Major Hornet is Flagman, who is at the beck and call of the President of the United States. Said president orders Major Hornet to find out who is sinking ships in the harbor and stealing all the ships’ cargo. Being a patriotic sort who wears a flag, Flagman doesn’t say no to the president, so he and his young companion, Rusty, take off after the criminal gang who are doing the ship-sinking and cargo-stealing. Something surprises me for a comic book story published in 1942...the crooks are regular crooks, not Nazi saboteurs. Well, they could have called them Nazi saboteurs and it would not have made any difference in the story. Note: at that time, Nazi U-boats lurked off the East Coast of the U.S. and sank as many ships as possible, because they were transporting weapons to our allies.
Flagman is said to have super strength, but seems otherwise mortal. He appeared in
Captain Aero Comics #'s 1-14.
Captain Aero had a screwball numbering system, which you can read about in the listing for that comic book at the Grand Comics Database. The cover says it is #2, but the indicia says it is Vol. 1 No. 8. Sometimes the business practices of the publishers were more unusual than the characters they featured.
According to the Grand Comics Database the artwork for this story is by Charles Quinlan.
I glanced at the remarks on numbering at the Grand Comics Database, and then fled.
ReplyDeleteThe publication date for this issue was February 1942. So the actual issuance would have been in January or in December, and drawing may have begun before the German and American states each declared war upon the other.
Once again, we have a boy side-kick whose secret identity has the same name.
And, once again, we have a story which is mostly panels of people chasing or thrashing other people.
To explain the inconsistency in the spelling of “Flag-Man”/“Flagman”, I'd imagine that most of the lettering were done by someone working from a script and paying no attention to the first page nor to the final panel.
Explosions sufficient to have the described effects on the ships would have also damaged the nearby waterfront, and would have done terrible things to the tunnel, unless it were reinforced in a manner that would have been prohibitively expensive.
The use of a hot iron on the face of the boss of the thugs seems to have left no mark.