Number 2420: Thanksgiving Turkey Award: Dan Hastings and the baby killer

It is the American Thanksgiving Day, where the traditional bird of choice to eat is a turkey. A turkey is not very intelligent, so I have named my annual award the Thanksgiving Turkey Award. It gives me a chance to show what I consider the worst/most unusual/weird or whatever-it-is comic book story chosen for the year.

This one is definitely one or all of those. It has a mad scientist who sends huge bugs to kill children, and a couple of killings are shown in graphic detail.

Dan Hastings, according to Public Domain Super Heroes, is a copy of Flash Gordon, which was not unusual at all in early comic books. It explains why he wears a gaudy costume yet uses his real name. Dan has a Dr Zarkov-like friend, Dr Carter. Dan and Dr Carter’s daughter, Gloria, are a couple. After the gruesome beginning of the story, it turns into another mad scientist story, with the girlfriend of the hero, in a bondage scene, being threatened with death. The anonymous comic book writer in 1942 had a disturbing imagination.

The story is from Scoop Comics #2, and skeletons of bug-stabbed infants earn this story three and a half turkeys.

No writer or artist is credited by the Grand Comics Database.

More Thanksgiving Turkey Awards! Just clink on the thumbnail.

Number 584


The imitation Flash Gordon


My correspondent, Nix, who supplies me with great scans from MLJ comics, has contributed this from Blue Ribbon Comics #1, November 1939.

Back in the earliest days of the comics, when they were almost exclusively anthologies, they tended toward certain types:a cowboy, a magician influenced by Mandrake the Magician from the newspaper comics, a spaceman like Flash Gordon...you get the picture. Dan Hastings is the spaceman, and he's not only influenced by Flash Gordon, he appears to be lifted right off the Sunday funnies.

Well, sorta...the artwork by an unknown artist isn't Alex Raymond, but the story is sort of a mishmash of various Flash Gordon stories, including the Saturday matinee serials with Buster Crabbe. Dan has his Dale in Gloria, his Dr. Zarkov in Dr. Carter, his Ming the Merciless in Eutopas, his Mongo in planet Mexady. Errrrr...Mexady? Even though it's issue number one we're dropped into the story with no prelims, no backstory, so it's as if the writer expects us to know about Dan already. And we do, if we read Flash Gordon every Sunday.

Anyway, it's not so surprising to find an imitation Flash Gordon in Blue Ribbon Comics #1, when the lead strip is an ersatz Rin-Tin-Tin called Rang-A-Tang. I love the old MLJ comics but at the company's beginning originality was not a strong point.