Number 2268: Bad old Doctor Time

We begin our December posts with a reminder that time is a relentless and persistent enemy. I think about it a lot. It is one of the reasons I found this story of the Target and the Targeteers appealing; they kick Doctor Time’s butt.

[SPOILER ALERT] When Doctor Time tells his story he says he had invented a serum to stay young, but was framed for murder. He was sentenced to 99 years and got out of prison at age 124! Then to get revenge he created a reverse formula, making people old. As I now know, all too well, no one needs to make a formula to make people old. On the other hand, Doctor Time should have gone into business with his youth formula. That would be a much better revenge. Anyone with such a formula would make himself rich as Croesus, and hopefully without having to be an ugly green criminal with stereotyped Asian henchmen. [END SPOILER]

The art is by Bob Wood, for whom time was not kind. Later in life he killed a woman in a hotel room while on an alcoholic binge. He ended up in prison.

The Target and his two buddies were business partners, and had a long-time career in Target Comics. Wood went on to draw the Claw when he went into business with Charles Biro on Daredevil Comics and other titles for Lev Gleason. This story looks like something Biro may have had something to do with, uncredited. I have seen more than one Biro story go along at a regular pace and then wrap up on the final page by cramming everything into several panels.

From Target Comics Volume 2 Number 5 (whole number 17, 1941):

Number 851

Target: Hitler

The Target was a superhero who usually ran with a posse, the Targeteers. The Targeteers are missing from this story, from Target Comics Volume 4 Number 1, 1943. The artist puts himself into the story, talking to the Target, who tells a strange and allegorical tale about Hitler. The Target is telling a hallucinatory tale, or else the artist is hallucinating about the Target hallucinating.

Superheroes getting to Hitler was no big deal in the comic books of World War II, fairly common, actually. But those stories were mainly of the smash-into-the-bunker-and-punch-Hitler's-lights-out variety. This has religious overtones, not unheard of, but unusual for the comics of the era.

Surprise! Another story from Target Comics tomorrow: the one and only Basil Wolverton and a Spacehawk adventure.

Number 540


Target


The Target and Targeteers lasted through the 1940s. Created in 1940 by cartoonist Dick (Frankenstein) Briefer, using the name Dick Hamilton, the Target was a metallurgist who wore a costume made of metallic fibers that bullets bounced off. His two business partners joined him as the Targeteers.

This episode is fromTarget Comics Volume 3 Number 12, February 1943. By this time the Target and Targeteers were servicemen, and this particular story uses only one Targeteer. Maybe the other guy was on KP peeling spuds.

Sid Greene did the artwork along with somebody named Ryan. Greene was another of the comic book journeymen I'm always glad to feature. He's probably best known to modern comics fans for the work he did during the '60s at DC, where I saw him first as an inker. He was hired to replace the retired Bernard Sachs. I saw Greene's pencils and inks in various places. I showed a story of his from Mystery in Space a couple of weeks ago. Sid Greene died in 1972.