Number 2410: Facing the Face

Years ago in this blog I criticized the Face’s mask. Why? I thought it was silly. I just didn’t think any criminals or enemy combatants in a war zone would fall over in a dead faint or be terrorized by a rubber mask. Some people disagreed with me, and now, after many years of looking at super heroes from the early years of comic books (1939-42) there were a lot of super heroes who wore sillier costumes, had sillier origins, or even worse, just copied other super powered or non-super costumed heroes. The Face’s mask, for a gimmick, was at least the only one that I have found so far, so I’ll give it credit for that.

The artwork was done by one of the top professional artists from that era, Mart Bailey. He was drawing comic books very early in a style more like a newspaper comic strip artist. When I look at this Face episode from Big Shot Comics # 3 (1940) I see a guy who was far ahead of many of his contemporaries in the field. He shared Big Shot with Ogden Whitney, who drew Skyman in a style that is also more professional than much of the early comic book artwork. (And Whitney kept that style for the rest of his career, until the late sixties at least.) I will also bless Big Shot Comics editor Vincent Sullivan for bringing us Sparky Watts by the off-the-wall Boody Rogers, who made a good counterpoint to Bailey and Whitney.

The Face story is credited to Gardner Fox.

Pappy's Sunday Supplement #7 — The Face #2

The Face was a masked patriot. He pulled an ugly green mask over his face and went to war against America’s enemies. And anyone else who needed a pounding from a two-fisted radio reporter, Tony Trent, the face behind the Face.

I have complained before that the Face’s mask seems more silly than frightening. I have had it pointed out to me that Batman’s costume is designed for the same thing: to strike terror into the hearts of the bad guys. Well, there is the real world...and then there are comic books...and what works in one sometimes doesn’t work in another. Nuff said. The Face lasted through the war, then tossed the mask and became Tony Trent, where he finished out his run in Big Shot Comics, ending in 1949.

The Face #2 (1943), was mostly written, according to the GCD, by Gardner Fox, and it was drawn by Mart Bailey. Bailey, like his fellow Big Shot artist, Ogden Whitney (Skyman), had a very clean illustrative style with crisp inking. I have shown a couple of stories from The Face #2 in the early days of this blog, but these are much better scans. (P.S. Tony Trent may be a reporter, but he is not carrying a dictionary, or he would know that “skulldrudgery” is not a word (page 61, panel 2), but “skulduggery” is. Again, nuff said.) UPDATE: Look in the comments, where reader Ryan tells me I am wrong about "skulldrudgery."