Number 492


Origin of Crimebuster


Chuck Chandler, Crimebuster, had his origin reprinted in Boy Comics #30, 1946. It was originally published in Boy Comics #3, in 1941. Grand Comics Database gives Charles Biro the credit for writing and drawing.

I probably don't need to point out the anachronistic naked guy with fig leaf, swinging the sword, on the splash page. I'll also direct you to the last panel of page 10, which shows Chuck in an embrace with his mother. She says, "Darling, how you've grown. Kiss me again." Holy Oedipus.

The action stops in the middle of the story so Chuck can buy a mistreated monkey from Chico Marx.

Crimebuster's costume is a hockey uniform with a cape. A few years later the cape was dropped, even the Crimebuster persona was dropped, but this story shows how Chuck came to be so sartorially unusual.

Despite what it says after the last panel, Iron Jaw was brought back to Boy Comics, even earning his own strip. Of all of Biro's creations, Iron Jaw is probably one of the most interesting.

Biro was an interesting guy in his own right. Here's a text page with photo of Biro from this same issue of Boy Comics, telling us that Biro is really interested in boys!

Number 491


Broadway Cop


"They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway." But some of the people are just dim bulbs.

From ME Comics' I'm A Cop #3, 1954, drawn by Bob Powell.

Number 490


Shanghaied Spirit


Until he was drafted into World War II, Will Eisner directed both the Sunday Spirit Comic Book Section and daily comic strip for newspapers. After he went into the service other artists, including Jack Cole, had a hand in, and the writing was handled by others. This sequence from the Spirit dailies, from March 30 to May 16, 1942, is by Eisner.

The story is classic Spirit: a great villain, the Blot*, a Popeye-ish henchman named Blind Bat, shanghaied men forced to work for the Axis, the Spirit fighting a pet shark named Max...I've scanned the sequence from Volume One of The Daily Spirit, published by Real Free Press of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1975. I picked up four volumes of the set in the mid-'70s, and don't know how many were distributed in the U.S. At the time Warren was publishing the Sunday Spirit sections (as with many such reprintings, out of sequence), and as an adjunct to those I really enjoyed seeing the daily strip version.


Warren had the advantage of using Eisner's files, whereas the Real Free Press strips look to be second and third generation, but they're fairly clear and readable. The six-week long span of the continuity gives it some room to breathe that was sometimes lacking in Eisner's strict 7-page Sundays.

The cartoony-looking Spirit at the bottom of the logo on each page is based on Eisner's design, but was drawn by Dutch cartoonist Joost Swarte.

*Yes, comic trivia fans, Mickey Mouse had a villain called the Blot, later the Phantom Blot.

**********

From Mexico, El Spirit #19, July 1977. I posted another story from this issue here.

Number 489


The Space Suitors


I've written about this story before. There's nothing very original about "The Space Suitors," from EC's Shock Suspenstories #11. It has a standard EC sex and revenge plot: a cheating wife and her partner conspire to murder the husband, and in the end get their EC-style justice. (Sex and infidelity are the basis of three of the four stories in this issue.) It has a science fiction setting, which doesn't have anything to do with the core of the story, just makes that EC-style justice seem all the more horrible. Reed Crandall's artwork raises it above the ordinary. He makes all of the EC clichés seem much fresher.

Nowadays gory stuff is so commonplace that any routine episode of one of the CSI TV programs can contain more gore than any pre-Code comic book, but in 1954 when "The Space Suitors" was published it would have been a startling experience for anyone not familiar with comic books to come across the panel of the murdered man's exploded head. It sure was for my brother, who was about 10-years-old when I shoved it in his face and said, "Look!" with all of the sadistic glee any big brother has in torturing a younger sibling. After that my brother would not look at another EC comic book. That was okay with me. Milt's "bloated, ruptured face" helped keep my brother away from my collection.