As some of you already know, I like to throw a superhero horror tale atcha here every once in a while to keep things interesting. And this one is not only very innnnteresting, it's also The Duke of Darknessessess's very first action-packed appearance, --and it's all pretty damn funny too! From the October 1945 issue of K-O Komics #1 (PLEASE NOTE that I usually link to the GCD issue info here, but it doesn't seem to be responding at the moment for whatever reason, and you definitely don't want to miss the great Jack Kirby cover on this one too!) Anyway, if you're one to skip these horror hero posts because you're too cool 'n snobby, then I beg you to reconsider and at least give it a try, it's tons of fun (and funny), especially if you enjoy supernatural stuff like The Spirit, or The Spectre. Did I mention this story is also funny?
8 comments:
K-O Komics #1 GCD link:
https://www.comics.org/indicia_publisher/1249/
Oh good lord! How many issues did the D of D last? Seriously, it's like the Spectre light! But it is entertaining, lol!
This was a wild one.
The plot follows the early days of comic book superheroes- A guy unexplainedly gains superpowers, stuff happens, bad guys are defeated, the end.
"All these comic book heroes think they are better than the police force!" a little breaking of the forth wall on page 6 middle right panel.
If Fletcher Hanks drew a calmer, more civilized superhero who didn't bump off every baddie he met, this would be it.
So I've read and still read superhero comics since the late 70s so I'm always up for more superheroes!
It's 1945 so they chickened out a little at the end and skipped Prof Evil being actually dismembered (and spread about, I'd assume.) If this was in the early fifties we'd see a whole page of that!
There's some good superhero action here, needs a bit of editing, though. I love the look of both DD and Prof Evil, especially page 3, that's pretty spooky!
As with 40s superhero comics, the powers are kind of ill defined and then well defined in places.
I’m pretty amused that The Duke of Darkness took the time to leave the chief a note before escaping prison. Also, I’m pretty sure that was a jab at Captain America on page 6, panel 4. Captain America had first come out in 1941. Also, why is the Duke of Darkness rescuing the already dead criminals from the burning building?
Professor Live haunts this world wearing the green suit in which he was buried. Which makes a reader wonder: Whose big idea was it to desecrate Paddy Sullivan's corpse by burying it in that nutty get-up? Or is that the way they found him? Also, this story gives a whole new meaning to the term "dead name". I guess once a soul has transitioned, a new name is de rigueur. But "Duke of Darkness"? I feel like Paddy's cop pals didn't know all there was to know about that guy.
For the record, I love superheroes and villains who are based in jail cells. That always strikes me as clever. Who came first?
I like this art, too. Reminds me a little of early Briefer. I dig how carefully the characters have been designed. They look the same from panel to panel, from angle to angle, without too much reliance on caricature. That makes it feel like an awful lot more than the usual amount of prep work was done for this.
I do wish a little more attention had been paid to the visual presentation of the several ghostly forms. I guess the perfectly solid looking versions of the Duke and Professor Evil are fully manifested. And that the blank spaces with word balloons are the fully unmanifested versions of them. But here and there they are drawn in ghostly outline, and I don't really know what they means. Some kind of middle phase? At the bottom of page eleven, the Prof is ghostly--but conking folks on the noggin and rifling their paperwork--while the Duke is totally invisible--and nagging the Professor to materialize. Seems haphazard.
I hope you can dig up more of these!
I barely know Will Eisner's The Spirit (except for that deliberately campy TV pilot), but from what I do know of the character, this has a lot of the same tongue-in-cheek feeling.
And of course the character is a murdered cop, just as that character is an "officially" dead one.
Ghost of Great Nero! I'ma say that a lot now.
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