I've designated March as "Mummy Madness Month", so every Monday we'll get ourselves wrapped up in some mummified related macabery! And let's march it into action right now with a creepy Captain Battle WW2 classic from the ominous October 1941 issue of Silver Streak Comics #15. Original Daredevil creator / artist, Jack Binder clearly had a blast with this one, --and I'm super duper sure you will too!
I absolutely love this. 40s super hero action is just so wild. We get a cover with a zombi(e) mummy, a splash with a skull mummy, and the real mummies are just nazis in bandages with guns, punches, wise cracks, and weird 40s whiplash story telling, I don't know why, but it always entertains me.
ReplyDeleteI guess my ADHD shows!
BTW that cover is great, the perspective, the tunnel centering the image, the mummy and the girl girl art book-ending, and then all the great little details, the skull spiders(?) (wrong number of legs again!) the alien octopus, the coffin, etc. The preview text is right Binder must have loved drawing this.
I love how Hale just takes an actual mummy from the museum for this trophy collection! This is why you don't have kid side-kicks!
I also love -- and this is 40s logic -- that the mummy master is (1) wearing a mask over (2) bandages over (3) a suit of armor at one point!
Binder doesn't have much use for panel borders, does he? It's well done and never distracting. Page 11 is nuts in that regard, and yet it works.
Interesting use of border/fourth wall-breaking art.
ReplyDeleteThese 1940's hero/superhero comics were energetic and manic. Plenty of action to satisfy the comics kids back then.
ReplyDeleteHale's Souvenirs is taking a page from Batman's Trophy Room, I will let comic researchers try to determine who was copying whom.
Here's to March Monday Mummy Madness, and all of the mummies, spooks, vampires, werewolves and all the horrors found in THOIA.
BTW:
ReplyDeleteWent down the rabbit hole looking at Captain Battle. Created in just a couple months after Captain America (it's obvious influence), was big enough to get at least 2 spin-offs (Captain Battle Comics and Captain Battle Jr.), neither of which lasted, and one that had 5 issues yet only 3 comics (I think) as it oddly switched publishers and numbering!
He got his own Bucky (seen here) and his own Red Skull (Herr Skull) but just didn't have that Simon/Kirby magic (who could?)
I'd like to see a Herr Skull fight if you've got one!
I'm sure many people have a bad attitude about seeing mummies (not revived ones, the other kind) in person, and I'm sure I'd be one of them if I ever got to see one.
ReplyDeleteAnd Jane really sums it up, doesn't she? - they're "so dead-looking!"
I like the way forties (and fifties) heroes always take the time to change clothes when there's crime going down. And wow, the Captain spends his days in a raincoat watching us all through his magic telescope? Shudder.
ReplyDeleteLove the bit at the bottom on page five where the plucky teen sidekick fights off four armed henchmen: "I'll handle these guys, and you go on after that one old man." And the Captain even botches that. Honestly, Hale might have done better without any help. As far as I can tell, the villains achieved their every goal--and captured or conquered each hero on top of that. If they'd been as murderous at the beginning of this story as they were at the end, or even a little speedier about it, they'd have gotten away scott free and there would be nobody left to work on the nation's defense problems. This thing is definitely an object lesson on the self-sabotaging practice of gloating too much.
The skull mummy in the splash is wonderful--and so are the color-coded sarcophagi! I just wish the goosestepping Ratzi bastards were fruitied up the same way.