I've been trying to get some requests filled going back into the previous year, but unfortunately haven't been too successful (though I was able to finally answer Bill's question in the comments of last month's Rudy Palais post HERE.) Anyway, Brian asked nicely about the Captain Battle vs. Herr Skull story from the Sept. 1941 issue of Silver Streak Comics #14, and that, (like a Cap sock to a nazi jaw) I can absolutely deliver! And here it is --SMACK!!! These boney goons are a real riot though, I mean, it's not enough to wear skull masks, but they've added a German pickelhaube (spike) to the tops of their noggin's, making them look like demented, undead unicorns! This is an action packed, frenetic follow-up to our previous mummy story HERE, and as long as we have the Silver Streaks out, we may as well see a few more later this week too. We'll just make it a Captain Battle vs. the Super Stupidnatural Fest, how's that sound? So grab hold tight to your luceflyer's, --it's gonna be a wild week!
This one isn't quite as nutty as the last one but just as fun. We get the predictable death trap, we get lots of fun destruction and mayhem, a lot of fights, and Hale being a kid (reign that guy in, Cap) that every young boy reading this can picture himself as, complete with the collection addiction.
ReplyDeleteMore great usage of panel borders, the kind of thing I'd usually think is distracting but Binder uses them to great cinematic effect.
I will say page 4, panel 7 looks like Cap and Hale have invented a new golden age power of cloning!
Herr Skull and his henchmen -- this is a *great* bad guy image. I love the most costume-y skulls, the horn, though Binder kind of cheats in a bunch of places where it's impossible to be a mask but that's a minor quibble.
Top of page 10, those two panels are great. Bonking the goons against the wall? Classic!
One knock against the colorist: At the beginning it looks like they were trying to give Herr Skull a different colored robe but it kind of fell by the wayside; it feels like it was written without a leader and they worked on end later? It's hard to tell. He should have gotten a different costume, but, again, minor quibble.
Awesome cover, awesome splash.
Stupidnatural, that sounds like a great name for a horror parody comic.
ReplyDeleteLuceflyers and a curvoscope/super telescope, these devices sound like they were inspired by Stardust or other out of this world superheroes during the golden age of comics.
This is a sub-sub genre, superheroes taking on the supernatural, before the advent of Dr. Strange but during the comics of the Purple Claw.
C B Colby once said "when it comes to ghost stories may there always be one more" the same goes for horror comics.
I haven't gone back to dig up the skinny on those wee jet packs the kids are wearing in this story, but unless they go fast enough to peel the very skin off a human's skeleton, that flight home was an extraordinarily long trip. I've never known even one tween sidekick that could make it more than a couple of hours in a car without a bag of Takis and a Sprite, either. I'm surprised they didn't both have beards when they got back to their New York, New York hilltop.
ReplyDeleteI love these golden age superheroes. I just finished reading all the Black Cat I can find, and now I'm into the Invisible Scarlett O'Neil. These Captain Battle stories are coming at just the right time for me. I love the spirited weirdness and the lame one-liners and the all rest. The skull horns are just great. I'm not so sure that I think Binder's willful disregard of those panel borders is always such an effective idea--but it sure is interesting watching him solve the problems he's created. See the bottom of page four, in which he must decide how to overlap characters that are literally facing one another (how tesseract!); or page eleven, where the dialog for the last panel appears in panel three, when the characters are still imperiled. Sometimes it's great though: I love off-stage Captain Battle knocking that henchman back into panel three! It's so visually backward from what I'd expect that I can't imagine anyone else has ever drawn a big punch that way before.