It's Madcap Monster Matinee time again, and we're sailin' along in full-on 40's fear mode with yet another Golden oldie from Orbit's occasionally weird, Wanted crime series. Now the more observant of you might recognize the goofy looking "bat" character in the splash below. This is because he made a brief cameo in the splash of our previous post HERE! That's right, 'ol Bat Flab appeared 4 issues prior to this one as a sort of "Wanted" visual teaser, I suppose, which was, not surprisingly, also illustrated by Maurice Del Bourgo. And okay, not to be confused with the 1940 Bela Lugosi PRC film of the same name (watch it HERE!), but our "Devil Bat" is still actually very similar to it, (as well as most cheapo poverty row film classics and afternoon serials of the era), --because it's just as entertainingly cartoonish and clunky as you can get! From the January 1949 issue of Wanted #17... and saaaay, am I crazy or does it feel like we're flappin' freakishly fast 'n furious through December?! Ahhh well, and Happy Friday the 13th too!
7 comments:
Yeah, nothing scarier than a bat that looks like Broderick Crawford, lol!
"But all criminals are not madmen like The Bat...They too must be fought and crushed...So henceforth, I will devote my life to fighting crime.. And to help society rid itself of these parasites!"
And with this oath The European Batman was born, or should have been had this been a superhero comic.
The Bat was impressive: horns, wings and pointy ears, he should have had a parachute for high rise escapes. If he had, this could have turned into a series of Sacco's pursuit to end The Bat's crimewave.
A great find, Karswell, Thanks for making Friday the 13th a little less unlucky.
Haha… well, we also now know what Rondo Hatton would’ve looked like as Draculer
So the prison break set up by the police or the guards gets one of them killed? That's probably how it would be likely to turn out, but a lot of action films try to convince you that it's a good idea.
A fun little detective tale with a couple twists and turns. The only disappointing part is that we don't get the "bat" of the splash, with his little furry body and gnarly limbs. That's a great image. Sure, the real "bat" is just an ugly guy, but I'd love to see the guy on the splash take his anger out on more poor European countries.
I love that the bat goes all in on the super villain lair. There's no reason for the worshipping and alters and stuff, but he's going to jazz the place up!
I'm with JMR777 -- I can't believe the guy didn't at least think of gliding wings!
Really enjoying this sidetrack into crime comics!
It's sort of like the Devil Bat is a realistic, charcoal portrait of some Don Martin cartoon. I like the idea that Del Bourgo has a go-to face for his bad guys. That's the studio system for you. But here it's kind of the reverse of Lon Chaney's "thousand faces."
The character work on everybody else is mostly great, too. I love every image of Petrence. But then the protagonist looks like Bob Oksner's Dean Martin sometimes (see page five), and Stallone others (penultimate panel), and then some kind of French revolutionary (at the very end there). So I guess he's the real man of a thousand faces here.
Two more random thoughts: One, I have a lot of sympathy for authors (or letterers) who misspell "bestial"--I mean, the wrong way is just so much more satisfying. And two, I will endeavor to accomplish things with "the skill of a trapped panther" from here on out. Like typing wasn't difficult enough already.
And speaking of suicide over the gliding wings options, isn't it odd in crime comics how quickly these big tough gangster / murderer weirdos are with just pulling a final panel farewell-- "you'll never get me!" Bang! *brains blown out... "Aaaah!" *leaps from building top... etc. Would love to get a discussion going someday about this sort of thing, it seems to happen quite a bit in precode Golden Age comics.
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