22 August 2017

Boy, Oh, Boy! (King Kirby 082)


As you may well know, Jack Kirby and his long-time partner Joe Simon, popularized the Kid Gang genre in comics. The 1970s revival of the Newsboy Legion and reprints of Boy Commandos brought an awareness of them to a new generation of readers. There were other titles, like Boy's Ranch giving the genre a western slant, but around here we like things Odd. So Boy Explorers was the one i liked best.
Boy Explorers were featured in text pages in the first couple issues of Stuntman before appearing in their own title. But that lasted only two issues before Terry And The Pirates took over (picking up the numbering at 3). Boy Explorers stuck around for another two issues there.
Here we find them a little earlier, hiding out over in Joe Palooka's book-


Okay. I know. Dream sequences aren't really all that odd since they're excused from normality by virtue of being a dream. But with the Boy Explorers, you never knew. They're regular adventures were odd enough - after all, they'd already been to The Edge Of The World in their second issue!
Let's jump over to Terry & The Pirates, the second half of the two-parter that ran in 3&4. Here they've found an Isle Where Women Rule -


Not the sort of adventure one might expect for the Boy Commandos. On the other hand, they get to be rescued by superheroes, so i guess it evens out...

Boy Explorers by Jack Kirby & Joe Simon from Joe Palooka #5 (1946) and Terry & The Pirates #4 (1947)

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