Showing posts with label The Arrow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Arrow. Show all posts

14 May 2020

That Time They Did A Comic About The Drugged-Out Cheating Harvard Athlete

My, oh, my - how things change with time.

These days a performance enhancing pill popper winning college competitions and breaking records would be viewed as a vile cheat and possibly a scummy addict. 80 years ago - not so much.

Coming to us from Harry Francis Campbell, the man who brought us Dr. Synthe, meet Harvard loser, the scrub of the Track team, Dash Dartwell. With a name like that, you know he grew up dreaming of running fame.

Fortunately, with right drugs...


Of course, when you're popping pills in public, you're likely to attract the attentions of the criminal element...
 

What?
You didn't think Cosmo Cat was the only one to take out bad guys like that, did you?

And so the pill popping and cheating continued...
 

Perhaps even then they realized the rather cringeworthy nature of Dash's powers. By the time we reached his fourth and final tale he had appeared in three different titles. Or maybe it was just that Centaur was on it's last legs and books kept folding on him.

Either way, here's the last time we saw Dash dashing -
 

Yes, i know - it was viewed more as a super vitamin rather than a drug. And science had a better reputation in those days. But it's still odd how perspective so radically shifts in just a few generations.

Let's hope we get some good shifts soon, huh?

Note that while Dash used the Human Meteor moniker, there was another...

page art by Harry Francis Campbell from Amazing Man #s 21 & 22, Stars And Stripes #2, and The Arrow #3 (1941)

01 May 2020

Feature Feature - Once Upon A Rainbow

Well, if anyone is curious, i won't be stimulating the economy this week. Trekked out to the bank to make my monthly pull before next week's supply run - no sign of any stimulus was to be seen.

What we do have to see today is a new feature, with a logo and everything -


ONES Upon A Time is dedicated to the comic book equivalent of One-Hit Wonders - characters who appeared only a single time though planned for longer. So stand-alone stories are naturally ineligible. 

Today we feature The Rainbow.

Jim Travis made his single heroic appearance in The Arrow #3 in 1941. Written by Ed Herron (Bat Masterson, Captain Midnight, Challengers Of The Unknown, Green Arrow, and many others) and drawn by Al Plastino (Ferd'Nand, Superman, Superboy, Two Decades of DC Covers, among Many others), The Rainbow had a more-than-solid creative team. And  he sported one the more uniquely designed costumes with a very odd hood & cape combination. 

What The Rainbow did not have was a home. The third issue of The Arrow was its last, and the Rainbow dissipated into the limbo of lost comics.

Note that at this early time, he used the full Alfredo Plastino, later almost always seen as 'Al' Plastino.


Hmm...
Even that next issue blurb seems to know The Rainbow would not be returning. They left where he would be appearing blank.

page art by Al Plastino from The Arrow #3 (1941)

14 March 2020

And He's Pretty, Too

Last time we met Tippy Taylor, sort of an American Tintin in jodpurs from George Loomis. Tippy is a young reporter whose global travels have dropped him on Fantasy Isle and into Lemuel Gullivar's world. Let's rejoin him now for his travels through the Underworld to the House Of Mystery to meet Satan

With dinosaurs, wizards, and robots, oh my...








Despite the blurb, there was no "Next Month"
Issue #24 was the final issue for Amazing Mystery Funnies.

However, the following month, Tippy appeared in The Arrow #2 to continue the tale -


This time they didn't even pretend there was going to be another episode. They got him out of his immediate predicament, and we must assume that Tippy either made his way back home, or built himself a home here on Fantasy Isle.

page art by George Loomis from Amazing Mystery Funnies #s 19-24 and The Arrow #2 (1940)