Somewhere Between Blackhawks And Boy Commandoes...

We've been looking at Pat Parker's evolution from War Nurse to Adventurer to Superhero to ... ? 

When we left off, the 'artist' promised us that Pat was headed off somewhere new next time. And indeed, not just a new front of the war, but also a new role - Girl Commando...

And now Pat was no longer a solo act - she had a team to back her up. From this point on, the series was The Girl Commandos. They ran for about a score of issues, dissolving after the war... 

(Yes, this is unfortunately how our Friends & Allies were depicted.)

(Finally! we start seeing Jill Elgin's signature on the strip)

Note that last caption - "Not so long ago..."

The war was over, and rather than follow the often tread route of retooling the Girls to fight crime, they allowed the Commandos to retire and enjoy civilian life in peacetime.

Not a bad run. With the exception of #38, Pat appeared in every issue of Speed Comics from #13 to #42, outlasting the war she fought by several months.

page art by Jill Elgin from Speed Comics #s 23-37, & 39-42 (1942-1946)

The Mysterious Origin Of Super Baby

So - how do you think Super Baby came to be?

If you said he's an alien who rocketed to Earth as an infant or a media whore who broke a nation for personal profit, you're thinking about the wrong Super Baby.

We're talking about the other Prince Of Wails, this kid -

Our confusion over his origins stems from the simple fact that they published more than one!

There's this one...

...and then there's this one...
 

To heap on an extra dollop of odd confusion, the stories were published by different companies. The first origin is from Timely's Comedy Comics and the second from Baily's Cisco Kid. I've got no clue how or why that happened, and there is no record of who created/wrote/drew the strip.

It would be another half dozen years before Superbaby (one word) started appearing in Superboy, and a half dozen more before Super Baby was left on Clark Kent's doorstep.

Super Baby had just a dozen stories before fading into comic limbo.

page art by ??? from Comedy Comics # 13, Krazy Komics #s 8-13, and Cisco Kid #1 (1943, 1944)

Thirsty ADventures

Last time we looked at some ADventures, it was for "R.C." and Quickie. As i mentioned then, back when i drank soda my preference was for RC or Pepsi. So, i guess this time we should look at "Pepsi" the Pepsi-Cola Cop, eh?

I was actually surprised when i went gathering strips for this feature. Out of well over 100 appearances, there seem to be only 5 actual strips being repeated over and over. On the plus side, that makes them rather easy to collect and display -

Where it gets oddly interesting is back at the beginning. There were three more adverts that ran only once each and were seemingly never repeated. As a purely guesswork answer as to why, i'd suspect it has something to do with the artist on that first trio of ads - the legendary Rube Goldberg! He was already a popular media presence, and his contract may have granted him more remuneration that Pepsi wanted to spend?

No real clue, but here are those first three from 1942 -

Now i'm thirsty...

page art by Rube Goldberg and Graham Hunter for many titles (1942-1947)