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)

Trump Flu Blues Prevention Break With Basil

Let's take a break from the puzzles and games and such. We're already getting enough silly entertainment from the president.

Seriously - how big of an idiot do you need to be in order to use Captain Bligh as the image you want to project?
Let's see - he steals, gets caught, and has the man flogged for daring to suggest he might have done it. He murders crewmen with his cruel need to establish his personal superiority, real or imagined. He makes bad decisions that screw things up, then punishes everyone else for it. He tries to cover his ass and make himself look good at the cost of those in his charge. His crazed actions eventually push them to deal with a deranged maniac in charge. And when it all finally goes to trial, the captain is protected by his own, but even they are forced to admit that he should never have been made captain in the first place.

Hmm...
Maybe he's actually not too far off the mark for a change. (Not on the current alleged mutiny, of course. That would require him actually having authority to be usurped, which he does Not. He's still operating on a child's idea of what the President is and can do. (And a child's idea of what a Man is, for that matter. Not to mention many ridiculous childish notions - like not being man enough to admit when you're wrong doesn't make you always right))

Anyway... 
While he's busy holding up relief checks so he can put his brand on his current failing business, let's get the hells off this planet for a bit.

Meteor Martin was another Basil Wolverton character from back in 1941. He only had two strips of which i'm aware, so let's take a look at both, shall we? These come from the final two issues of Amazing Man, #s 25 & 26 -

That's one confusing final blurb. The comic appeared in Amazing Man, not Stars & Stripes. Nor did Wolverton ever work for any publication with that name, so far as i can determine. Certainly not the newspaper for those in military service.

So, i guess maybe the answer was "No."

page art by Basil Wolverton from Amazing Man #s 25 & 26 (1941)