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)

Impossible Times

My plan was to spend today painting. I've been working the setups for a new piece for a few days. As some know, i tend to paint from photographs. However, since i tend to paint things that don't (or can't) exist, the photos get a bit trickier. But only a bit. I just have to use imaginary cameras to take pics of non-existent worlds. Not too tricky - the sort of thing i used to do when my business card read "Existential Cinematography"

But, damn. I forget that i'm operating on only 8GB of RAM currently. The render i left going last night is still only 1/3 completed - so painting from that photo is going to be a bit Impossible today. Damn, once again.

Oddly enough, i've been talking about a Master Of The Impossible with the Mindbender from Mars in the past couple days. He seems like a good topic for today, eh? (And, heck - it might even prove to be useful reference for the ol' MM.)

Dr. Synthe first appeared in the second issue (#3) of Stars And Stripes Comics in 1941.

Yesterday was only a single page post, and i seem to have lost the day prior. So let's go big today and run the complete Dr. Synthe, all 32 pages of the adventures of the Miracle Man From Mo from Harry Francis Campbell and Henry Weston Taylor -

At that point, Centaur Comics folded up and Stars And Stripes Comics ceased to publish.
That was a situation too impossible for even Dr. Synthe to continue on.

page art by Henry Weston Taylor from Stars And Stripes Comics #s 3-6 (1941)