Showing posts with label Samson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Samson. Show all posts

10 August 2019

Into The Unknown And Fantastic Elements Never Before Traveled By Man

Well, i promised a Fantastic post this afternoon, so it's time to deliver. We actually have a bit of a head start on this a few days ago when we met this guy...





 Okay. You might not recognize a couple of those stories (we'll get there) but, it's the good (bad?) Professor to whom we refer, not the tales. Rather surprisingly, Professor Fiend is the first time we've touched on Fantastic Comics

Fantastic Comics premiered in December of 1939 (cover date), lasting only 23 issues over two years. (Or 24 issues over 70 years. As mentioned in Professor Fiend's previous post, it's a little tricky.)

The star of the book, hogging all the covers, was Samson, a legally safe Superman substitute...




...and in that classical vein, they featured The Golden Knight...




...and an updated version of another classic character, Captain Kidd -




With world war looming, it's no surprise to find a strip like Yank Wilson, Super Spy Q-4 -




And BTW - Yank was rocking the blue body suit look for superspies long before S.H.I.E.L.D. -


They also had scifi adventure beneath the sea in the far future with Sub Saunders -




What makes it so surprising that we haven't been here before is one of the  golden age kings of Odd had two features in the book, including his most famous creation, Stardust, The Super Wizard -




Fletcher Hanks was perhaps too obvious when i was starting this blog, and so Fantastic Comics got pushed to back of the cave and ignored.

Fletcher also wrote & drew Space Smith under his Hank Christy nomme de plume -




And then there was my personal favorite. Halfway to Buckaroo, it's the adventures of Flip Falcon In The Fourth Dimension -

(Yeah, it took a couple episodes to settle on his name)



These were just the characters who were around at the beginning of the book. More joined along the way; some only in the last couple issues as they tried new things before cancellation. We'll likely peek at them eventually, but next - Let's join Flip Falcon back when he was still Flick to see how he got started...

splash panels from Fantastic Comics #s 1-12 (1939, 1940)