Saturday Solutions, Supersnipe Edition

Well, there were no puzzles or quizzes in yesterday's Friday Fun & Games, so why the Saturday Solutions?
There are still puzzling ponderables and quizzical questions raised. Like -
Where did Supersnipe come from?
He was quite popular, the first character to regularly get long form stories, often doubling the page count of other comic stars. What happend? Where did he go?

Let's look at the inside front cover from the second issue of Supersnipe, #7:

Before you ask, yes - De Grouchy is a real name (with a prestigious lineage), not a fictional character.

So, Supersnipe was birthed entirely from the mind of George Marcoux., who saw his opportunity and ran with it. But, wait - what? There were other appearances of Supersnipe before the Army & Navy Comics story we saw?

Yep. In Shadow Comics, volume 2, #s 3...

...#4...

...#5...

...and in #6, we find out that last blurb was a lie. We got this advert instead:

It's worth noting again that the superhero comic was still in the very formative stages - Superman & Batman had premiered only a handful of years previously - and Marcoux was already poking fun at the newly budding tropes of the barely formed genre. George was an established cartoonist with a career before comic books were a thing. That may have helped to give him a 'lofty perspective' from which to observe and note these things.
Or it could just be part & parcel of that delightfully twisted sense of humor he displayed.

So, what happened? Where did Supersnipe go?
The answer to that is a sad one. George Marcoux died only a few years later in 1946. The book carried on for a little while without him - and i haven't read that far yet, so i cannot comment - but i suspect that Supersnipe was too personal in essence to continue without his creator.
I'm slowing my reading to savor what remains.

pages from Street & Smith's Shadow Comics, v.2 #s 3, 4, 5, & 6 and Supersnipe #7 (1942)

Six Of One

Army & Navy Comics surrendered after their encounter with Supersnipe in #5, and so issue #6 was the first for our hero:

"At Last - A "Comic" With A Sense Of Humor" 
And an oddly twisted sense of humor it was, i'm happy to report.

Though the book was most definitely Supersnipe's now, it did still hold traces (or already paid for stories) from its' predecessor with strips like these:

The new title added some new heroes, some more heroic than others...

...and the oddest of the bunch, Wing Woo Woo. Reading now, this is quite cringe-worthy as a horribly racist caricature of a person, especially to someone like myself who grew up in Asia. But viewed in historical context, it was actually considered progressive at the time. While we were rounding up Japanese Americans and tossing them into our own concentration camps, a large percentage of Americans were completely unable to differentiate between Japanese & Chinese and would gladly have lumped them in together. (You know, much the way too many modern Americans will gladly lump all Muslims together) If you'd asked most about the Rape of Nanking, they'd wonder whose grandma you were talking about.
Showing a 'Chinee' who was a patriotic American helping the war effort was an attempt at positive depiction of Chinese Americans. It was definitely a "one step at a time" kind of thing, where they had yet to really grasp that by depicting the character as they were was inherently demeaning - to them that was just how you showed someone was Chinese. It was more a matter of ignorance than malice, and while perhaps disquieting to view, it should be remembered that Gruskin was trying. Hell, he may even have had military contacts with the Flying Tigers* for all we know. Our history my be uncomfortable, but forgetting it only serves to make us feel better, and prevents learning the lessons of the past.
So, as a general policy, you won't find these sort of strips censored or glossed over on an automatic basis here at The Voice Of ODD! But you may have to suffer through one of my rambles.

All three of our new heroes returned for further adventures in Supersnipe.

But the real stars of the book were Supersnipe and his friends & family. Koppy (Supersnipe's secret identity) routinely showed up in other stories, like this one featuring his Grandfather:

It doesn't end well...

One of Koppy's friends you've already met, the star of this week's Sunday Morning Funnies:

Let me tell ya somethin'...  Back in them days, ya got some damn comics for yer dime!
With all this going on, there's still the lead story, 22 glorious pages of Supersnipe!
We're mostly covering the odd nature of the title itself this time, so we're not going to run a full 22 page story, or even a breakdown, this time out. Just peek to show how odd things are starting to get. Check the major events that open up this story:

Oh, yeah! Supersnipe is a real and actual hero now. Ain't no stopping the future!
And note the "Jap Trap" sign in the background, referencing Ulysses's own story later in the book. (seen above) George Marcoux instills a sense of fun throughout, in both writing and artwork. And he enjoys picking on comic book tropes, way back in 1942, as in these two pages:

And we're still in the first issue here. Wait until you see the explanation for that pic from Saturday's Behold The Future post.

And the book continued to get odder over time...

But we'll get there...

all art except Huck Finn from Supersnipe #6 (1942), Huck from early next year (1943)

*(The Flying Tigers were an American squadron of pilots fighting World War II for China before America got involved. There's comics, movies, books... go enjoy)

Friday Fun & Games - The Muffo Way

Once again we avoid the excitement of Friday Night Fights with our own

As you may have noticed, we're in the middle of binging on the glory of Supersnipe. So, no puzzle this week for Fun & Games. Instead, let's play with "Magic!" with Tricks That Even Muffo Couldn't Muff!!

Muffo, you may remember from yesterday's post, was a back-up feature in Supersnipe. Here's the rest of that introductory strip so you know who we're talking about:

Muffo, Ladies & Gents!
Giving hope to kids everywhere that they can be a real magician. If he can, anyone can.
So here's those tricks for you to practice with:

Muffo making magic from Supersnipe #6 (1942)

Then Came Five...

...
The 5th issue of Army & Navy Comics arrived on the stands with no warning on the cover of what was contained within...

Leafing through, it might seem the same as the previous four issues...

...and Private Rook returned for what is, as far as i know, his final appearance...

Of course, Private Rook's adventures were both insane and degradingly mocking of the wartime enemy, as usual...

There were a few joke pages and the obligatory text feature, but tucked in the middle were six pages of Odd (especially for a book aimed at members of the Armed Services) that would take over the title on the following month, and for most of the next four years:

(Yes, that's The Shadow. No, that's not Bird Person.

I'm going to pretend that's Kent Nelson, sans helmet, hanging next to Mandrake*...)

And then things got weirder...

all pages from Army & Navy Comics #5 (1942)

*(I think that's actually SuperMagician, not Mandrake, but he looks so close...
more importantly "That's Not Bird Person" is actually DOC SAVAGE! (Really))