The last of the costumed super heroes in Golden Age Action Comics for National, had a long and veried career. Appearing from the git go as one of a number of non-costumed adventure features in the comic as his alter ego "Tex Thompson", when the super hero boom hit, he suddenl dyed his blonde hair black, slapped on a patriotic red, white, and blue costume and became Mr. America!
Battling crime in costume with confidant and friend Bob Daley just wasn't enough to get readers interest though, and in 1941 a re-tooling of the feature came as Mr. America fashioned his cape into a flying carpet (I know, smacks of desperation...but hey...they were all flying by the seat of their pants back then, so why not by their capes) and to add more color to the feature, Bob Daley fashioned a costume for himselfand beame..."Fat Man"!
When America entered WWII, a re-tooling again took place as the dynamic duo of Mr. America and Fat Man became for a few issues, "The Americommandos" to add a little gung ho to the strip, and shortly after it took a more serious (at least attempted) tone and Fat Man was dropped, Mr. America actually (unlike other costumed heroes of the day) went behind enemy lines in Europe and became the singular "Americommando"!!!
Here's a story of the strip from mid-way of all that developement, issue #42 of Action Comics from 1941 and the story wherein Mr. America fashions his cape into a flying carpet, and Bob Daley puts a lamp shade on his head. Created by Ken Fitch and Bernard Bailey here's...
You can't blame them for trying kids, they were ALL doing it.
There as magic to these anthology comics. For one thin dime, you could get 64 (cout 'em!( 64 pages cram packed with as many colorfully costumed super hero fighting for the right as you could hope for. Each title had it's own roster. Each title had it's followers, you can bet. They didn't sell a million and a half issues a month by doing it wrong!
Superman, The Vigilante, Zatara the Magician, Mr. America/The Americommando and Fat Man! The heroes of the Golden Age of Action Comics!
Talk to you soon.
This Golden Age retrospective is turning into one of my favorite Overturfisms. It looks like a daunting task, but I am sure you keep telling yourself: One Character at a time, one post at a time ! The softback collected edition will be an AWESOME essential for any true Comic-Lover's Library.
ReplyDeleteIt's actually nice to see dissertations on comics from someone who doesn't live in his mom's basement!
ReplyDeleteLys: a book colection of what I'm trying to do would stepp on enough copyright toes to choke a horse. Flying Spaghetti Monster bless we worry free bloggers. And as long as I set my cartoon commentaries in the Drink Hole and can scatter some Angels around, I won't be discouraged!
ReplyDeleteMarco: I'm really just a Mom and a basement away from all that...
You have a winner here, dude! I'm so in. Again, I must say, with regards to your cartooning, you have it all going on!
ReplyDeleteThanks as always Mykal. Now that I have a long-running story structure going on, I'm looking forward to wroking on my layout and backgrounds. I use the most sparse backgrounds since Jules Feiffer (not that that's a BAD thing...I just want to be more comfortable in it). I think Ernie Bushmiller would be proud!
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