Number 1243: “A Thrilla, dilla night…”

This is the final posting of four this week, spotlighting Quality Comics. I really enjoyed presenting these theme weeks, and will do this again sometime.

Plastic Man, star of Police Comics since its first issue, was on his way out. After this issue Plas would appear in Police Comics two more times, then be replaced by a couple of crimefighters in civilian clothes, Ken Shannon, Private Eye and T-Man Trask. I’m sure the Plastic Fans of the day felt let down when they saw what had befallen the title.Plas went on for another few years in his own title, filled with a lot of reprint material, and then was sold to DC Comics along with Blackhawk.

This story is credited to Cole, story and art, by the Grand Comics Database. I’ve been snake-bitten a time or two by identifying Jack Cole as artist, so I’ll leave it to more knowledgeable fans to determine if this is a Cole-solo, or as was often the case, whether he was assisted by others.

From Police Comics #100 (1950):

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Number 1242: Luck be a Lady

This is the third of four postings this week from Quality Comics.

Why did Lady Luck only last five issues? I’d think she would have lasted longer just based on the pin-up aspect alone. Or maybe that was the problem. Around the time the Lady Luck comic book appeared in 1949 the critics of comics were in their battle armor and rattling their sabers. There were many other sexy female characters in comics, ranging from Sheena to Katy Keene, and despite them perhaps Quality lost its nerve about publishing sexy comic books. They also published the queen of comic book pin-ups, Torchy, and toned her down. So Lady Luck was Lady Out-of-Luck. Regardless, Lady Luck was a good character (part of Will Eisner’s Spirit Section in newspapers, published in four-page installments, and reprinted in Smash Comics #’s 42-85).

Klaus Nordling is credited with drawing and writing Lady Luck. He died at age 76 in 1986.

From Lady Luck #86 (1949).*

*Actually the first issue. It was continued from Smash Comics, which ended at #85.

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Number 1241: Eisner pre-war and postwar

This is the second of four postings this week with features from Quality Comics.

Will Eisner was one of the more accomplished artists in the comic book field, even from his very early days in the industry. And he joined the industry before it was an industry.

He had a distinctive style before World War II, and it grew into the style we all know and admire from after the war. (He also had several people helping him, but the overall look of his work is consistent with his layouts and inking.)

“Espionage Starring Black X” was a strip from early issues of Smash Comics. This episode is from #12 (1940). The Spirit story, reprinted in a 1950 issue of Police Comics, #100, originally appeared in the newspaper comic book section Eisner produced, dated April 28, 1946. “Black X,” who always wore a monocle (even when covering his face, as he does in this story), is a type of pre-war spy story where spies were gentlemen, and agents had numbers instead of names. The Spirit story is one of the types of Eisner stories I really like, whimsical and pure fantasy.

Less than two months ago I did another posting with Eisner's Black X, in Pappy's #1212.

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The Trouble With Robots

One of the central themes running through DC comics in the Silver Age was a reverence for science combined with skepticism for applied science (i.e., technology).  Few plot points illustrate this better than the continual problems that Superman (and Superboy) had with his robots.

They were originally created to help Superman out of jams, particularly in situations where both Superman and Clark Kent had to be somewhere at the same time.  However, they were unreliable at best, often shorting out due to electrical disturbances, or sunspots.  And at times they were unavailable for other reasons:

And on more than one occasion, they nearly revealed his secret identity:

At least twice, his robots went rogue.  Ajax, a robot who was transformed into an android by members of the Superman Revenge Squad in Superman #163, apparently went off the reservation and tried to kill Superman, although it turned out that he was just pretending to do so to fool the SRS squad.  And when Superman tried to create an android of his own in Superman #174, it turned out to be mistake-prone and attempted to take Superman's place by convincing Clark Kent that he had never really been super.

But nothing reveals Superman's trouble with robots more than the story in Action #299, surely one of the wackiest in the entire Silver Age.  He receives a robot named LL-35 from the planet Jax that is supposed to be much smarter than even Superman himself.  LL-35 makes a suggestion:

Here are the robots he builds according to the instructions:

Kryptonite vision, you say?  I can't imagine how that could possibly backfire on Superman.  Unless, that is, some aliens tampered with the robots' loyalty tapes:

Well, that's pretty unlucky.  And for the next several pages, the robots torment our hero, using Red Kryptonite to turn him into an elastic man, and later giving him three faces:

Superman doesn't even get out of this using his wits; instead he gets lucky.  See, this was all taking place on an alien planet, where every day, a fallout dust disintegrates metal:

Any other examples of Superman's robots causing headaches for him?

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