Clue Comics #1: The Boy King and the Giant

[alicemacher]

The other night, I was looking through the first issue of Clue Comics (Hillman Periodicals, Jan. 1943) for a particular story, when I found that all the stories caught my fancy to some extent or another. So because it's in the public domain, I'm gonna post the whole thing! (Minus the text story, ad pages, etc.) Over the next few days, wonder at the exploits of costumed crimefighters Nightmare and Sleepy, the bumbling but patriotic Stupid Manny, the high-tech (for the 40s) masked avengers Micro-Face and Zippo, the plucky Boy Rangers, and the proto-furry superhero Twilight!

But that's not all! Because all of the above features lasted five issues (and a few lasted longer), when I'm done with Issue #1, you get to vote on which feature you'd like to see more posts of. Ain't that swell? Yes.


"The Boy King and the Giant" is the creation of Charles Biro and Bob Wood (script), Alan Mandel (pencils) and Dan Barry. Scans, as with all the stories in this issue, are courtesy of ComicBookPlus.com.
































Next up: "Checking the Checker," starring Nightmare and Speedy.

Comments

[ozaline]

Nostradamus built a robot to fight Hitler! That is AMAZING!

I was kinda expecting a piloted mech or at least something more mechanical with the bolt, but still this is fun.

I

[dcbanacek]

Its a land locked country, that is obviously NOT Switzerland... why do they have a harbor, let alone ocean going vessels?

[lucean]

Throughout the whole story I continued to struggle with the thought that a writer sat down and felt the natural enemies of tyrants are kings. I think it broke something in my head.

[viridian5]

There was a line of thought that a country's true pure-blooded king had a connection to the land and anyone else who took control was a tyrant (even if said new person was actually better at ruling or better for the people).

I think it's bull, which is why I laugh at, say, the idea of the ending of The Court Jester being a happy ending. The "real" king is on the throne, but the real king is a baby, and earlier events showed that the court was a snakepit of corruption and backstabbing, which means the actual ruler would be a corrupted regent and terrible things would continue happening.

[reveen]

That's not how Belgium works. That's not how Greece works either. What the fuck is a Swisslakia?

[icon_uk]

Two countries over from Markovia, a couple of miles past the Latverian border, and just next to Uberwald. You can't miss it.

[silicondream]

Because if there's one thing WWII-era America was really enthusiastic about, it was harbouring refugees from the Nazi regime!

I was going to say something snarky about George Washington not quite saving every American from tyranny, but then I saw that Richard I was listed as a mighty enemy of tyrants and oppressors and, well, not much point really.

[icon_uk]

I was more pondering which role Lincoln was seen as being, especially given what John Wilkes Booth shouted as he shot hi,.

[fredneil.livejournal.com]

Ironically, his reason for shouting that and the reason why Lincoln is included here are the same thing.

[alicemacher]

With these sorts of stories, Golden Age writers were definitely presenting an idealized America that welcomed everyone needing refuge and treated everyone, American-born or immigrant, equally. Part of that was for wartime propaganda reasons, of course. No doubt there were some writers who genuinely believed it.

I wonder though if there were other writers who were painfully aware of the domestic reality and yet intentionally created a vision of what America could and should aspire to. Keep in mind that many early comic-book writers and artists were Jewish; although the public at large wouldn't learn the full extent of the Holocaust until 1945, there was definitely awareness of Nazi persecution of European Jewry, and widespread opposition at all levels of society to letting even a single Jew in.

[penguinzero]

I would say that the US would probably be willing to relax its immigration policy if they were told that, along with a few bargeloads of refugees, they'd be getting an immense robotic superweapon that could shift the world's balance of power significantly. And that, if they didn't accept the refugees, they'd go to some other nation and take the robot with them. Pragmatism can count for a lot.

[icon_uk]

That was AWESOME!

It's like a WWII precursor of Tetsujin 28-go or Giant Robo with a nod to Ray Harryhausen's later work en route

Though as they're somewhere in Europe, and they wanted to go somewhere to fight Nazi's, you'd have thought they MIGHT have thought about not wandering quite so far and eading towards Britain.

[bradygirl_12]

That giant is SO COOL! That Nostradamus was some guy! :)

[laughing_tree]

Considering the far-out concepts some of these public domain characters offer, I'm surprised Big Two writers have pretty much never made any use of them over the years. Or is their public domain status a fairly recent thing?

[alicemacher]

Not so recent. Their publishers went out of business early on, as did the majority of Golden Age publishers in the 50s or earlier. So no one ever renewed the copyright on the titles, nor on the characters.