Famous First Editions: Detective Comics 27 on The Corner Box S2Ep14

This week on The Corner Box, hosts John & David do a deep dive into some Famous Firsts, and talk about navigating the racism in some very old stories, the most appropriate ways to solve crimes, skipping comics with no pictures, what an anthology would look like today, and the crazy original gun ads in the books. Also, David launches another successful Kickstarter campaign, the podcast listeners get visuals, and John teases the next Sensational episode.

Timestamp Segments

• [01:59] The Famous First Editions.
• [04:26] David is very stressed.
• [07:56] 10,000 $1 tips.
• [11:00] David becomes a historian.
• [12:42] Original comic book formats.
• [15:58] Does crime pay?
• [16:52] Racism in Detective Comics.
• [19:13] The Batman art.
• [22:36] The greatest Batman story.
• [24:26] Superman vs Batman origin stories.
• [26:37] How to solve crimes.
• [27:42] Batman’s cool costume.
• [30:00] Speed Saunders, Ace Investigator.
• [31:05] Buck Marshall, Range Detective.
• [36:59] Crimson Avenger.
• [37:24] Death on the Airwaves.
• [37:34] All the gun ads.
• [37:48] The Bruce Nelson art.
• [39:27] Dr. Fu Manchu.
• [41:00] Collecting stamps.
• [41:38] Cosmo, The Phantom of Disguise.
• [43:06] Plain Clothes Pete.
• [44:06] The concept of the book.
• [45:41] David’s new favorite curse.
• [47:35] Ads at the back of the book.
• [50:00] A teaser for the next episode.

Notable Quotes

• “Crime never pays.”
• “You never see the lower half of the horse.”
• “There’s a reason why you’ve never heard of a lot of this stuff.”

Relevant Links

Super Kaiju Rock n Roller Derby Fun Time Go Book #2 | Kickstarter

David's Fun Stuff!
Did Someone Say Fun Time? Let's GO!

John is at PugW!
Pug Worldwide

For transcripts and show notes!
www.thecornerbox.club

Books Mentioned

• Action Comics #1.
• Detective Comics #27.
• Sensation Comics #1.
• Area 88
• Batman and Me
• The Bat-Man: First Knight
• Ben Webster
• Blondie
• Blueberry
• Mutt & Jeff
• Reg’lar Fellers
• Spider-Man: Chapter One
• Superman #1
• Tintin
• Tippy Teen

Transcript

Welcome to The Corner Box, where your hosts, David Hedgecock and John Barber, lean into their decades of comic book industry experience, writing, drawing, editing, and publishing. They'll talk to fellow professionals, deep dive into influential and overlooked works, and analyze the state of the art and business of comics and pop culture. Thanks for joining us on The Corner Box.

[00:28] David Hedgecock: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to The Corner Box. I’m your host, David Hedgecock, and with me, as always, is my very good friend,

[00:35] John Barber: John Barber.

[00:36] David: Hi, John.

[00:37] John: Hi. We’re not getting better. We’re hoping everything else gets worse, so we seem better, by comparison.

[00:43] David: It's a good strategy, John. Let's see how it plays out.

[00:46] John: It’s been working really well, so far.

[00:48] David: So, we're going to talk about some Famous Firsts today.

[00:52] John: Nice.

[00:53] David: I'm very excited. I don't remember how I stumbled upon these. Maybe you are the one that pointed me in the direction of these, or did I point you in the direction of these?

[01:01] John: I don't think so. I'm a big fan of the Treasury Edition format. I love those, but I actually hadn't been a big picker-upper of the Famous First Editions of them, until recently. I think it was you talking about them that I was like, “that would be fun to get some of these stories.” Both Marvel and DC have been printing money by printing reproduction copies of old comics.

[01:26] David: What a great gig.

[01:27] John: Personally, I'm not super interested in the ones that are just a comic, whatever, like Flash. Something like War of the Gods. DC put out War of The Gods. If I want to read War of the Gods, I'm going to go buy the paperback or read it on the digital thing, or something, but the ones that have weird extra stories are the ones that are really fun, for me. The ones where, otherwise, you wouldn't get that story reprinted. So, I really like that. When you start talking about the First Edition, you mentioned those, and I'm like, “oh, that's right. Those have them, too.”

[01:58] David: What we're talking about is the Famous First Editions. These came out, I don’t know, I think they started this program around 1974-ish. Somewhere around that time, ‘72/73/74, somewhere in that time. What they did was, they reprinted exact replicas of some famous first issues. Detective Comics #27, the first appearance of Batman, or Action Comics #1, the first appearance of Superman, or Sensation Comics #1, which is the first appearance of Wonder Woman. So, we're going to talk about two of them today. We're going to talk about Detective Comics #27, first appearance of Batman, and then we're going to talk about Sensation Comics #1, and the ones that I'm looking at are the actual 1974 editions, the famous first editions. They’re really cool. They're in these large, oversized reprints. They have a really thick cardstock cover to them. They have a shiny foil print ink to them. The Detective Comics has, it’s called the limited collectors’ silver mint series, John, and it's got a silver ink, and then when you open it up, then there's the actual comic itself, again, printed in the oversized format.

There's a little introduction on the inside front cover of the thicker card stock cover, and then you just go right into the comic book, and then the comic book is an exact reprint of the entire issue of Detective Comics #27, including all the ads and everything else. They took nothing out of it, whatsoever. So, it’s exactly, I'm assuming, as it would’ve been presented, but not the same size. I don't think that would have been printed at this size. I’m assuming these first editions are oversized, just to make it a nice package. Anyway, they're gorgeous packages. If you can find them on eBay or something, I definitely recommend them. I’m enjoying them. Although now that I've got a couple of them, I’m like, “man, how the heck do I store these?” They don’t fit in a comic book box. So, it's like, “oh, no. What am I going to do?” Also, getting bags and boards for these is also impossible. So, the fact that the ones that I have are in really nice condition, whoever had these books before me, I'm impressed with their ability to keep things nice, because you had to go out of your way to make that happen.

[04:18] John: Bags and boards do exist for them.

[04:20] David: Yeah, I don't know where to look for those. I haven't really tried, yet, but John, before we talk about that, I want to talk about something else. 

[04:29] John: Why? Do you have something going on, David?

[04:31] David: I do. I do, John. I'm very stressed, John. The reason we haven't talked, I just launched the Super Kaiju Rock n Roller Derby Fun Time Go Book #2. The Kickstarter launched this morning, John. Yeah, I'm tired. Getting that thing ready and out the door, it’s a lot of work, but it is really fun. I know I say that every time, but it really is true. Every time I start getting a little stressed about the Kickstarter stuff and the comic book making stuff, I just remind myself that “you don't have to do this. So, just relax and enjoy the process, and enjoy the journey,” and it really has worked for me. My therapist must be really good, because I’ve actually convinced myself that that's totally true. So, a couple of days ago, I was really stressed because I was not in the right head space, because I was like, “Oh, no. We're not getting enough followers. What's going on? I must be doing something wrong,” and then I just took a deep breath, and was like, “no, it is going to be whatever it’s going to be. You just have to put in your best effort, do the things that you know how to do, and if people respond to it, great, and if they don't, then that's good information to have moving forward,” and as soon as I did that, John, I went from not having as many people following on the Kickstarter campaign - I had 150 people following, and this was last Thursday, and in my mind, I was like, “250 is around where I want to be, where I'm going to feel comfortable.”

So, I was 100 off, and it takes a while to get people to sign on to get notified for these campaigns. It's not a totally easy thing to do. I felt like I was way off the mark, but the second that I was just like, “just relax, have fun, tell people about it, but don't be annoying. Just enjoy yourself. Start having fun,” and the second I started doing that, John, boom, I got 100 more people following in 3 days.

[06:29] John: Nice.

[06:30] David: When we launched this morning, we were well over the 250, which was where I wanted to be, and all I did was basically let go and stop stressing. I didn't stop working. I didn't stop trying to do the things that I know how to do to try to get people excited, which is basically just showing a bunch of people Rolo's art. My entire marketing strategy is “look how cool this art is,” but still, I enjoyed doing that. I enjoyed sharing the art, because I love the art so much. Love Rolo’s stuff so much, and I just let that go. I let that show, and it really made all the difference in the world. So, it was a good launch. I'm really excited that we had that many people following before we launched, and we've launched really well. I think we're going to fund today. It’s looking possible, and that's better than the first book. The first book took a couple of days to fund. So, everything's pointing in the right direction, and I'm excited. So, all that said, if you haven't checked out my book, Super Kaiju Rock n Roller Derby Fun Time Go, we're in the middle of our second campaign, as of today, but by the time you hear this, it'll be well into the campaign, and I hope you join us. Go on Kickstarter and just do a search for Super Kaiju, or go to funtimego.com, and there's links there. So, I hope you join us. I hope you check it out. Thanks, everybody, for letting me talk about it.

[07:57] John: I will say, here's another way you can do it. Do what I've just been doing, while you've been talking, which is just Google “Fun Time Go Kickstarter,” and then don't realize that you've opened it in the browser window where you have Nate Murray's log in information, and login as him on Kickstarter, and I don't know, how much do you want? Do you want to get, what, $80,000? I can get you whatever you want. It's yours.

[08:19] David: There's only three of the Super High-End Collector Version of it. It's a $500 package, or something like that. So, just pick up one of those. Nate will love you.

[08:28] John: I don't want to stop somebody from getting that. I’ll just put in a tip for that amount.

[08:31] David: Yeah, do the $1.00–

[08:35] John: I’ll just keep putting $1.00 for the rest of this podcast. We'll see what we get up to.

[08:41] David: Okay. I love this. I love this for me, I love this for you, and Nate never has to know. This is going to be good.

[08:48] John: I think it would also be good if, not only was he charged $10,000, but he got 10,000 emails about it. He’d love it. Sorry, it's a mutual friend of ours.

[08:59] David: Yeah. No, we would never do that to somebody we don't like.

[09:03] John: Congratulations. That's awesome. It looks really good. I really, genuinely was trying to buy it, and I'll wait till after the podcast to do it now.

[09:11] David: Oh, thanks, John.

[09:12] John: I don't have my own login on that browser window, because the world's more complicated than it needs to be.

[09:18] David: You haven't seen this one. I didn't share this one with you yet.

[09:20] John: No, I know. I was realizing this today.

[09:21] David: It was a surprise.

[09:23] John: Yeah, it’s just like the other stuff you do. I've never seen it. Absolutely not true, everybody. Absolutely not true.

[09:34] David: I want to dive into these Famous First Editions. I wonder if we should do the commercial stuff in the middle of the program, instead of hitting everybody up front. I guess it doesn't matter. Everyone just skips around to wherever they find something interesting.

[09:46] John: By then, you’re tired of us, and you're just going to turn us off if we give the hard sell. Right now, we've got a little bit of grace.

[10:53] David: Just do it right in front.

[09:54] John: Yeah, 90% of our listeners, which is an impossible number to hit- we don't have enough to get an even-

[10:01] David: Let's say 75% because that's— When you have 4 listeners, that means each one is 25%. I can do that math.

[10:09] John: Yeah, and three of them are hovering over, switching to— I don't know what would be a funny podcast for them to switch to— listening to the original serial again. I actually don't have the First Edition of that. It recently came out, last couple of months, DC reprinted a version of Detective #27– I think it's supposed to be exactly like the original. So, it's the exact size.

[10:31] David: Oh, it's even the exact same size?

[10:33] John: I’m going to randomly grab the comic that I think everybody would randomly grab, which is a copy of Area 88 #1. Here's what it is, in comparison. It's a little bit taller and a lot wider, or not a lot wider, but a chunk wider, but then next to a Famous First Edition, it's smaller.

[10:50] David: Oh, yeah. The Famous First Edition is way larger.

[10:53] John: Yeah. Golden Age comics are just a little wider, really, than modern comics. Just an eighth of an inch taller, maybe.

[11:00] David: One of the things that I've recognized is that, as much as I love comic books, I have not been a good historian of comic books. I haven't been, really, that curious about the history of comic books. This podcast has actually changed that, for me, a lot, because as we talk about all these books, it's just got me thinking more about the history of things. So, going back and finding old interviews— I picked up a copy of DC, what was that book? I sent you a picture of it— there was a comic book magazine called DC Comics All-In, or the best of DC, or something. It was a monthly, or maybe every other month, magazine in the 70s, and the first issue, it had an article in it, which was just an in-depth interview with Joe Kubert. That's why I picked it up, because I was like, “oh, man, this looks really cool.” I've been looking at stuff that, because I'm like, “oh, wow. I learned some stuff about Joe Kubert—” I'm going to always say Kubert. I learned some cool stuff about him. They almost exclusively talk about his early career, in the interview, how he came up and who he was learning from, and he was a Carmine Infantino guy. He was in the Carmine Infantino studio. Those kinds of things, as I've started to get into it and read a little bit more about these historical things, interviews and things, it’s gotten me more and more interested, because the more I read, the more you learn. The more you learn, the more you know. The more you know, the more you like it.

As I've got this newfound interest, still comic books, but a new aspect of comic books, I was reading the other day about, and I think it was in that Joe Kubert interview— yeah, let's tie that all together— they were talking about how comic books came about, and originally, the comic books were just newspaper reprints, reformatted, essentially. That's why you get, the original comic book size is exactly, basically, a newspaper folded down, once or twice, because they were using the same papers and the same printing presses. It was basically just one more fold, or one more cut to the comic book size from the newspaper size, folded in half, or something that, from that time.

[13:15] John: Yeah, like it's a tabloid.

[13:17] David: So, when you're looking at this issue of Detective Comics, #27, you can see how those origins informed the work, because most of the work is exactly an 8-panel grid, and there is no variation on that stuff. It is 100% an 8-panel grid, which basically is how they were doing newspapers. It's interesting, to me, that these origins of these comic books basically come directly from the newspaper reprint, as newspaper reprints, and how the storytelling in newspaper comic strips really did inform the early art production of comics, and just look at them. Pick up a modern comic today and look at it. We’re a million miles away from what I'm showing you on camera right now.

[14:10] John: Yeah. That’s funny, because you have the same thing in Europe, around the same time, too, where everything is very structured but also built to be reprinted in different ways. I’ve been reading the small TinTin comics. It's all modular that way, or when I was reading all of Moebius stuff. Moebius’ stuff was designed for the page that it was drawn on, but the Blueberry strip was designed that the top half of the page and the bottom half of the page are separate, and they would run in books in different formats. The very first appearance of Superman, that was drawn to be a comic strip, and then they cut it up, and pasted it into comic book pages.

[14:50] David: I didn't know that that's how that came about.

[14:52] John: Yeah, that's why Action #1 starts in […], and then we read Superman #1, it has the story that leads up to it. Superman #1 has a reprint of Action Comics #1, with a bunch of pages additional to the beginning of it. The other part you might notice, when you're reading some of these comics, is some are very influenced by particular comic strips, and you might have a strip appearing in one of these comics that is identical to an existing comic strip, just with a different name. There’s a lot of stuff like that. There's certain ones— I mean, the Crimson Avengers one looks an awful lot like The Spirit.

[15:35] David: So, we thought we'd try something a little different. We're recording this, as we always do, on Zoom, but we're considering showing these as little YouTube videos. So, if you hear us, folks on the podcast, referring to something that we're looking at, we’re hoping that maybe you can also see it, too, but we'll see if that actually plays out. For now, we'll try to describe, as best we can, what we're seeing, for the podcast listeners. Detective Comics #27 opens up.

[16:01] John: The first thing you're probably asking yourself, when you're picking this up is, “does crime pay?” David, how far do you have to get in the comic before you find out if crime pays?

[16:08] David: The inside front cover.

[16:09] John: Oh, okay, good. It answers that right away.

[16:12] David: Yeah. John, crime never pays. Never. It’s […] the inside front cover. Never.

[16:16] John: Okay. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

[16:18] David: I was just going to say, the cover does feature Batman. It's pretty classic. I feel like everybody's seen the classic Detective Comics #27 cover. 10¢. Starting this issue, the amazing and unique adventures of the Batman. 64 pages of action, John. May 1939.  Inside front cover, as John already has pointed out, suggests that crime never pays. There's some really fun little tidbits, little 1-panel stories, and it dives right into the Batman. It’s the feature, John. It's the opening story for this particular issue.

[16:52] John: Before we even get into that, I mean, I don’t want to keep derailing, but this is the 27th issue of Detective Comics. There should be nothing super remarkable about this. It's usually, I think, a Yellow Peril leaning detective magazine. The first thing is all about, “here’s some facts about the Mounties and bullets - cool stuff that detectives do, and you'll get a lot of racist stuff as we go on.

[17:18] David: Oh, it's so racist. Jesus, is this thing racist.

[17:19] John: Yeah, you're right. Boom. Here you are. The Batman.

[17:22] David: One of the things that is interesting about this story, at least in my initial reading of it, is how much more timeless this particular story is than some of the other stories that are in this book. Some of the other stories are very particularly of a time, and very racist. It is offensive, some of the stories in here. I was appalled. I couldn't finish a couple of the stories because of how it just— I couldn't stomach it. I didn't like it. So, it's interesting, to me, that Batman seems to be devoid of a lot of that very specific and particular era’s— it doesn't have that same yucky feel, and it speaks to, I think, potentially why it is one of the more well-regarded pieces in this book, at that time. It just feels more new, fresh, different, not hateful or spiteful, in any way. It doesn't have as much of that.

[18:33] John: It's tough, though. I think they got lucky with the first one. That is what you have. That is a comic you can reprint. I don't think that's a characteristic of Batman, the way it is—even something like The Shadow, where it's really influenced by that. The Shadow really gets into—sorry. Back up. I don't know if it's putting on our modern-day hats about the racism of it, when it comes to the shadow. Some of this stuff is, yikes.

[18:56] David: I don't have any of that feeling in the Batman story, in particular, which I found interesting. I didn't see that or feel that in the Batman story, and I don't think that's because I'm wearing rose-colored glasses. I think it's just, that's what this story is and how it's portrayed. One of the things that I think is pretty interesting is that Bob Kane, who goes by Rob’t Kane, is probably the worst artist in the entire book. The thing that does happen in the Batman story, in particular, is that although the it's set up, lined up in the 4-quadrant grid, from top to bottom—Essentially, there's 8 panels on every single page, and there's two in the top row, and there's two in the middle, second row, third row, fourth row—8 total, and they really do not go away from this. There's only one story in this entire 64-page issue where they do a 6- instead of an 8-panel grid, and it's so different that it's very much noticeable, but the thing that Bob Kane does with his grid is that he varies the panels in the columns. So, the column size changes. If you see, most of the other stories after the second story do not do that, at all. There’s hardly any, almost no variation, at all, on the grids. It is a very strict “every square, every panel’s exactly the same size, there's eight of them, and they all look the same,” and every single panel is a mid-shot, also.

[20:35] John: Yes. Yeah, that is for sure.

[20:37] David: Which, also, Bob Kane does differently. So, that, in and of itself, I have to think, for me, having read modern comics for 30/40 years, it doesn't really stand out that much, but I have to think, potentially at least, not really—again, not being a historian—the way he varied the panels, the size of the panels—in some places, he even adds a panel or two—adhering strictly to the rows, the size of the rows, but he plays with the size of the columns, and then varying the shot from mid-shots to pulling way back, doesn't ever really get super close, but he does get more of a close-up than some others—anyway, I think that variation probably excited the heck out of, I don't know, if I was nine years old and all I saw was 8-panel grid mid-shots, and then suddenly, somebody did a full-body shot of somebody punching somebody else in the face—Whoa, that's crazy.

[21:38] John: Yeah, I wanted to make a joke about, he had to vary the size of the panels because he couldn't find pictures from pulp magazines to swipe that were the right shape, but you're totally right. I think I remember reading—this is a recollection from decades ago—reading Batman and Me, his autobiography, and talking about them going to see Citizen Kane, and being like, “oh, man. People are reading our comics,” which is silly, but at the same time, if you watch Citizen Kane, man, it really does look like a Batman comic. The deep focus on that stuff, and vice versa. This is much more cinematic than a lot of the—just doing comic strip stuff. There's no close-ups in a lot of comic strips. That's a tradition in the way that stuff looks, from the beginning of time to the present. Garfield doesn’t get extreme close-ups, and it didn’t back then, either. Making a sweeping generalization when I say that. I don't think this is the best example of this, but I think the other big thing that Batman had going for it was that Bill Finger was a better writer than most people, at that era, that were writing comics. He was an uncredited writer on this.

It's not like it’s the greatest story in the world, and remember, years ago, DC did an issue of Detective Comics, where it was just retellings of the story. They’ve done that a number of times, where they’ve retold the story. It doesn't hold up. I mean, when you read this the fourth time, and you're like, “it's a very simple mystery.” The twist that Bruce Wayne is Batman, is fine, but he's the only character in it. There’s nobody else it could’ve [been].

[23:14] David: I was like, “It was Bruce Wayne the whole time? What a twist.”

[23:21] John: It's cool enough if you were, at the time, like, “oh, that's a boring Playboy. He may be just the intro to get Commissioner Gordon in there,” and then “Lambert has been murdered at his mansion. I’m going over there now. Like to come along?” says the Commissioner of Police to a bored Playboy, who replies, “Oh, well, nothing else to do. Might as well,” as he's smoking his pipe. It's not the best police work, but I think we've established, on this show, Commissioner Gordon is not the best cop.

[23:50] David: He's not that good, John.

[23:52] John: No.

[23:53] David: I don't think he's very good at his job. I think Commissioner Gordon maybe should be voted out. If he was the Commissioner of San Diego, I don't think he'd have a job anymore. Maybe he would.

[24:01] John: “We’ll look the other way, at the mass vigilante killing children by putting them in danger,” because he got a new child. Is that his reelection platform? Anyway, I'm sorry. For all of that, this is not the best Batman story. This is not the best Batman story by the Bob Kane studio, but it’s readable. I mean, I've read it a zillion times, and I'll probably read it a zillion more.

[24:25] David: Yeah. I'm anxious for us to do Action Comics #1 down the line. So, I won't spend too much talking about it. I think page one of Action Comics #1, which is basically the origin of Superman, is the entire origin of Superman, and is everything you ever need to know, or ever have known, about Superman is on that first page. It’s an incredible feat, what they were able to do in one page, in my opinion. This isn't that. The Batman origin is not that. It's a little more paced out, spread out, and maybe it's because, what you were saying, potentially, Superman/Action Comics #1, the Superman story, was originally supposed to be newspaper.

[25:05] John: Page one was created for Action Comics #1.

[25:07] David: Oh, okay.

[25:09] John: I believe. Yeah, I mean, I think that first appearance of Superman is great, and it also goes into this tremendous statement of purpose, where the first thing Superman does is stop the state from executing an innocent person, and you're like, “that's where this character's going to go,” and that is where that character goes, for a long time—at least, until World War 2, and what I would say is funny about it is that Siegel and Schuster were these young science fiction fans. They came from fandom. They made their own mimeograph books in high school, and they were writing this real pure power fantasy, but also an empowerment fantasy. Bob Kane didn't sign the bad contract that Siegel and Schuster did. Bob Kane signed a good contract for Bob Kane. He was a businessman, as well as—Well, that was it. He was a businessman, and you can see there’s this professionalism to the story, where you don't have that in a lot of this stuff.

This isn't the greatest story, but this is written by a professional writer, who is good at writing stories, and knows if you make a thing in page one, it pays off in page 8. Bruce Wayne shows up in page one. The last panel is Bruce Wayne steps out of […] and he’s Batman. It's not the best Bill Finger story you’re going to find, and it’s not like he didn't have some clunkers, but he was, in my experience, very solid compared to other writers, at that time, especially compared to other stuff you're going to find in this comic. Batman isn’t off solving social justice issues. He’s stopping rich people who murdered each other, in order to be more rich, or whatever.

[26:37] David: Yeah, and the way he stops them, John, is he punches them into vats of acid, thereby killing them.

[26:44] John: “Well, it's a fitting end for his kind,” as Batman says.

[26:49] David: Batman’s not very disturbed by the fact that he just punched dude into acid, thereby killing him. Literally, the first story the Batman's ever in, he kills a dude.

[26:58] John: Well, to be fair, Superman throws guys out of windows, and you don't really see what happens to them. That stuff doesn't come until later. I mean, Batman carries a gun a couple of issues later, which is not unreasonable. If you were to make a superhero now, punching the guy in the vat of acid after he murdered somebody is completely a reasonable thing to do. It's just the way Batman has turned that we don't think of Batman as a guy that does that. If James Bond punches a guy and he falls into a vat of acid, you're not like, “oh, James Bond. What did you do?” No. He kills people by the dozen. The antecedents to this, like Zorro, Dick Tracy, The Shadow, they kill people. You can't stop bad guys by not killing them. That doesn't come till a bit later, where you're like, “well, no. You could. They’re dressed like circus strongmen. They can do that.” Speaking of the circus strongman thing, I mean, Batman, from the get-go, has a cool costume. This is not the best drawing you're going to find of Batman’s costume, but it’s always been a thing that carried Batman a lot, is that he just dresses nice, and has cool cars, and stuff.

[27:56] David: Yeah. No, that's true. There's a couple of cool shots of Batman in here. I totally agree. The narrow eyes with the mask really plays well, and on the last page, that final shot of him, where they reveal that Bruce Wayne is actually Batman, as he’s just walking out of the door—that’s a cool shot of him, wearing the cape over him, almost like a Sherlock Holmes-esque looking cloak, with the cape and hood, and it is visually, a very striking pose. I would’ve been completely thrown by the purple gloves, if I hadn't just read the recent First Knight book, but I'm blown away that the original incarnation of this guy had purple gloves on.

[28:43] John: That's one of those ones I wonder about. There's an issue of Spider-Man: Chapter One, that John Byrne did, that explains why Spider-Man's symbol on his back turned from blue to red, or blue to black in between issues of Spider-Man. It's one of those things that, every reprint of that just fixes it. They just got it wrong the first time. I feel like people got really into those purple gloves after Grant Morrison. The purple gloves are a bit not coordinated with the rest of the outfit.

[29:11] David: Yeah, it's an odd choice.

[29:13] John: Who knows who colored it? I don't think these guys had control over that, at this point.

[29:19] David: Oh, I didn't even think about that, but it's consistently purple throughout, though, but yeah, who knows who colored it? You’re right. I wonder if they do have that figured out, at this point, who probably colored it. They must have an idea.

[29:38] John: There's probably stuff where they send it off just to the engraver and the other people working there, or whatever.

[29:44] David: So, the rest of the book, John, it's a collection of just detective or crime stories. Batman ends with the reveal of Bruce Wayne being Batman, and “tune in next month and we'll see what happens.” We move into the next feature, which is Speed Saunders, Ace Investigator, and the Killers of Kurdistan.

[30:07] John: It's handled very sensitively.

[30:08] David: Yeah, by Fred Guardineer. That one’s interesting.

[30:12] John: It’s a detective who wears a yellow fedora and a camel hair coat, with black hair pulled straight back, and a very strong jaw. Page one, in the bottom lower left, I think you can see which comic strip this is heavily influenced by. It's very Dick Tracy.

[30:31] David: It’s pretty much straight up Dick Tracy. Look, they’re barely hiding it. Do you want to go into depth into the actual stories and stuff? Like I say, a crime happens, and the guy in charge solves the crime (?) half the time, but they’re pretty straight-forward. There's not a lot of complexity to anything in here.

[30:55] John: They're fairly brutal. There is a lot of people getting […] bonkers. I mean, it's a mechanical hand that pops out of a door to shoot somebody. That kind of stuff. You’ve always been a big a big Buckhead—Buck Marshall, Range Detective.

[31:09] David: Yeah. Buck Marshall, Range Detective.

[31:12] John: Funny thing here, when you look at it, if you see this, you might notice, there's only two colors on this. It's only black and red.

[31:21] David: Is it red in your book? It's pink in mine.

[31:23] John: Well, it's magenta.

[31:24] David: Oh, okay.

[31:25] John: It's pink. There's another story later in the book, and you can see that those are the exact same pages. There are certain pages on it that they only printed two-color, instead of four-color, presumably to save money. So, it aligns exactly that the story later on is also in those colors.

[31:40] David: It’s on the same signature, yeah. For sure, they were doing that, purposefully, but it actually looks pretty. It's a decent, fun little Western mystery. The guy on his horse having to solve a little bit of a mystery, punches a couple of people, shoots a gun or two.

[31:57] John: To me, this is the one that hit me the most, of the “these are just mid-range shots of people talking about what's going on.”

[32:03] David: Oh, yeah. The mediocrity of the art— it’s numbing, almost.

[32:07] John: Here's a page, where 5 of the first 6 panels have the characters facing away from you.

[32:14] David: There’s a horse. You never see the lower half of the horse. Not once does the artist, even—Oh, no. I take that back. There is one shot where you see the horse’s legs. That's never done again. That’s it. The opening caption is “Buck Marshall, Range Detective. Bullet Bluff. Buck Marshall, Range Detective, loosens his six-gun in its holster as he hears the rapid tattoo of pony hoofs on the stony bottom of the valley trail--," and that's how we’re introduced to Buck Marshall, John. I feel like this one's already been going in Detective for a little bit. I feel like Buck Marshall's probably a pretty popular feature, at this time. Who doesn't like a Western? What 10-year-old doesn't want to ride a horse and shoot a gun?

[32:56] John: Yeah, or hit a gun out of somebody's hand with a hammer, at the very least. The guys going around carrying guns, I don't think, kill anybody. The next one was interesting, to me. One of the things that's really funny about this, when you think about it—these guys were doing this whilst Superman was coming out. It wasn't like, “why don't we just concentrate on Superman and do more Superman?” No, we’ve got to keep Spy going. Chief […] want to know—

[33:25] David: The US spy […]?

[33:27] John: They don't even introduce the characters. Bart. I forgot—

[33:31] David: They don’t say his last name.

[33:32] John: Bart Regan. There you go.

[33:35] David: Regan. That’s a good, strong name.

[33:36] John: Yeah. Movie star name. It's funny to imagine a world where you could just call something “Spy.” He goes to visit somebody, whose about to tell him who killed somebody, then, “good heavens. What's wrong?”

[33:51] David: “Dead.”

[33:52] John: “[…] the doctor. What would you say he died of?” “Internal hemorrhage.” I don't know. It's not the best.

[33:58] David: Yeah. So, the very next thing he does is, he runs to a congressman and says, “hey, you're coming with me.”

[34:03] John: Yes. I'm sorry. I take it back. I love this story. I forgot what happens in this.

[34:08] David: Congressman […] “going with you.” So, he pulls a gun on him, like “the hell you're not.”

[34:13] John: He just doesn't tell him he's a government operative. He just kidnaps the guy.

[34:18] David: He just kidnaps him. It's great. No time for that, John.

[34:21] John: No. It’s exactly right.

[34:23] David: Got to keep the story moving.

[34:25] John: God, this is a really good one. He’s sitting there, reading his paper, drinking out of a cup, “very interesting, indeed,” but then on the fire escape outside, a figure crouches and climbs in, and it's a guy just trying to steal food. He's unrelated to the story. He’s a burglar. So, Bart's like, “well, are you just hungry? For a minute, I thought you were somebody else. Help yourself, pal,” and the guy with the gun goes, “well, you bet I will.” He eats the food, and then dies because the food is poisoned, and that's what's killing people. That's how you solve crimes. I love that, but just the world they’re living in, where “Hey, what are you doing coming into my house with a gun? I, a spy, am going to stop you. Oh, you're just hungry? Well, help yourself. Let me know if it’s poisoned.”

[35:07] David: And then he dies.

[35:10] John: I mean, he didn't do it on purpose.

[35:12] David: No. Bart didn't know those poisoned. He was about to take a bite, himself. The thing that’s funny is that Bart's curious about it for a minute, like, “wait, why did he die? I don't understand.” Then it comes to him, John. “I've got it. The food. Come to think of it, the others while eating.” A clue, John. Then, there’s a lot of drama.

[35:35] John: And then, Bart shoots the bad guy, and ready for the next case.

[35:40] David: Yep, it’s resolved. In the last two panels of the story, Bart punches one bad guy, takes the gun from him, shoots the other guy. That's it. Problem solved.

[35:51] John: Yeah. Well, it worked.

[35:58] David: Then we have the Crimson Avenger, John.

[36:00] John: Yeah. I said he looked like The Spirit. He’s more of a Shadow analog.

[36:05] David: I think it might be more of The Shadow. Feared by the underworld and haunted by the police, the Crimson carries on the works of befriending the helpless. Known as the Crimson to only his Chinese servant, Wing, Lee Travis is the wealthy young publisher of the Globe-Leader.

[36:22] John: Yeah, I'm sorry. He looks like The Shadow because he carries the twin-45, but that is of course, Green Hornet.

[36:30] David: Yeah. I didn't realize that the Green Hornet was this early on. More of a 40’s character, but I guess—

[36:35] John: Funny little anecdote- in around this time of year, in Christmas Story, when they say, “who was the Lone Ranger’s nephew’s horse?” or something like that. That’s a trivia question on the radio […] listening to—that’s the Green Hornet. The Green Hornet is Lone Ranger’s nephew. That's why they know what the horse is. You just have to know that connection. You don't know deep lore about Lone Ranger. Anyway, it's got nothing to do with anything.

[37:02] David: I love that movie.

[37:03] John: That is a character that still pops up, here and there.

[37:07] David: Crimson Avenger?

[37:08] John: Yeah, I've definitely read Crimson Avenger comics that were new.

[37:11] David: You have?

[37:12] John: Oh, sure. Yeah. I think this is one that DC’s kept alive. This was DC’s first costumed superhero, such as it is. That’s not an insult. He’s not super costumed. He just wears a red cloak, but anyway. Death on the Airwaves, by Paul Dean.

[37:26] David: Yeah, I didn't bother to read it, to be honest.

[37:28] John: I did read it. It was alright.

[37:31] David: There's no pictures with these words, John. I can't read it. I do like the ad for being an expert marksman. “Have fun. Get a Daisy Air Rifle.”

[37:40] John: There's a lot of gun ads in these.

[37:42] David: Yeah, there are a lot of gun ads. This is true.

[37:45] John: It's another thing that was true about the Christmas Story.

[37:47] David: Yeah. Bruce Nelson, by Tom Hickey is next. I think the Tom Hickey art in the Bruce Nelson’s some of the better stuff you see. The faces look a little more lovingly rendered than you see in some of the others. There's some actual expressions that are going on, that you can see that they're having expressions, which is really a hallmark of many of the other pieces in this.

[38:10] John: It's very weirdly cropped. There's a lot of, just the heads of people in panels.

[38:15] David: Look at, on page three of the story there, John, the very first panel, the woman who’s sprawled on a bed. I think that's a really good shot. This guy knows how to draw.

[38:23] John: Yeah, but the storytelling is awkward, compared to the drawing.

[38:29] David: Couldn't agree more. There’s a reason why you've never heard of a lot of this stuff. A reference to Devil Smoke, at some point, which I thought was funny, but other than that, and other than the fact that some of the facial expressions are relatively well-drawn, not very memorable.

[38:45] John: “Look out, a snake.” Nelson jumped to one side, drew his gun, and blew the snake's head off, as it slithered across the floor. Shooting a snake indoors would not be my first reaction, even if I had a gun. The bullet went into the floor. Are you going to fix that? Jeez. I get a wastepaper basket, and just put it on top of the snake.

[39:09] David: When you think about it, it is a really good shot. He’s probably 10 feet away from that snake. That snake is thin. It's a small snake.

[39:16] John: Not easy.

[39:18] David: No, it's not. He nails it.

[39:21] John: Yeah. I mean, good for him.

[39:23] David: One shot.

[39:27] John: Here's Dr. Fu Manchu coming up.

[39:29] David: Dr. Fu Manchu, by Sax Rohmer. John, I don’t know how much we can talk about this. There's some stuff in here, John.

[39:35] John: It was on here, where I was blown away when I learned when Sax Rohmer was writing this stuff. He was born when I thought he was writing this stuff. That is the epitome of the Yellow Peril era. Here's a guy from China. He's running the underworld and everywhere, and all the stuff. I found the story incomprehensible. It is just in the middle of a story, I think. The actual drawing is—I don't even know if the drawing's okay, but what is being drawn is unpleasant. It's not great. It’s illustrated prose, it's 6 panels.

[40:08] David: Yeah, 6 panels. Everything is in prose. Even when they're speaking, it's just in quotations and typed out in prose at the bottom of the panel, essentially. There's no word balloons in it. It really is more of just a story with pictures, in a way, and this is one of the very few, if not only, stories in the whole book that utilizes a 6-panel grid, which I find interesting, but in general, overall, this is one of the ones that I found grossly offensive, and I didn't pay it much mind.

[40:38] John: Yeah, well, the two things are odd about it are- that is not a DC character. That is a character, the trademark is still owned by a different company, and he's Shang-Chi's father—was when Shang-Chi was first created at Marvel, because they had the license to do Fu Manchu comics in the 70s. So, weird stuff there, but yeah. Lighten up with a little Flatfoot Flanagan?

[41:01] David: Yeah. There's a full-page ad for stamp collectors, if you’re into stamp collecting. There’s got to still be people out there that collect stamps.

[41:10] John: I have my dad's stamp collection. He was like, “do you want my stamp collection?” I was like, “I don't know what you're going to do with it if you don't. I don’t, but I don't want it to not exist, either.

[41:18] David: I'm the only one in my family that has a collector bug. I don't have to worry about that. Everybody else has to worry about me. I'm doing my best to catalog everything and mark everything that has value, though. So, people can just look for the green tape in my collection, and those are the ones that are worth something.

[41:35] John: Wow.

[41:36] David: Trying to be kind. Trying to be helpful. The next one, Cosmo, the Phantom of Disguise. There's the other half of that signature, where you've got the magenta color, or just one color, black, white, and magenta, and this one is super racist. This one almost makes me curse, it's so bad.

[41:54] John: Before you get to that part, though, The Phantom of Disguise is a pretty good name.

[41:59] David: Phantom of Disguise?

[42:01] John: I mean, Cosmo—No, it doesn't work. The Phantom of Disguise. I don't know. There's something there. I was reading this Doc Savage book, a while back—We might have even talked about this on the show—I’m reading along, and then this black character shows up, and it's like, “oh, boy. That's no good.” He’s talking in this terrible dialect and everything, and then he pulls off his hat, and turns out to be Doc Savage in disguise, and I just remember thinking, afterwards, “hey, boss. Maybe you're not a master in disguise. Maybe you're just really racist.” That might be what Cosmo's onto here, too.

[42:36] David: Yeah, I think so.

[42:37] John: The story starts out—you know you're in for it—Cosmo is called to Immigration Headquarters.

[42:43] David: Yes, you know you're in for it.

[42:46] John: But yeah, he dresses up like a Chinese guy, but not—

[42:51] David: Super stereotypical—

[42:53] John: Yeah, not in a way that, even in the 30s, people dressed. You had to know that wasn't how people dressed.

[42:58] David: I read about halfway through, and I was like, “I just don't care. I don't care enough to just subject myself to it.” The next one is Plain Clothes Pete, by Alger, and I think this is some of the better cartooning in the book. It's a more simplistic, cartoony style. The rest of the stories in the book seem to be more rendered. They're trying to go for a slightly more realistic approach to the art, whereas Plain Clothes Pete definitely leans into more of a cartoonish style, a comic strip cartoon style. There's a specific artist that this reminds me of. The modern-day version of this is, what's his name? From Mutt & Jeff. There's a little bit of that styling that you see here, but I can't think of who the 40s/50s/60s version of this is. I guess, the 80s version would be more of a Dagwood, if people remember the comic strip, Dagwood. So, it's much more cartoony.

[43:59] John: That might actually be what this is ripping off, style-wise. Very exaggerated walking poses. That's one of the things I like about these is, you get a variety of different stories, and it's like, “okay, you have a funny one in here.”

[44:13] David: In the grand scheme, if I was getting this in a nice, slightly oversized, magazine-sized package, 64-pages, with a variety of stories, and maybe one or two prose stories in there, with more modern sensibilities, modern art, and modern storytelling, man, I'm all-in on stuff—I love the concept of this book. Even though some of them, I didn't read, and probably never will, I still would have this book just for the two or three stories that I did enjoy, or that I knew I would have enjoyed. You've got the ongoing features, you’ve got new material. It’s a very well-edited book, in terms of its presentation on what it's got in it. I wish we had something like this in 2024/2025, to be honest.

[44:57] John: Yeah, […] figure out what that means, because just doing a regular anthology book isn't what this is. There's something a little different about it, I think.

[45:06] David: I guess, it does have a theme. It's based around murder/mystery/detective-style theming, but yeah, I don't know. It's something about it that carries a sense of charm that I don't see. You just don't see this sort of thing. You just don't see this. We'll move on to Slam Bradley. Ready to keep going, John?

[45:26] John: Yeah. Another appearance by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.

[45:31] David: Yeah, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the team supreme come back.

[45:33] John: And another character that I think still continues. That was definitely an intentional revival of the character.

[45:41] David: By the way, this has my favorite curse of the whole book. This guy gets out of his car, he pulls a gun on another dude, and he says, “raise ‘em, you dumb cluck,” and I was like, “man, if I was nine years old, reading this in 1927, I would be so happy right now.” That is a good curse. I would be using that curse all the time. You dumb cluck.

[46:02] John: Yeah. There's a thing with Slam Bradley that it's all of the jerk parts of Superman put into something. The part where Superman is just being tougher than other guys, and stuff. That's all Slam Bradley is. He's around this sidekick guy.

[46:17] David: What if Clark Kent was an asshole? Is that basically where we’re at?

[46:20] John: Yeah. He's an asshole for good, but he’s still a jerk about it, a lot of times. “Raise ‘em, dumb cluck.” “What’s the idea of—" “I’ll raise ‘em, alright. Straight to your chin,” and that's how he resolves that. “You want some of the same medicine? Come get it.” It's a fun, goofy thing. It's still baffling to me that Siegel and Shuster were doing this, as well as Superman.

[46:42] David: Were they still doing Superman, at this point?

[46:44] John: Yeah, less than a year, I think.

[46:46] David: I thought we were a year or two later.

[46:49] John: No, Superman is ‘38. Cover dated May ’39. So, it would’ve been early ’39.

[46:54] David: Oh, okay. […] Man, that's impressive, because they've got two strips in here, they’re doing Superman- these guys were working. Everything is rendered a little more in a realistic style, but there's just one character that just happens to be looking super cartoony. I like that choice. Whatever that choice was, I don't know what they’re riffing from, or where they got that from, but I like that choice. It's funny. One cartoonish looking character. Maybe he's a child, but I don't know. […]. Slam Bradley’s sidekick.

[47:25] John: The beta. He's the beta to Slams alpha. Yeah, that's quite a comic.

[47:32] David: That's it. That's the last story of the series, John. So, the last page of Slam Bradley, we get a cool little “Thanks boys and girls of America” ad. Read our comic book. There's All-American Comics. There's Movie Comics. There's so many different comics, John. None of it’s superheroes. Fun, action, mystery, adventure.

[47:51] John: One of them has Red, White, And Blue, America's Greatest Adventure Strip. Stagecoach.

[47:57] David: Wow, this comic has Mutt & Jeff, Ben Webster, Tippy, Reg’lar Fellers, Toonerville Folks, and Scribbly.

[49:03] John: It is funny, on that last page, the Movie Comics […] issue, Stagecoach, with second-billed, some guy named John Wayne. I wonder what ever happened to that guy.

[48:14] David: He’s not even the headliner.

[48:15] John: No. Stagecoach was the one that made him a thing. It's hilarious.

[48:25] David: The thing that I love is that the back cover is just a collection of ads. In the 80s, you're still seeing these exact same kinds of ads, with the exact same colors, everything the same. There's no difference. So, for the next 50 years, John, this ad was a winner. Everybody used this template as their ad.

[48:44] John: Oh, yeah, totally.

[48:46] David: Different things on this thing. You can buy a hoover.

[48:49] John: It's wild. It’s like an Acme Novelty Library comic, but crazier. “Want to learn to throw your voice? Get a hula skirt? How about pistols? How about blank cartridge pistols?” There's two options, “or a beautiful blonde wig? Live chameleon? You got it.”

[49:05] David: You can get some itching powder or some sneezing powder. This is one that blew me away. You can learn jujitsu. I didn't think they were talking about jujitsu in 1939, but here we are. You can get a midget pocket radio.

[49:17] John: Well, there you go.

[49:18] David: That's it, John. That's the book. That’s the May 1939 Edition of Detective Comics #27, featuring the first appearance of Batman.

[49:27] John: Do we dive right into the next one?

[49:29] David: I think we'll have to save it for another time.

[49:31] John: Cool. Well, there we go. That's the origin of Batman.

[49:34] David: I hope our listeners enjoyed that little walk through history. We're going to do it again. Next time, we're going to do Sensation Comics #1, featuring the first appearance Wonder Woman. I'm very excited for this one, John. I have purposefully not read Sensation Comics #1, this version of it that I have, because I want to see it for the first time, while we're talking about it. Thought I'd mix things up a little bit.

[49:59] John: As a teaser for everybody, I actually hadn't read it until I bought this a couple of weeks ago, and I didn't even realize I hadn't read it. There’s a bunch of characters in here. It's not only the first appearance of Wonder Woman. It's the first appearance of Mr. Terrific. Wildcat, as well.

[50:14] David: Oh, yeah, that's right. I didn't know Mr. Terrific was in there, also. Man, that's a pretty impressive little roster there, for one book. So, I'm excited to dive into that one. Thanks for walking through that book with me.

[50:28] John: I enjoyed it.

[50:29] David: All right. Thanks, everybody. Bye.

Thanks for joining us, and please subscribe, rate, and tell your friends about us. You can find updates and links at www.thecornerbox.club and we’ll be back next week with more from David and John, here at The Corner Box.