Sunday, June 26, 2016

Post #115

Issue #103
Jan. 1949
Rating: 4

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The penultimate issue of the series is routine for the genre.

Outline for a GA comic strip:
1. Bad guys do something bad.
2. Hero\Heroine investigate the clues.
3. Hero\Heroine stumble into a trap.
4. Hero\Heroine gets free.
5. Bad guys get caught.

Step #3 for this issue:

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Post #114

Issue #102
Dec. 1948
Rating: 5

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Joe Kubert cover. Alex Toth is credited with pencils on the Flash. Robert Kanigher (Script), Carmine Infantino (Pencils), and Bernard Sachs (Inks) presents an outstanding Black Canary story in this issue.

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By the end of 1948, comics were evolving. So was Jazz.



With the Jazz soundtrack combined with the silent film of the streets of New York in 1948, it helps in understanding from where comics found their inspiration.

Post #113

Issue #101
Nov. 1948
Rating: 5

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Cover and Flash story inks credited to Bernard Sachs. The Atom is dropped. A text story and a couple pages of cartoon gags by Martin Naydel are added.

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This fledgling pre-SA style Flash story, scripted by John Broome, is unique in that it substitutes cops-n-robbers cliches for a sci-fi adventure. Broome would go on to write the very first SA Flash time travel story in "The Man Who Broke the Time Barrier!", in Showcase #4 (along with Infantino and Kubert). Carmine Infantino and Bernard Sachs superb work in the GA Flash vision of time travel makes this one of the truly lost gems of the GA.

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The following panel brings to mind the outstanding work of a future Joe Kubert on the Viking Prince strip of the mid-fifties in The Brave And The Bold. In that strip, the Viking Prince spends a lot of time sailing the North Sea.

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The kid friendly roller coaster ride does create a sense of vertigo.

This issue exhibits glimpses of the future for comics, and the death spasms of the past for the superhero genre. An Ectroplasmic Magnet???

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How many times has Batman and Robin found themselves in this exact situation?
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Bernard Sachs gets a well deserved feature in the Nov. 2013 issue (#121) of Alter Ego fanzine. More to come in future a post.
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