Honestly, sometimes the hardest thing about writing these columns is deciding which comic book I want to show and tell, but this week that isn’t the case. When it comes to sheer off the wall, outside the box Golden Age wonkiness you really can’t get much weirder than the first two issues of Great Comics. I covered them in a previous installment but when a digital download of #3 finally became available, well, how could I not?

Great Comics #3 is probably best known for ”Futuro Kidnaps Hitler and Takes Him to Hades!”, the first and last appearance of the supposedly superhero Futuro. which in 1992 was reprinted in New England Comics Anti-Hitler Comics #1.

Although the script insists he and his wolfhound Nimbus (who’s also sentient; he has thought balloons) “travel without scientific aid for they are masters of time and space” (yes, the dog is a master of time and space) besides the ability to “visualize the future” the only actual power he demonstrates is invisibility. And that’s only because he is “of the future” — like that’s an actual explanation. Futuro also has an absolutely unnecessary team of powerless assistants, the US Futurians composed of Faith, Freedom, Truth, Courage and Justice who fly thanks to their “aerogene” tanks full of “cosmic gas”.

“Futuro Kidnaps Hitler and Takes Him to Hades!” isn’t strictly a story, at least as I understand the concept, but it is weird. Really, really weird.

One of my favorite parts of Great Comics was The Great Zarro, a very strange superhero gifted with the power of flight that traveled the back roads of America with Rags, his kid partner and the cartoon grotesque little brother of his dead girlfriend. But in this issue like so many of his costumed brethren (Blue Bolt, Spy Smasher, Daredevil, etc.) Zarro decides to tap out of the whole costumed hero business to start a second career, becoming an ordinary U.S. Army Air Corps Intelligence Office. Though of course he’s still referred to as “Zarro” after putting on his uniform he apparently puts his ability to fly behind him, a skill you’d think the military would be eager to exploit during wartime. Plus Zarro does this in 1942, supposedly the very height of the superhero boom, so as with many things about Great Comics I’d not entirely sure what the editors were thinking here.

Almost immediately he is reunited with Rags who (as you can see previously dressed like a depression street urchin and had only one tooth) between issues has not only grown several feet and aged roughly eight years but seems to have gotten a total body transplant.

Madame Strange also appeared in the first two issues of Great Comics. She had a name like a ghost breaker and the costume of a Wonder Woman wannabe but was unfortunately just a fairly generic spy hunter without an actual name, let alone a secret identity.

But as you can see between issues not only had she changed outfits for one that’s a whole lot less revealing and superheroic (those I’ve got to admit those are some fierce shoulder pads you’re sporting, girl) but become a fairly conventional girl reporter with a double life. Not only that but she’s now has a signature weapon unique in the annals of Golden Age comic books; a riding crop (kinky). On the other hand in this story she fights her first actual super-villain, The Octopus, a horrific Japanese stereotype with buck teeth and fangs and a claw.

The Grand Comic Book Database credits the script to Jean Press and the art is signed Silang Isip, meaning it was almost certianly drawn by the Filipino artist, photographer and musician Pagsilang Rey Isip who for Choice Comics drew Princes of Pirates, Jean Lafitte and Rex the Seeing-Eye Dog.

Finally there’s The Lost City. I’ve often looked at the cover for Great Comics #3 and wondered what The Lost City could have been — I naturally assumed it was just a generic adventure series about somebody, you know, looking for a lost city. But it’s actually an adaptation of the 1935 movie serial The Lost City which our friend Wikipeida tells us also had a feature version which was in release in the 1940′s. The next part of the adaptation was set to run in Choice Comics #3, another comic that’s currently unavailable for digital download. But hopefully that will change and soon.

And there was also another comic book titled Great Comics…but I haven’t been able to track down this one. Yet.

Image via Wikipedia