I realize that I just posted about an issue of Headline Comics and that for the sake of novelty I should wait a while before posting this one, but screw that. This one is too good to sit on.

Before Atomic Man came on the scene the headliners of Headline Comics were the Junior Rangers, a fairly anemic kid gang of the ordinary-kids-fight-the-Nazi’s subcategory. There was All-American boy Roger, tough talking Smokey, farm boy Alergnon and Chinese-American Chan. The only vaguely interesting thing about the Junior Rangers was, you guessed it, Chan, a rare non-stereotypical Asian who in spite of his stiff English and traditional Chinese dress was just one of the guys.

As previously established you really can’t put your trust in a Golden Age comic book cover. More often than not they either featured symbolic covers which were iconic and/or ironic or depicted scenes that appeared nowhere in its contents. But as you’ll soon see for yourself, this issue really does feature an advanced civilization created by seven-foot tall penguins.

Every once in a while something absolutely original would appear in the back of a Golden Age comic, a feature that went way beyond the usual assortment of magicians, explorers and two-fisted adventurers you’d normally get. I’d say something like Worldbeater and Unggh by August Froehlich, but there is nothing like it.

And finally there’s Blue Streak, a supposedly powerless trapeze artist who fought crime on the side. I saw “supposedly” because while he spends a good percentage of this story swinging from a rope most of the time it doesn’t seem to be actually attached to anything. If that’s not a super power I don’t know what one is.