Whiz Comics #65 (UK) is yet another partial black and white reprint of an American comic, in this case Whiz Comics #131 (USA). I’ve picked this one mostly because “Captain Marvel Fights The Television Trap” is a prime example of a latter day Captain Marvel adventure. During this period close the art got a lot better (the other reason for posting this story is just how pretty Kurt Schafenberger’s pencils look in black and white) and the stories sometimes got really weird. In an attempt to jump in the science fiction boom in popular culture Captain Marvel was suddenly capable of travelling vast distances through the depths of outer space. Which lead to oddball “space adventures” such as this one.

And here’s an installment of Freshman Feddy by Frank Little and Frank Bolle, Fawcett’s college strip about poor gormless Freddy who was constantly being assaulted by two psychotic upperclassmen, Ace and “Stooge” for no apparent reason. At fantastical as this scenario might seem to modern readers it actually reflects a long ago world where college freshmen, even those with no interest in joining a fraternity, were forced to endure all sorts of humiliating and demeaning hazing by upperclassmen (like Freddy’s dorky cap; he had to wear that under constant threat of violent retribution). At this time this was considered to be just good clean fun and part of a proud collegiate tradition, but even by the standards of the time Ace and Stooge appear to have lost their freaking minds.