I’ve been meaning to get back to the Golden Age superhero-centric anthologies, especially ones that I haven’t posted on yet, so, completely at random, here’s Wow Comics #31.

As per usual the least interesting feature inWow Comics was Mary Marvel, a character who always a lot more interesting in theory than actuality. Due mostly because she tended to appear in stories that didn’t measure up to that potential, like in this outing which has her alter ego Mary Batson travelling cross-country to visit a sick friend. Which is, on the face of it both unpatriotic (seeing as how during the war people were supposed to avoid unnecessary trips) and silly (she could have just flown there under her own power). Not to spoil things but Mary gets involved with a race of rather goofy looking bird people and their floating city. It’s drawn by Jack Binder (at least according to the incredibly tiny credit at the bottom of the page), but if so it’s not not up to his unusual standard.

One of my favorite back-up features from the Golden Age is The Phantom Eagle, which is odd considering he belonged to a long abandoned type comics books were awash in back then, one that I’m not even particularly fond of; the mystery two-fisted pilot. Teenage mechanic Mickey Malone wanted to get into the war so naturally built his own plane and during his off-hours fought the Nazis as The Phantom Eagle, who later formed a secret unit of teen pilots from different allied countries known as The Phoenix Squadron. It was pretty standard stuff at the start but artist/writer Marc Swayze was good and only got better as he went along. Especially during the post-war period where Mickey and company searched for an ancient artifact called “the Golden Chalice” which supposedly was inscribed the “Formula for Peace”. It’s a sequence that’s just crying out for an official collection or, baring that, internet compilation (I’m looking at you, Digital Comic Museum).

Mr. Scarlet and Pinky were basically the Fawcett Comics version of Batman and Robin which at least had the interesting conceit that in their civilian identities of lawyer Brian Butler and well, Pinky, they were not millionaires or at least safely middle class. No business was so bad for them they were essentially starving and as far as I can tell it never got better. Here they mix it up with a meager example of super-villainy known as Mr. Promise in a story very nicely drawn by Jack Binder.

I’ve spoken about how little I like Fawcett’s Spy Smasher, but my least favorite Fawcett costumed character would pretty much have to be Commando Yank, a utterly generic masked fascist fighter who had the drabbest outfit in the history of masked mystery men.