Reading Room: ONE-SHOT HEROES! The Owl

With the Court of Owls currently bedeviling The Batman...

...we'll be looking at previous heroes to use the motif of an owl.

This character from Centaur Publications' Funny Pages V4N1 (1940) was the first costumed Owl.

Written and illustrated by Martin Filchock, he appeared only a couple of months after the first appearance of The BatMan in Detective Comics #27 (1939), and shows a number of similarities to the initial version of the Caped Crusader.
As it turns out, 1940 was a good year for owls as two more heroes (and one heroine) would show up within six months to claim the name.
We'll be looking at them next week...

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Reading Room: JET DREAM "Terror of Ting-a-Ling"

What happens when an innocent stumbles upon a heroine's secret hq?

Ask Johnny Kai, Ting-a-Ling's boyfriend, when he ends up in "No Man's Land"!

"Stray dog"?

Jet doesn't have a very high opinion of men in general, does she?

Story by Dave Wood, art by Joe Certa.

This new story from Man from U.N.C.L.E. #21 (1968) backs up a reprinted U.N.C.L.E. tale, so most people (myself included) thought it was a reprint as well.
Good thing I took a look inside the book! ;-)

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Reading Room: NATURE MAN "Terrible Torrent" & NATURE GIRL "Trapping the Trapper"

Jerry Siegel followed the pattern established by his biggest hit...

...Superman, when he did Nature Boy, including an adult incarnation...

...along with a distaff version...

Nature Man appeared in Nature Boy #3, Nature Girl in #5.
Both strips were written by Jerry Siegel and illustrated by John Buscema.
While Nature Man is obviously a grown-up David Crandall, there's no explanation as to who Nature Girl is, how she got her powers, or why she has a pet elephant!
(Although I note, as an adult, Crandall finally puts on a pair of tights!)
These were their only appearances.

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Reading Room: JET DREAM "Menace of the Feathered Warriors"

The time had come for Jet Dream's final battle...

...and it's against her evil doppelganger...who's also her only recurring foe!

Well, so much for recurring foes...

Story by Dave Wood, art by Joe Certa.

We thought this story from Man from U.N.C.L.E. #20 (1968) was her final strip chronologically, but we've just found out that it's not the case!
While the final issues (#21 and #22) of the title reprint earlier U.N.C.L.E. tales, the Jet Dream stories in both issues are not reprints but new stories!
Those two tales will appear over the next couple of weeks.

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Reading Room: BLUE BEETLE "Loan Shark Racket"

In the early Golden Age, superheroes helped the "little guy"...

...when sleazeballs took advantage of honest citizens' dire financial straits!

The Blue Beetle finally gains his mask in his story from Fox's Mystery Men Comics #3 (1939) which is credited to the the pen-name "Charles Nicholas", but was written by Will Eisner and illustrated by Charles Nicholas Wojtkoski, who later used the "Charles Nicholas" name for all his comic work until he retired.

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