Reading Room: ONE-SHOT HEROES Ferret

Criminals are a cowardly, supersitious lot...

...but even they weren't afraid of this lame character in his only Golden Age appearance!

The writer and artist of this tale from Centaur's Man of War Comics #2 are unknown, and so was this character...until the tail-end of the B/W indie craze in 1992, when Malibu Comics revived a revamped group of Centaur Comics heroes as "The Protectors".

The Ferret was remade into a feral character who looked almost exactly like Marvel's Sabretooth, but was obviously-intended to capitalize on the popularity of Wolverine!

The Protectors ran 20 issues and Ferret starred in a one-shot book that sold well enough to prompt a 10-issue run of his own title.

Not bad for a guy who appeared in only one story before his revival.

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Reading Room: WOLFF "Sorceress of the Red Mist"

Return to the post-apocalyptic future Earth of Wolff the Barbarian...

...where technology and magic are both considered "dark arts" by the majority of inhabitants of this barbaric future!

Is it just me, or does the Sorceress of the Red Mist remind you of sexy space heroine Agar-Agar, who was also published in the Dracula anthology magazine (and was also written by Wolff co-scripter Luis Gasca under the pen-name "Sadko")?

Or was that eye-makeup thing just a fashion trend in the early 1970s?

This tale from Dracula #3 (1971) was superbly-illustrated and co-written by Esteban Maroto.

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Reading Room: NOT WHO YOU THINK: THE ARROW "Correcting the Colonel's Court-Martial"

No, he's not the guy currently on the CW...

...since that character is based on Green Arrow, who was given that colorful name to avoid confusion with this guy, comics' first archer superhero, as detailed HERE!

Ironically, the CW superhero visually-resembles this character more than DC's Green Arrow,  whose back-story has been Smallville-ized for the tv series.

Written and illustrated by Paul Gustavson (who also created another archer hero who predated Green Arrow...Quality's Alias the Spider), this tale appeared twice in Centaur titles, first in Funny Pages V2#12 (1938), then in FantoMan #2 (1940), which was actually the short-lived title's first issue.

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Reading Room: VOODAH "Justice of the Jungle"

When you hear the phrase "Lord of the Jungle", you visualize Tarzan or Thun'da...

...or some other White guy.
But, during the Golden Age of Comics, one such jungle lord was Black!

Debuting in Golfing/McCombs' anthology Crown Comics #3 (1945), Voodah was the first Black hero in comic books.
Illustrated by Matt Baker (who most fans know was one of the premiere Good Girl artists of the '40s-'50s, but don't know that he was one of the few African-American comic artists of the era), the idea of a non-White jungle hero seems obvious today, but was extremely-daring in the 1940s!
In fact, it was so daring that Voodah slowly became paler over the next few issues, eventually becoming just another White guy bossing the locals around!
But, before he went White, Voodah had some kool adventures, including battling a dinosaur single-handed!
We'll be presenting those tales later this month!

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Reading Room: DOC SAVAGE "Television Peril"

Doc Savage, though incredibly-popular in pulps, never made it big in comics.

But it wasn't for lack of trying, as this never-reprinted tale from Shadow Comics #91 (1948) shows!

Oddly, Doc, who doesn't hesitate to utilize captured equipment (like the HellDiver submarine*) in his fight against evil, doesn't adapt this teleportation device in later stories to enable him to reach distant locales faster than otherwise possible!

The writer is unknown, but the art is by Bob Powell's art studio, which was "packaging" (providing editorial and art services) for several titles for the publisher.
Doc Savage went thru a couple of incarnations in the 1940s.
He started out as a backup in Shadow Comics for three issues before receiving his own 20-issue book featured a bare-chested version wearing a hood with a mystic jewel from Tibet that gave him various powers as needed by the scriptwriter.
After the title was cancelled, Doc returned to the back of Shadow Comics, where he was portrayed as a better-than-normal (but not superhuman) investigator battling weird threats, staying to the end of the title in 1949.

Note: there's lots of currently-available Doc Savage material (pulps, comics, movies, and even radio shows), all well-worth picking up (most of them are in my personal collection), but we're be showing only the stuff not included in those volumes!

*The HellDiver was captured by Doc in The Polar Treasure.

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