Super-Powered Sach by Dave Goode

Not a real comic, but Judo Comics is at lulu.com

Growing up I was a huge fan of Monogram's East Side Kids and Bowery Boys series. Actually growing up I didn't know anyone who wasn't a fan of those two series. And I always thought the East Side Kids would have made for a great comic book series during the Golden Age. Stories in a series would pretty much be like the ones in the movies.The kids would help to smash Axis spy rings. Or they would help to bring crooked gamblers and gangsters to justice. They would even have " Scooby Gang " adventures in haunted houses. But over the years I've given thought to the idea that the Bowery Boys may have been an even better subject for a comic book series.




The Bowery Boys were more or less an older version of the Eastsiders with the same actors playing basically the same characters. The difference was the Bowery Boys series injected more comedy into the films. And in many cases the stories were more far-out , with the gang facing a number of mad scientists. Something strangely enough that the East Side Kids never did. Especially when you consider that two of the movies from the series , SPOOKS RUN WILD (1941) and GHOSTS ON THE LOOSE ( 1943 ) featured Bela Lugosi. Also in a couple of the Bowery Boys films Huntz Hall's character Sach a.k.a Horace Debussey Jones gains super-powers.

The first of these Super-powered Sach movies was MR. HEX ( 1946 ) where a hypnotized Sach gains super-strength and limited invulnerability becoming a champion boxer.


























In HOLD THAT LINE (1952 ) he drinks a chemical concoction that increases his physical attributes so that he first becomes a track & field star and then later a football hero.

In NO HOLDS BARRED ( 1952 ) various parts of his body become steel hard and he becomes a professional wrestling star. In PRIVATE EYES ( 1953 ) he gains the ability to read minds and he and the rest of the gang open a detective agency. And in JUNGLE GENTS ( 1954 ) a flick that features a young Clint Walker as a Tarzan-type Sach gains the power to smell diamonds. Smell diamonds? That's a power even the Silver Age Superman never had.

My favorite of the Sach gains super-powers flicks may have been MASTER MINDS (1949). Though as a pro wrestling fan I'm quite fond of NO HOLDS BARRED as well. In this one Sach gets a toothache which somehow gives him the power to see into the future. His buddy " Slip " Mahoney (Leo Gorcey ) comes up with the idea to put him in a carnival sideshow to make some cash. A mad scientist played to perfection by Alan Napier reading about Sach's psychic abilities in the news decides to transfer Sach's brain into the body of Atlas , a humanoid creature of great strength that resembles a prehistoric man. The two have their minds switched for a brief time and comic antics follow. Imagine ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN if Lou Costello's mind had been transferred into the Frankenstein monster's body. Coincidentally enough Atlas in MASTER MINDS is portrayed by Glenn Strange , the same actor who played the Frankenstein monster in ABBOTT & COSTELLO MEET FRANKENSTEIN.

For my money the best performance in MASTER MINDS comes from Alan
Napier as Dr.Druzik. Best known as Alfred , the faithful Wayne butler on the 60s Batman television series, Napier is one of my favorite actors. I love just about everything I've ever seen him in. Especially as the commie agent in BIG JIM MCLAIN ( 1952 ) and as the acidic art critic in HOUSE OF HORRORS ( 1946 ) . And he's great in this one. It's hard to watch him here and not imagining him in the roles that made Boris Karloff a horror film icon.

TV's Teen Jungle Star by Dave Goode

One of my favorite ersatz Tarzans was Bomba,the Jungle Boy. The character appeared in 12 movies beginning in 1949 with Bomba , The Jungle Boy and ending in 1955 with Lord Of The Jungle. The series was loosely based on books by the Stratameyer Syndicate. As loosely based as the MGM and RKO Tarzan movies starring Johnny Weissmuller were based on the books of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Strangely enough the actor who portrayed Bomba was the same actor who played Tarzan's son opposite Weissmuller. Johnny Sheffield didn't play John Clayton a.k.a Korak. Instead he played "Boy" , the adopted son of Tarzan and Jane. A creation of the MGM studio. Sheffield would be written out of the Tarzan series after the Tarzan series after the movie Tarzan And The Huntress (1948) from RKO. He simply grew to large to play a character called "Boy".

 

I remember watching and enjoying the Bomba movies on television as a boy. The stories played like something out of Fiction House's Jungle Comics. And Sheffield was believable as the athletic Bomba. Built along the lines of a high school running back.

In 1962 WGN-TV repackaged the Bomba movies as a prime-time Summertime TV series.* DC COMICS would publish 7 issues of Bomba , the Jungle Boy comic book from 1967 to 1968 and for the first two issues sub-titled it TV's Teen Jungle Star. Seriously? Repackaged B-Movies from the 40s and the 50s aired on TV in 1962 and you're marketing the comic book as if the "television series" was still being run. No wonder they dropped that " TV's Teen Jungle Star " tag by the third issue.

* "WGN in Chicago started running them once a week in the early evening under the umbrella title “Zim Bomba,” with the films cut from their original 65- to 70-minute lengths to fit a one-hour timeslot with commercials. The huge reaction from viewers caused Allied Artists, the successor to Monogram, to recut the 12 pictures into 13 TV episodes also designed to run in one-hour timeslots with commercials. This “Zim Bomba” package remained in syndication through the 1970s" - 2010 Johnny Sheffield obit

Want to know about Zim-Bomba?: 

 

 Speaking of jungle fun...let's see what the Golden Adonis is up to...

You dig the Golden Adonis? Then you need to get JUDO COMICS! Loaded with retro comics fun....GRAB YOURS TODAY!! >>CLICK HERE<<

And Who Disguised As Clark Kent.... by Dave Goode

Born at the tail-end of the "baby boom" I grew up on reruns of The Adventures of Superman.As such there really isn't any other Superman to me other than George (no relation to Steve) Reeves. Long before the Ilya Salkind produced movies Reeves made us all believe that "a man could fly". And more importantly he taught us to believe in "truth , justice and the American way". But as great as he was as Superman, Reeves may have been even cooler as Clark Kent. 

 

As a kid you watch a show titled The Adventures of Superman to see the titled hero fly, smash through walls, have bullets bounce off him and punch out bad guys. It was as I grew older I began to appreciate Reeves performance as Kent. It was Kent who carried the show. He did the leg work. And he was private eye cool doing it.No one looked quite as casual cool as Reeves acting with his hands in his pockets. Watching Reeves as the investigative reporter you could easily imagine him starring in a series of detective movies for Monogram.

The Clark Kent as written for Reeves was respected by the police , who in the form of Metropolis police inspector William Henderson , often sought out his advice. His employer Perry White , editor of the Daily Planet completely trusted and respected him as well. Someone else who respected Kent were the members of the underworld who feared that he would figure out and expose their nefarious schemes. The only person that didn't seem to respect Kent was fellow Daily Planet reporter portrayed by Phyllis Coates in the shows 1st season. In subsequent seasons when the character was played by Noel Neill she respected Kent as much as everyone else. Though they were rivals.

George Reeves was far from the Clark Kent created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster for the comics. But you have to remember they created him at a time when comic books still had a comic quality. Many adventure features had comic relief sidekicks. The Superman comic books had Superman as his own comic relief in the form of Clark Kent. Kirk Alyn and Christopher Reeve portrayed Kent in that manner. But as for myself and the millions who grew up with George Reeves we prefer our Clark Kent mild-mannered not wimpy.