I did a gigantic binge-reading of StanJack Thor last year and it amazes me how that run is basically "lost." In my mind  it's just as inventive (though in different fields) as anything they created FF (but I never binge-read FF), and is as fast, powerful, and full of momentum as... anything, ever, in comics.

Here's a loooooong review of one of my recent estate-sale finds: Hit Comics #56, January 1949, from Quality Comics. Here's what a Kid Eternity fan would have gotten for a dime some time in autumn of 1948:

cover - a montage of horse-racing-related items with a disembodied Kid Eternity head, and the headline, "Kid Eternity battles BIG ODDS in the Great Steeplechase!" Art by Pete Riss. Right below the logo it says, "Still 52 pages" - I guess some comics had already shrunk by then; Hit Comics itself would go down to 36 pages with issue #58. The "Quality Comic Group" logo is tiny.

ifc - a full-page ad that's half comic strip, half text, selling a harmonica and a 54-page instruction book for $1.98 from Jim Major, the Harmonica Man. The comic strip shows a kid winning a talent contest.

Kid Eternity - 13 pgs, art by Pete Riss - the Kid gets a crush on an "older woman" (she's 18) and comes down to help her and her grandfather save their farm. Grandpa is a classic southern "colonel" with a white goatee. Their only chance to pay off their mortgage was to win the stakes race at Steeplechase Downs, but their horse was injured in mysterious circumstances. Grandpa suspects the Yankee newcomer who owns the next-best horse in the race. To replace the injured horse, the Kid summons Bayard, "the famous charger of Charlemagne's heroic lieutenant Renaud!"

The Kid should have done more research - Bayard and Renaud originated in a 12th-century chanson de geste story-poem in which Renaud kills a nephew of Charlemagne and is eventually forced to give the magical horse Bayard to Charlemagne, who tries to kill it but fails. The horse was capable of understanding human speech and of carrying up to four men at once. I suspect that the writer got Renaud mixed up with Roland, who really was Charlemagne's lieutenant (in literature, not in history).

The colonel and his granddaughter are delighted with the new horse, and completely at ease with the fact that the boy and the horse appeared out of nowhere. Later, after dinner, Kid Eternity tries to woo the girl with music - he summons Chopin and Paganini to play for them. She just enjoys the music, unconcerned about the two strangers who appeared suddenly.

A commotion in the barn alerts them that saboteurs are trying to injure the horse and/or the jockey. Kid E calls Renaud himself to defend Bayard, but the jockey is rendered unable to ride. The Kid volunteers to take his place. The next day, during the race, there are more saboteurs along the course of the steeplechase. To deal with the first one, the Kid summons Billy Dixon, "hero of the Adobe Walls fight of 1874 against the Indians - finest shot among the old buffalo hunters!". To deal with the second badguy, he calls John S. Rarey, famed horse trainer of the 1850s. The third badguy manages to trip Bayard, but the Kid summons John Broughton, who in 1740 "practically invented scientific boxing" to kayo the villain. Bayard and the Kid are far behind at this point, but they catch up and manage to defeat the Yankee horse by a nose.

At this point, the Yankee newcomer who Grandpa thought was behind the sabotage turns out to be an honest, decent fellow who helps round up the badguys who had bet on his horse without his knowledge. He and Grandpa shake hands, his son who had ridden his horse in the race sweeps the girl off her feet, and the Kid goes back to Eternity to forget her.

In all, the Kid summons five historical figures and two literary ones.

The backup features:

Her Highness - 5 pgs, artist unknown - "Her Highness" is an elderly female thief; she literally steals candy from children and coins from a blind beggar. She and her younger cohort Silk encounter Professor Hugo Van Snoot, who wants to prove his theory of "Reform thru Culture" - that "virtue is the result of civilized living!" He takes them to a coutourier, a French restaurant and a symphony concert, which Her Highness disrupts by shooting the piccolo player with a peashooter. After they're thrown out of the symphony, Her Highness tries to pick someone's pocket but he turns out to be a cop and she's soon back in her usual jail cell. Professor Van Snoot goes off to revise his theories. After one more appearance in the next issue of Hit Comics, Her Highness was gone until 1982, when Nelson Bridwell had Her Highness, Silk and Kid Eternity guest-star in a Shazam! story in World's Finest #282. It's likely that Bridwell owned a copy of this issue.

Bob and Swab - 5 pgs, by Klaus Nordling - Bob, a Marine, and Swab, a sailor, are stationed on a ship in a tropical port. They get "volunteered" for a mission to ferret out a spy among the natives of the town of Toromucho, which I think is supposed to mean "a lot of bull". They bring a camera to take pictures of suspicious characters and to document that they're doing their job. But everywhere they go - Jose's Juice Joint, Honest Juan's Gyp Joint, Mme. Glazer the Gazer, etc., a mysterious figure takes pictures of them. When they're ready to go back to the ship, the mysterious stranger crashes into them and manages to switch their film with his. So the captain of the ship sees a series of pictures of Bob and Swab - surrounded by women at the Juice Joint, surrounded by empty liquor bottles at the Gyp Joint, sitting with the fortune teller, etc. So the duo end up in the brig wondering how they managed to take all those pictures of themselves.

Peachy - 6 pgs, signed by Bart Tumey - This Archie-like feature follows a pretty but high-strung teenage girl called "Peachy" Pitts and her sad-sack boyfriend "Beanie" Brown. In this story they hear that Peachy's father's vacation cabin is in danger of falling into the river. They go out to try to reinforce the riverbank but it collapses and the cabin, the teenagers and their car all end up in the river. Beanie calls Peachy's dad but a bad phone connection leads to Mr. Pitts thinking that his bank has failed, leaving him penniless. When the duo get back and explain the situation, the suddenly jubilant Mr. Pitts says that he'd sold the cabin to Beanie's father the day before.

Betty Bates - 6 pgs, art by Alice Kirkpatrick - This is the only backup feature that isn't a "bigfoot" cartoon style. Betty Bates is a crusading District Attorney; in this story she finds out that a boxing manager is trying to fix a championship fight by bribing the champ's cornerman to put a knockout drug in his water. The badguys lock her in a closet but she gets out just as the challenger is declared the winner. She reveals the scheme, a doctor confirms that the champ was drugged and gives him an antidote, and the champ kayoes the challenger as Betty kayoes the crooked cornerman.

Kid Eternity text story - 2 pgs - In Africa, Kid Eternity summons Orion to kill a lion who was about to pounce on a small boy.

Sir Roger - 5 pgs, art by Bart Tumey - Sir Roger is a clever but lazy hobo. He gets word that his uncle has died in Havana, leaving him $10,000. To get to Havana, he stows away on a ship in a crate labeled "Ferocious Lion" with instructions to feed the lion several times a day. He's quickly found out, but the captain lets him stay for a cut of the $10,000. They arrive in Havana and go to the office of Mr. "Rameriz" (I think they started with "Ramirez" but were worried about offending any real Cuban lawyers named Ramirez). The lawyer, who resembles Prof. Van Snoot from the Her Highness story, reads the will: "To my nephew, Sir Roger, I leave ze $10,000 which he has borrowed from me over a period of years. He don't have to pay eet back." The furious captain chases Sir Roger into the ocean, where he says, "T'heck with ships, I'm swimmin' back!"

Big Brother - 5 pgs, artist unknown - The title character, who is a citified version of Li'l Abner, is named Big Feller, and his little brother is Mitie. They seem to be on their own. Big has a job interview as a bodyguard for a wealthy family who have received threats that their son will be kidnapped. While he's interviewing, two bumbling kidnappers, a skinny one called Stringbean and a fat one called Squash, grab Mitie thinking that he's the wealthy family's son. Mitie proves to be too much for them to handle, and by the time Big finds out that Mitie is gone, he's bringing the kidnappers back at slingshot-point. Big then clobbers them, although it seems unnecessary.

[ad] - a full-color comic-strip ad for Bendix coaster brakes for bicycles. At the bottom it says, "Eclipse Machine Division of Bendix Aviation Corp., Elmira, NY".

[ibc] - a full-page ad for the National Radio Institute, who will send you two booklets free - "How to Be a Success in Radio - Television - Electronics" and a sample lesson - "Getting Acquainted With Receiver Servicing". The booklets introduce NRI's training courses in radio & TV repair, which are covered under the GI bill. This is the only ad that has photos but no illustrations.

[back cover] - a full-page ad with a large illustration of three smiling children holding Butterfinger candy bars as they slide downhill on a toboggan. The text, and the candy wrapper shown in the illustration, brag that Butterfinger is "rich in dextrose". When was the last time any product bragged about containing dextrose? Anyway, the maker of Butterfinger back then was Curtiss Candy, who also made Baby Ruth. Today both are owned by Nestle.

1949 would bring big changes to Hit Comics. As mentioned, it was downsized to 36 pages with issue #58. The remaining features in that issue were Kid Eternity, Bob & Swab, Betty Bates and Big Brother. Peachy shifted to the back pages of Kid Eternity's own book and then to Hickory. Her Highness, as noted, was gone for decades. Issues 59 and 60 had Sir Roger in place of Big Brother, which was never seen again. Then issue 61 replaced Kid Eternity as the lead feature with Jeb Rivers, a historical adventure strip set on a Mississippi riverboat, drawn by Reed Crandall. The backups continued to be Bob & Swab, Betty Bates and Sir Roger. That quartet of features continued until the last issue of Hit Comics, #65. Jeb Rivers had one last story in Police Comics #102 while the other three ended when Hit Comics did.

Just read the first issue of Alan Moore's Tom Strong. 'Holy Socks!' that was fun.

I loved the concept behind Tom Strong and Moore handled it with his usual skill and flair, but I have never been able to overcome my dislike of the visualisation of the title character with that disproportionately overdeveloped upper body. I tell myself I shouldn't allow such a trivial detail to stop me from reading a comic I'm pretty sure I'd otherwise enjoy, but comics is a visual medium and it really does bother me. I'll probably try it one of these days, though.

Been dipping into my stash of The 'Nam comics over the last two nights -- I read issues #2 through to #5 and issues #11, #18 and #19.

This series was so great in its early days. I love the half-realistic/half-cartoony artwork of Michael Golden, who penciled the series for the first twelve issues or so, while Wayne Vansant, who took over art duties when Golden left, is certainly no slouch and continues in a very similar vein to Golden. Doug Murray's writing is always engaging and serves to make the book a real page turner. Plus, he does a more than decent job of portraying the average infantryman's experiences in Vietnam, within the constraints of the Comics Code Authority, which can't have been an easy task. Of course, this does mean that most of the gore and bloodshed takes place tastefully off-panel and "cripes!" seems to be the expletive of choice among the grunts, but that aside, I think this was probably one of the best comics Marvel put out in the late '80s.

In fact, I'd say it was one of the best war comics ever published.

Well, I don't have a complete run of The 'Nam yet; I currently own exactly 50% of the series and what I have in my collection is heavily skewed in favour of the first 50 issues. But having said that, from what I've read of the latter part of the series, I'd say it's not as bad as some folks might make out.

Of course, once they started introducing The Punisher into the title, that's an especially low point IMO. From what I've read though, the Chuck Dixon issues -- the ones without The Punisher in them, that is -- vary from quite serviceable to pretty good, but definitely not great like the Doug Murray issues.

However, the Don Lomax era, which is the last 15 issues or so, is really pretty darn good again, judging from the issues I've read. Lomax also wrote another '80s Vietnam War comic called Vietnam Journal, which was published by Apple Comics (I think) around the same time that The 'Nam started. I've not read any of those comics, but they're supposed to be every bit as good as the early issues of The 'Nam and much more realistic and gritty, since they're not code approved books. I'd love to check the Vietnam Journal series out someday.