Battle For The Chaotic World of Fletcher Hanks!

Time for more Fletcher Hanks! Today's stories are Stardust & Space Smith from Fantastic Comics # 3 (cover-date February 1940), Big Red McLane from Fight Comics # 4 and Fantomah from Jungle Comics # 4 (previous two comics cover-dated April 1940).


























By the way, if someone is going to leave a comment for this post, DO NOT include any links for or about items for sale because I'll just delete them. This is not the place for someone else to plug their merchandise, even if the items are related to stories I post. You wanna sell something, start your own damn blog!

The Heroes of Rural Home Part VII

Whoops! I didn't mean for nearly four months to slip by without posting another installment of "The Heroes of Rural Home". I was hoping to keep the somewhat-monthly schedule I had going, but ... that's Life for ya!

Today's stories are Green Turtle & Jun-Gal from Blazing Comics # 4 (cover-date February 1945) and Steel Fist from Blue Circle Comics # 3 (September 1944). All of today's stories can be found at your local Golden Age comic book download website if you'ld like to see what else Blazing & Blue Circle Comics had to offer.

According to everyone else in the world, Green Turtle was drawn by Chu Hing, Jun-Gal was drawn by Harold De Lay and Steel Fist was drawn by Henry Carl Kiefer. I gotta say that while I'm impressed with De Lay's work, Kiefer's work on Steel Fist is kind of disappointing. Kiefer got started in comics in 1935, working on strips like Wing Brady and Just Suppose (with A.D. Kiefer, who I assume might be a sibling). Henry Kiefer would have a pretty long career in comics working for most of the major companies under a variety of names ("Karl Kief", for example). Some of his work is really nice, such as his "Famous Poems" and other similar features, but his work on Steel Fist is lacking the detail & style that I've grown fond of ... or maybe he simply wasn't suited for superhero stories. On that note, here's a few pages of Kiefer's earlier work.

Free Comics

Like downloading or reading Free Comics ... legally? Here's some places to go where you can read or download comics without spending a penny.

http://www.ninjaturtles.com/ - The official site of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I'm not a fan of the Archie series, or the cartoons, or the movies, but I did enjoy the original series that started it all, and if you head to this site, you can read the first 17 issues of TMNT, plus five one-shot comics.

http://www.elfquest.com/gallery/OnlineComics3.html - ElfQuest.com says it has every single ElfQuest comic available on its site, dating back to 1978.

http://marvel.com/digitalcomics/free - Marvel Comics website features some comics you can read for nothing. I haven't checked-out their site for a while, but it's nice to know that with 70+ years of publishing under their belt, they haven't changed their selection of free comics in a long time (that was sarcasm, by the way).

http://www.imagecomics.com/onlinecomics.php - Image Comics has almost 40 comics that you can read for free. That's not a huge selection, but ... well ... it's free!