Sunday, April 01, 2018

Today in Comics History, April 1, 1948: Jealous of Batman's success, Green Lantern also gets himself a joke-themed nemesis



from "The April Fool's Day Crimes!" in Comic Cavalcade #27 (DC, June 1948), script by John Broome, pencils and inks by Alex Toth

Oh hey! Today also appears to be the day Doiby Dickles was killed by gangsters.

Other heroes that Green Lantern appear to be jealous of include Fawcett's Captain Marvel, what with Billy Batson working in a radio station...


And, despite the fact that they would not premiere for another thirteen years...the Fantastic Four and their trademark flare alert!


Jealous, jealous, Alan Scott. No wonder they called him the Green Lantern!

That supervillain the Fool certain is some kind of criminal joker, isn't he? (nudge nudge wink wink)


Eh, on closer inspector, he really is much more of a Riddler. Your compulsion to leave clues will continue to be your downfall, guys! I'm jus' sayin'.


Anyway, all's fool that ends fool! Happy April Fool's Day!


4 comments:

Dave Sikula said...

Wasn't Funnyman enough of a ripoff of the (odious) Danny Kaye? Bah.

Blam said...

Say, Bully... or "say, you," maybe, given Alan Scott's Johnny Thunder impression at the top of the story... You know whose debut (in All-American Comics #89) preceded The Fool's (in Green Lantern #28*) by a month? The Harlequin! It weren't April, of course, but given that over on Earth-One her moniker was adopted by the character formerly known as The Joker's Daughter — and The Riddler's Daughter, and The Penguin's Daughter — she’s pretty darned significant. Not to mention, Alan Scott would surely concur, significantly darned pretty. When it comes to "a joke-themed nemesis" for Green Lantern, me, I sez, "Fool, Schmool." Early Alex Toth art is always interesting, though.

Blam said...

(*Crazy that GL was appearing in three regular series, including Comic Cavalcade as seen here, even if — given their anthology nature and the bi-monthly schedule of most — we’re only talking about 30 pages of story per month, not counting his JSA exploits in All-Star Comics.)

William T. Sherman said...

Yeah, good luck restoring that painting .