Sunday, December 04, 2022

Today in Comics History, December 4, 1872 and 1947: They finally find the S.S. Minnow


from "The Mary Celeste: Ship of Evil" in Black Magic (1950 series) v.2 #11 (17) (Prize, October 1952), pencils and inks by Al Eadeh, letters by Ben Oda




How big a mystery was the Marie Celeste? So big that it was featured in the once-upon-a-time this book was actually about detectives Detective Comics!



from "The Mystery of the Mary Celeste II!" in Detective Comics #138 (DC/National, August 1948), pencils by Curt Swan, inks by Steve Brodie

It was such a notorious historical event that the Marie Celeste will be remembered, even into the far-off futuristic year of 2000 AD!


from "The Doomsday Machine, Part 6" in 2000 AD prog 84 (IPC, 30 September 1978), script by Roy Preston as Henry Miller, pencils and inks by Dave Gibbons and Garry Leach, letters by Peter Knight

Which naturally means that 75 years later, humanity has still not learned its lesson. (Moral applies to all eras and times.) And of course the second ship disappears as well.


from "The Mystery of the Mary Celeste II!" in Detective Comics #138

Its disappearance is a puzzle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in seaweed that the Boy Commandos, no longer having any Nazis to punch (geez, guys, just wait a few years), must uncover! Oh, and apparently it was caused by a giant hand, perhaps that of Abraham Lincoln. MYSTERY: SOLVED!


The BCs explore the abandoned ship and are baffled by the disappeaance of the crew, never once thinking to blame it on the Campbell's Tomato Soup all over the walls.


As it turns out, the crew of the MCII have been kidnapped to become slaves on a Crime Island, populated by Dr. Jack Griffins, or possibly Larry Trainors.


Do the Commandos capture the bad guys? Well, of course. And even before the Comics Code would enforce that they had to!


Remember when the Boy Commandos were popular enough a feature that they appeared in two DC comics magazines? The Golden Age! Whatever happened to those days? That's a mystery even more enigmatic than the Marie Celeste.

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