Number 1951: Captain Marvel Jr and the Poore man’s radioactive attack!

I didn’t misspell “poor” in the header above. Spencer Poore is a businessman in “Captain Marvel Jr and the Radioactive Air!” from Marvel Family #54 (1951). What we comic book readers learned early on — and this is a spoiler if you haven’t learned it yet — is any new character introduced into a story will likely be the bad guy at the end.

This entertaining bit of hokum involves a real-life threat of the time, radioactivity. The Atomic Age was upon us!

I have thought about what friend and frequent commenter Daniel said about the Marvels...they should just stay in their superhero personas. I can see why Billy and Mary Batson go back to their civilian identities (in Billy’s case, he has a job at station WHIZ), but poor Freddy Freeman is left to peddle his papers while supported by a crutch. I know this is a comic book and uses comic book logic, but of the three Marvel Family characters, Freddy is the one who could bypass his handicap by staying a superhero.

Grand Comics Database doesn’t name a scripter, but guesses Kurt Schaffenberger was the artist. Just go back a couple of weeks to Pappy’s #1943, and see the lead story from this issue, which was drawn by Schaffenberger, then compare. I am not sure who drew this Captain Marvel Jr story, but it wasn’t Schaffenberger.

Posted in: Pappy Comics