Number 2101: Thunderfist punches again

Canadian fans of American comic books, in color, replete with dozens of superheroes punching bad guys and enemies of Democracy, lost access to those books with governmental decisions on wartime exigencies. Comic books just weren’t considered important enough to be imported during those years. So Canadians grew their own comic book industry on a tighter budget than Americans, putting out comic books in black line, the so-called Canadian Whites. Active Comics was one of the wartime titles, with its own superhero, Thunderfist. You can read about Thunderfist in a posting from this past February by clicking on the link beneath this story.

Murray Karn, still a teenager when he drew Thunderfist, did a fair job with the artwork, although there are some Flash Gordon swipes here and there (common in American comic books, also). The story, by E.T. LeGault, commits the same sin as many American comic books, by telling us in captions what we are looking at in pictures. It also feeds into wartime xenophobia with a caption about “foreign-looking men” — but that came from the insecure times in which it was created.

In this story I like the giant robot. As you regular Pappy readers know, I am drawn to stories with robots, and also gorillas. Maybe it came from watching the cheapo/ultra cheeseball Robot Monster movie when I was a kid. They showed it several times on television when I was a youngster. I believe it permanently affected me.

From Active Comics #3 (1942):

Here is the Thunderfist story from Active Comics #2. Just click on the thumbnail.

Posted in: Pappy Comics