All Good Comics

Entry updated 29 December 2025. Tagged: Comics, Publication.

US Comic (1944; 1946). Fox Publications, Inc. Artists include Lou Ferstadt, Frank Godwin and Alvin Hollingsworth. 2 issues. Initially published in 1944, All Good Comics was one of several unnumbered one-shot 132 page comics published by Fox in this era – such as The Book of Comics, All Top Comics, All Your Comics (all 1944) and Book of All-Comics (1945) – featuring a mixed bag of genres. This issue had 25 strips, plus some nonfiction pieces; it was revived in 1946, with 36 pages (having 5 strips and a short text story), but for one issue only.

The 1944 All Good Comics included four Superheroes: The Bouncer, who had his own comic (see also Rocket Kelly): in Ancient Greece, Anteas "son of Mother Earth" (that is, Antaeus of Greek Mythology) had drawn strength from the Earth; sculpted in the present day by a descendant who named the statue "the Bouncer", it comes to life whenever evil threatens. Alan Dale is a "gentle carver of puppets", but when required to fight evil plays a tune on his organ and turns into superhero The Puppeteer who can travel on the "V Beam" to any destination (previously known as Captain V; under either name he appeared in a handful of Fox comics during this period); he has a talking crow called Raven. The wealthy Ann Morgan is secretly The Purple Tigress (clad in purple cape with striped bikini and boots), she is athletic, reasonably strong and sees well in the dark (see Feminism). Her only other appearance was in Jo-Jo Comics #7 (1947). There is also the The Green Mask, previously seen in Mystery Men Comics, who had his own comic; superpowers include the ability to fly. All of these superheroes fight mundane villains.

Adventures of Connie is a reprint from the newspaper strip Connie (1927-1941): a mid-adventure episode, where a friend's sister has just been sent a century into the past (see Time Travel) by a Mad Scientist testing his "time projector". Knocking out the scientist, Connie and friend use the projector – which has three dials for "geographical transit", "time transit" and "return" – to try to rescue her. However, in 1844 they are arrested for passing counterfeit money, whilst one Amos Q Billings – clearly based on W C Fields – uses the Time Machine to learn the results of horse races. Other adventure stories are non-genre; there are also several Humorous strips, sometimes with Fantasy elements, particularly anthropomorphized animals. One sees Snooky (a young girl) and Honey Bear riding a Rocket to discover why the stars have disappeared; it turns out they were keeping the Man in the Moon awake.

Two stories feature planetary adventurer Rick Evans, who lives in Future City: "S.O.S. from Mars" has him helping Princess Mina of Mars overcome the Alien Lugo in an example of a transposed jungle story plot, where humanoid aliens replace non-white tribes (see Race in SF); the dark-skinned Martians even have a white, human-like queen (see Clichés). "The Prison in the Sky" finds Rick and friends – the "beautiful Professor Astra" (see Women in SF) and cowardly assistant Stringbean – journeying by Spaceship to rescue Scientists enslaved by a giant female cyclops. They too are captured, with the Cyclops taking a shine to Stringbean and keeping him as a pet whilst the others work; eventually they all escape. The only genre tale in #1 (1946) features Rick in "Land of the Snake Men", where he, Professor Astra and Stringbean visit said land (which might or might not be on Earth) to obtain snake venom to cure a dying scientist. A local snake man tries to sacrifice them to the local snake god, an enormous cobra.

All Good Comics was forgettable – the Connie reprint is the standout, the art and storytelling being noticeably superior, reflecting the gap between the era's newspaper and comic-book strips. Of the other tales, only the Rick Evans adventure "The Prison in the Sky" and The Purple Tigress are of interest. [SP]

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