Captain Flight Comics
Entry updated 13 May 2024. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1944-1947). 11 issues. Four-Star Publications Inc. Artists include George Appel, L B Cole, Leo Morey, Zoltan Szenics and Maurice Whitman. 52-60 pages: usually 4-6 long strips, a 2 page text story or non-fiction pieces and, from #3, a few short humorous strips.
Pilot Captain Flight has various war-related adventures, sometimes two an issue. Normally there are no fantastic elements, but in #2 he invents the "Pilotless 'microbe' plane", a fleet of which are controlled from a "fortress" plane: that is, what we would today call drones. #3 has the only appearance of Telo the Mental Wizard: here a "foreign power" (transparently named Prussany; see World War Two) invades the USA by firing giant capsules full of soldiers across the Atlantic. Telos uses his mind-reading (see Telepathy) powers on a spy to find the landing site. Another one-off appears in #4: pilot Top Bowers defeats a far-eastern Mad Scientist who waits for the world to exhaust itself through War, then to rule it with his "super science", which includes a mind-control torch.
Otherwise, this comic's first four issues consist of War, crime (see Crime and Punishment) and other adventures, but little in the way of genre material, though a couple of tales in #1 get close. Professor "X", Crime Doctor tells of a woman surgeon whose daughter was born with malformed legs; when the daughter reaches twenty the surgeon abducts a young woman and attempts to transplant her legs onto her daughter (see Medicine), but both victim and patient die. In the other story the daughter of Dash, an antiques dealer, is accidentally killed by gangsters: he sells his business and trains himself in various forms of self-defence and disguise, calling himself The Avenger, to fight organized crime. His lack of a costume prevents him from being classed a Superhero.
From #5 the comic moves more heavily into genre territory. Rock Raymond stars in a Space Opera story that would be later be refurbished to become the Rocketman episode "Panic on Pluto" in the Rocketman comic (which see). Superheroes Red Rocket and The Grenade (a one-off strip) both fight mundane villains and have no Superpowers, just a costume and their fists – though the latter's story has a vague "secret formula" and a random half-man half-beast thrown into the mix. Diver Deep Sea Dawson battles a seaweed queen and her minions (see Under the Sea) who plan to conquer the surface and turn humanity into enslaved "water plants" (see Slavery). #6 has The Black Cobra, another gangster fighting superhero without superpowers (this is a reprint from Dynamic Comics); there is also a story featuring a character called Red Rocket, but a very different one from that in #5: this is a whacky Humour strip about a teenager of that name who builds a Rocket ship and flies to Mercury with a pal, only to be pursued on arrival by two sisters looking for husbands (see Women in SF). In #7 one of the Captain Flight strips has an armour-plated Zeppelin Airship large enough to be used as an aircraft carrier. It is destroyed by the Captain crashing his aircraft into it, then parachuting off. Red Rocket (#5 version) also appears and another Spurt Hammond story (from Planet Comics #8) is reworked to become a Rock Raymond story (later, it would be altered once more, becoming the Rocketman tale "Venus Afire"). #8 has the return of The Black Cobra, now with a sidekick The Cobra Kid. Red Rocket reappears, but is now a mind-reader and has a Spaceship and other advanced Technology: here he defeats "The Black Satan of Doomsday" (aka The Black Devil of Venus) who shrouds the Earth with a Venusian gas, so blocking out the Sun. This story would later be refurbished into a Rocketman tale and published in Strange Fantasy #4. Kitty Kelly was a resourceful young air hostess who previously appeared in #6, but in #8 she is the female superhero Yankee Girl: Rich men are becoming psychotic, so Kitty investigates, to discover a Doctor is injecting them with a "lunacy serum" so they are put in an asylum and he gains control of their wealth. Yankee Girl has some modest superpowers – she can Hypnotize and is resilient: twice people think they have killed her but she quickly shrugs it off. Torpedoman also appears in this issue: he is a deep-sea diver detective with an underwater jet propulsion device and an advanced breathing system.
In #9 Red Rocket fights the "Invisible Terror", a strip that would be reworked to feature a character named "Cosmo" (with a "K" on his chest rather than an "R") in the previously mentioned Rocketman comic. There is a Kitty Kelly adventure, with Yankee Girl just used as a subtitle. The story has no sf or fantasy elements: a plane crashes in the wilderness and one of the survivors is a murderer. Kitty works out who. In #10, Red Rocket attends a mid-Atlantic peace conference in 2042 as the US representative: his speech denounces the dishonourable intentions of the Nazania nation ("Ach! ve haf been found oudt!"). The King of the Lobstermen who live on Mercury's brightside (see Scientific Errors) asks for Rock Raymond's help in finding out why the beautiful women who live in the twilight regions are disappearing – including their Queen, Merca. It turns out the cat men of the dark side are responsible, following the orders of Professor Morta, who seeks "a formula for eternal beauty". Deep Sea Dawson returns: in #7 he had acquired a seal sidekick, with a suggestion he understood it, here it clearly barks in a language Dawson understands (see Linguistics) and appears to be of near-human Intelligence. #11 was published 14 months after #10 and at first glance it's title appears to be just "Flight": but if you look closely a tiny "Capt", barely distinguishable from the background, can be made out. Captain Flight is reduced to being the issue's two-page text story, and he's now a "young, well-renowned scientist" in the 21st century who goes to explore a newly discovered planet. Torpedoman reappears – and has two stories. Red Rocket investigates why new-born babies are turning into mutated Monsters and discovers it is a plot by Martians mutated by the atomic weapons used in the Earth-Martian wars. Their plan is to turn all Martians and Earthlings into Mutants, which includes planting radiation-emitting devices under Earth's hospital nurseries. There is also a superhero strip featuring The Blue Flame, who is essentially the Human Torch but blue.
Captain Flight was an indecisive publication. The shift in its genre focus is understandable given contemporary events, whilst heroes who turn out to be one-offs were common in comics; but Red Rocket seems a different character each time he appears; Kitty Kelly suddenly becomes a superhero for her middle story, but is back to being an air hostess the next, and the comic seems unsure which diving hero to stick with. It is also occasionally quite dark (see Horror). However, this variety does prevent the comic getting in too much of a rut; and though – save for Kitty Kelly's competence (see Feminism) – there are no real standouts, it is a moderately enjoyable read. [SP]
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