Silver Streak Comics
Entry updated 4 November 2024. Tagged: Comics, Publication.
US Comic (1939-1942; 1946). Your Guide Publications Inc, New Friday Publications Inc, Comic House Inc. 23 issues. Artists include Jack Binder, Dick Briefer, Don Rico and Bob Wood. Script writers include Otto Binder (see Eando Binder), Dick Briefer, Leslie Charteris, Carl Formes, Don Rico and Dick Wood. 68 pages per issue (fewer in #22 and #23), usually with 7-9 long strips and a short text story, plus various short fiction and non-fiction strips as filler. #21 was dated May 1942; #22 and #23 were published in 1946. #22's strips are reprints from earlier issues; aside from a Silver Streak tale, #23 has no characters from previous issues and no genre stories.
Silver Streak Comics predominantly consisted of adventure stories of various genres. Sf, Superhero and Fantasy strips were common, though less so towards the end of its run when Humour and World War Two tales without fantastic content increased. The first three issues are the most enjoyable, with plenty of absurdity; with the exception of The Saint and Captain Battle strips the later issues are dull, with the The Bingham Boys being the nadir. Yellow Peril tales are common, whilst those set in Africa are as uncomfortable as might be expected (see Race in SF) – so the anti-racist Silver Streak tale in #13 is welcome (also, following Japan's invasion of China, the Chinese sometimes receive sympathetic treatment). The Saint tale in #18 is one of the standouts, being more maturely written and with good artwork (though there is a subsequent decline in that strip's stories and art). In the descriptions below, the issues in brackets after each strip's title are those where that character appears, but exclude #22, the all-reprint issue.
The opening story in #1 has Eloise Pearsall, "America's only female ambassador" arriving at her new posting, the island of Ricca in the South Pacific. The Supervillain The Claw (#1-#2, #7-#11) is based here and wants her as his queen: Eloise is abducted using Hypnosis, here a Psi Power acting at a distance. However, her friend the "chemist adventurer" Jerry Morris concocts a radium solution that keeps him immune from any mental or physical attack, enabling him to rescue her. This is a Yellow Peril tale, with The Claw planning to conquer the world (see Imperialism); his followers experience wonderful dreams, to which they become addicted (see Drugs) – disloyalty is punished with nightmares. In #2 The Claw allies himself with Hitler (see World War Two), cowing him by crushing a vase with one hand. He then creates an ocean vortex by growing to an enormous size (Great and Small): its effect on currents leads to the tropics freezing (see Climate Change). Fortunately Jerry has invented a lightbulb gas which freezes liquids: put into dipped car headlights, the resulting ice roads become barriers that encircle the vortex. The Claw reappears in #6, using advanced Technology as well as Magic (which includes mind reading); in #7 he invades (see Invasion) America through a rail tunnel linking Tibet with New York, dug by a mechanical mole, and battles the Superhero Daredevil (see below) becoming his regular opponent. In #9 he succeeds in conquering America and capturing Daredevil, who in #10 is fed to piranhas; however, the American woman The Claw has chosen as his bride sneaks some Poison to our hero, the fish die and the villain is overthrown. In #11, as a last throw of the dice, The Claw calls for assistance from Lucifer, called a genii, but clearly from Hell (see Eschatology; Gods and Demons); his minions fail to defeat the man armed with a boomerang.
Superhero Spiritman (#1) has a "Futurscope", a distance viewer which can show any event taking place on Earth by manipulating its time and space controls: then, armed with his ravodine gun (see Weapons), he can travel to that location by using a machine which generates "Mistone Rays". On arriving he can be an invisible spirit or his physical self. Mister Midnite (#1-#2), we are told, stops time by yelling "Stop, time!!!" (see Stasis Field), yet when he does so people appear to be unaffected. Next issue his powers shift: now by uttering the same phrase he is immediately taken to the perpetrators of a crime, in this case small, large-headed men who capture beautiful women to Torture. Our hero fights them in their hideaway, accidentally releasing a gas from a container that, though "ineffective to humans causes the little men to disintegrate" (why they would have such a gas is, like much else, unexplained). Red Reeves the Boy Magician (#1-#2) has his own genii. Crime fighter The Wasp (#1-#2) has a mask and cloak, but little else that qualifies him as a superhero (though he does make a buzzing noise: "I always warn my victims beforehand."). The comic has occasional other borderline superheroes/supervillains, not discussed here.
Lance Hale (#2-#6, #8-#13) is a "soldier of fortune": after being kidnapped in Africa by Scientist Dr Grey, Lance willingly joins his exploration of space using the Faster Than Light Spaceship Grey has built – the scientist also gives him an armband that greatly increases his already considerable strength. In #3 animal men decide to conquer the Earth, their King announcing he plans to make Dr Grey's daughter his Queen ... then enquires "you have a daughter Dr Grey?". From #4 these events are ignored, with Lance having Earth-bound adventures: in that issue he is in Africa seeking a giant diamond, finding flames that bestow Immortality – H Rider Haggard's She: A History of Adventure (1886) was doubtless an inspiration – and fighting lizard men; in #6 he becomes a Tarzan-like character; these adventures are usually mundane, but in #11 he fights giant animals and in #12 finds a Lost World with Dinosaurs and ape men (see Apes as Human). Solar Patrol (#2-#6) features Ken Kurage, captain of the Earth government's police force (see Crime and Punishment). His first tale involves the tree men of Uranus (see Outer Planets) who, just as men evolved from apes, have evolved from trees (see Evolution). They seek minerals for their munitions factory that are only found on Earth. Ken has an elaborate Universal Translator and he teams up with an amazon from Mars. Another adventure has a man who – after having put his brain in a giant mechanical body (see Cyborgs; Brain in a Box), built octopus Robots and weaponized a comet – attacks Earth, Mars and Venus. Fortunately the comet has an unprotected "off" switch.
Silver Streak (#3-#21, #23) is a superhero named after a racing car built by scientists and a swami: its unnamed driver, hypnotized by the swami to be the "strongest, bravest, fastest man in the world" is apparently killed by a giant fly created by Dr Katan, an "insane professor of zoology" (see Mad Scientist), who uses the insect to blackmail the city. The Swami frees the driver from his coffin, awakening him from his death trance, whereupon he runs off. The Swami's earlier instructions related to being a racing driver, but now the driver finds he has super speed and so becomes a superhero – eventually gaining a falcon helper (named Whiz). His adventures tend to be uninteresting, but in #10 he fights a robot. In #11 he gets another sidekick "Mercury, the Boy Streak", who he injects with "a secret fluid ... to overcome the law of Gravity and travel ... at tremendous speeds" (we infer he uses this too, a revision of his origin story in #3). In #13 Silver Streak fights a group in the southern states who are lynching African Americans ("this is disgusting, as an American it makes me almost ashamed of my country"). In his first tale Dickie Dean, The Boy Inventor (#3-#21) comes up with a pair of devices (see Inventions) relating to past events: one that picks up old conversations, the other showing shadows cast weeks ago. In #4, after his uncle is killed in an unnamed War, he invents "a machine to end war" – it turns the air "as thick as molasses", stopping vehicles and rendering bullets and shells harmless. War does indeed end. In #7 Professor Skinn, a blind mad scientist who sees through a giant mechanical eye worn on his head and connected by wires to his eye sockets, tries to recruit him for evil; when Dickie refuses he performs brain surgery to remove his conscience. Fortunately he is saved by a friend and henceforth regularly battles with Skinn. #10 has a Time Viewer; in #14 he equips robots "with fish gills so they can be used under water", enabling him to retrieve enough sunken treasure to build an experimental, futuristic laboratory the size of a small town (#15).
When Bart Hill was a boy his parents had been murdered and he was tortured – branded with a boomerang shaped scar – which left him mute. Now an adult, Bart is superhero Daredevil (#6-#17), using a boomerang to battle crime (he is also fairly athletic). In #7, no longer mute and able to fly, he becomes the nemesis of The Claw (see above), finally defeating him in #11. Subsequent stories tend to mundane. Zongar the Miracle Man (#7), uses an amulet containing a spirit that does his bidding and battles an evil scientist. Cloud Curtis (#7-#17) is a pilot with an advanced airplane – it has a giant propeller in its midriff – otherwise sf elements are rare, though in #8 he prevents spies obtaining a newly invented metal which is very strong but lighter than aluminium. Superhero Captain Battle (#10-#21), who lost an eye in the World War One, uses his scientific inventions to fight evil. In the first story he looks through his curvoscope (a distance viewer) and remarks to Jane, his secretary, that "a race of birdmen seem to be conquering our European brothers" – "and sisters" Jane points out (see Feminism): he thereafter refers to them as cousins. His jetpack, which travels at "almost the speed of light", enables him to reach Europe in good time and defeat the birdmen, who are men the sorcerer Black Dragon has imbued with the spirit of the extinct Dodo, which we are told makes them immune to physical death; they are killed by radio waves. In #12 he gets a young sidekick, Half Battle. Opponents include Nazi Skull Men with a bone spike growing from the top of their heads, who disappointedly just turn out to be men in masks (#14). This becomes the format for subsequent stories: Nazi mummies are just men in bandages (#15), Nazi Zombies are men in make-up (#16); in #17 they are dressed as Vampires (though they do have working artificial wings – see Flying) and steal an American scientist's Ray that strips flesh from bone. These plots continue until #21, when one Friar Diablo actually has a working magic wand. Thun-Dhor (#13-#14) is an American born Tibetan lama trained in the "arts of Gom-Pa" which give him various superpowers; the Dalai Lama (who is over 300 years old) hands him a bracelet that will psychically link the two of them. They battle an exiled lama who has the "box of Pandora", containing assorted evils with which to afflict the world. In #14 he levitates an Ancient Egyptian pyramid containing the mummy of an evil pharaoh to New York, then plans to cover America in sand so the reanimated pharaoh "will once more rule a desert Empire". The Bingham Boys (#15-#17) are two brothers who have adventures, one leading to the destruction of the secrets of Atlantis, which we never see.
#18 has a The Saint (#18-#21) story "written especially for Silver Streak comics by Leslie Charteris". One of his team is Professor Steiner, whom Simon Templar rescued from a Concentration Camp after he denounced the Nazis: in this story, searching for a German store of bacteriological bombs, they use the professor's "truth extractor" device, a helmet whose oscillating current passes through the brain paralysing the wearer's willpower. The Saint appears in subsequent issues, as "The Saint by Leslie Charteris", implying that he wrote these too: #19 introduces a wristwatch radio transmitter used in later stories; in #20 the Italians in Libya use tanks that can travel through the ground.
Daredevil is unrelated to the Marvel superhero with the same name; his popularity led to his jumping ship to his own comic, Daredevil (1941-1956, 134 issues, vt Daredevil Comics. #1 titled "Daredevil Battles Hitler"), though from about 1947 he became a secondary character and eventually disappeared. The Claw and other Silver Streak Comics regulars also appeared in early issues of this title. [SP]
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