D'oh!!
Now, this Crime Smasher guy is something of a mystery. Late in his original career, the Fawcett hero Spy Smasher changed his name to Crime Smasher, and started smashing crooks instead of spies.
This story is from Charlton's Badge Of Justice #22 (1955). Some sources suggest that this story does feature the renamed Spy Smasher, while other sources say no, this is a completely different character with a coincidental name who made only the once appearance.
The story itself is no help, as the guy is never referred to by name...even his dame just refers to him as Crime Smasher!
So is this Alan Armstrong? Someone else? Or, as one website suggested, is this guy just the Earth-4 counterpart of Earth-S's Spy/Crime Smasher?? God, it's great to be a nerd...
Anyway, now it's later in the same story, and the hoods have an even more inescapable death trap:
Kids--stay in school and at least take basic physics before becoming a crook!!
Thanks for posting this -- I had no idea that the Fawcett Crime Smasher (maybe) appeared in any Charlton comic, let alone one as late as 1955! I've always been a little over interested in the number of Golden Age costumed heroes who at some tipping point decided to abandon their costume (the most notable example probably being Blue Bolt, who went from a Flash Gordon/superhero hybrid to a straight up superhero to a photographer).
ReplyDeleteI've always though The Brief Second Life of Alan Armstrong was kind of sad -- you go from costumed war hero/millionaire playboy to unlicensed, unpaid private eye, hated by the cops as well as the crooks.
I always found it particularly odd for it to happen to Spy Smasher--yeah, WWII was over, but there were plenty of spies left to smash. Just switch from Nazis to commies. But the market demanded crime comics, so...
ReplyDeleteBut in the good news, at the end of this story Crime Smasher gets a $50,000 reward for busting up the gang, so he's hardly unpaid!