Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Law & Order: Carnival Victims Unit!!

Happy Terrill, the Ray, is at the circus with his orphan pal Bud! But he notices...

Oh, well, whatever. On with the show!


Saaaay...



Yeah, right, whatever.

Hey, look up in the air!


Great, now we're gonna have another Dick Ric Grayson on our hands!

Happy and Bud return to the circus the next day to investigate...



This time, however, Ray is ready!


Gee, why couldn't you have done that yesterday, Mr.-Moves-At-The-Speed-Of-Light?!?

The bad guys hightail it...

"Bah"? "Pietro"? What, is this a plot by Magneto and The Brotherhood Of Evil Mutants?

Anyhoo, Ray is talking to the man he saved...


Hah! Let's see Fox Mulder do that!!!

Seriously, how many FBI agents just happen to have enough skills to not only pose as an acrobat, but actually perform on the trapeze?!?

Then again, if comic have taught us anything, it's that there is so much circus-based crime in America, that every law-enforcement agency doubtless has their own Big Top Division, filled with agents holding various circus skills just waiting to infiltrate the carnival. Law & Order: Circus Crimes! CSI Big Top! NCIS Roustabout!!

Oh, and what was the plot, anyway?

I know it's asking a lot of a Golden Age story, but we have no indication what Vera was actually doing as a "spy." Sure, a traveling circus is a good way to move around the country and all, but exactly what secrets are you coming across? And don't they have a better way of passing on information than having a horse pass on information by tapping out Morse code in a tent filled with thousands of witnesses?

But the camera that is really a paralyzing ray is pretty cool...

From Smash Comics #24 (1941)

2 comments:

Madman2001 said...

Yes, this story has so many plot holes. Yes, what kind of secrets was Vera passing along and how did she obtain them? Why would Morse Code be the best way of passing along data? I mean, Morse Code is a very very thin medium -- you can't get much data out, particularly if you're relying on a horse tapping it out. Jeez, each word would need somewhere north of 6 taps to spell it out so I'm guessing that a 3 word sentence would need at least 15, and more like 25 - 30 taps. And how did Vera tell the horse what to tap out?

I must say that the artwork is absolutely fabulous for the Golden Age. Great perspectives and evocative drawings. Who was this anyway?

snell said...

The art was by Reed Crandall