Comic Cavalcade was an anthology series that ran from 1942 until 1954, publishing super-heroes and other adventures for the first six years. Wonder Woman, the Flash, and Green Lantern were the headliners. DC has reprinted the first three issues as The Comic Cavalcade Archives, Vol. 1. (At 100 pages per issue, it’s still a pretty big collection!) I bought a copy, mainly for the Flash stories, and it finally arrived yesterday.

I read a few of the stories this afternoon, and these panels from the Green Lantern story in issue 1, “The Adventures of Luckless Lenore,” made me laugh out loud.

Green Lantern’s sidekick, Doiby, has been trying to romance Lenore, whose “bad luck” seems to be engineered. At this point he’s been captured. I didn’t even notice the name of the bar the first time through, it was the menu that caught me off-guard.

Whiskey

Beer

Whiskey & Beer

Whiskey & Milk

Whiskey & Egg

Whiskey, Beer, Egg & Milk

I rushed into the other room to show Katie, and she immediately said, “Spam, spam, bacon and spam!”

On a related note, I recall reading somewhere that one of the reasons DC has released so few Golden-Age books in Archive Editions is that the original art is rarely available. In the 50s or 60s, they started keeping their own archives, but for the stuff from the 40s, they generally have to take an actual copy of the comic book—crappy printing, faded newsprint and all—scan it, re-ink it, and re-color it. This book actually has credits for “black-and-white reconstruction” and “color reconstruction.”

Originally posted at K-Squared Ramblings in 2005.

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