Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Dominic Fortune in “All in Color for a Crime” in Hulk! 21 Jun 1980

 

Story Denny O’Neil Art Howard Chaykin

Before the Marvel Premiere issue, Dom got his first colour adventure in Hulk 21.  As a magazine the stories could be more mature and free of the Comics Code.  Tying into the Hulk TV show at the time, this is the first of five adventures.  Issues 21 & 22 appeared before Marvel Premiere #56.

The story starts in 1937 and Dom and Sabbath are heading to New York as Dom has discovered that there is a comic book character The Purple Slasher that looks a lot like Dom.  While Superman didn’t make print until 1938, masked and costumed characters had been appearing in pulps, comic strips and comic books before that.

Chaykin certainly knows his comics history and this comes into play here and in his later series “Hey Kids Comics”.

Dom and Sabbath visit the old neighbourhood and discovers that the artist has been missing for the last few weeks.  It turns out that the Nazis have taken over the comic shop and using the Purple Slasher to spread propaganda (naturally use the Jewish creators to create Nazi propaganda).

We get several fight scenes as the Nazis try to stop Dominic from freeing the cartoonists.  There is a lovely fight scene over black and white panels of the Purple Slasher with Fortune in painted colour mirroring his fictional counterpart.  The painted colours are lovely and are still vivid for a book that is over 40 years old.

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