Posted in: Comics | Tagged: archie comics, comic books, Comics, golden age comics, MLJ, Pep Comics

Diving into the Comics Vault: Pep Comics #4

Published Sun, 29 Mar 2020 14:30:36 -0500

If you want to read the previous entry in this series click here. Pep Comics #4 has one of my favorite covers. Featuring The Shield, we see our hero fighting bad guys in tanks in what we can safely assume is Washington D.C. This is a bright, eye-catching cover, and should be considered a Golden Age classic.

As with Pep Comics in the past, this issue opens with The Shield on his continued adventures in keeping America safe. This specific chapter is important as we have our first guest appearance, The Wizard. The Shield and Wizard enjoyed minor success in their own titular comic — Shield Wizard. In this issue of Pep Comics though, Shield rescued Wizard from what we can assume are German bad guys. This episode was more exciting than the first three and featured a lot more detail in both the art and plot.

We then dive into The Comet, who's been running from the cops for a few days. The last time we saw him he had been brainwashed into being a pawn for the evil Satan, but now that he was of sound mind, he's on the run from the law. Will he be able to clear his name? Will Comet be a good guy going forward, or an anti-hero? I'm not going to spoil it, despite that this is a 70+-year-old comic.

The rest of this issue of Pep Comics features The Press Guardian — with more action than it had before, Fu Chang, Prince Buttonhead, Sergeant Boyle, The Midshipman, The Rocket and the Queen of Diamonds, Giants of the West, Kayo Ward, and Bently of Scotland Yard.

As I said in my previous post, the Queen of Diamonds is a very bad ruler. In this issue, she's on an adventure with Rocket, which raises the question — who is watching her planet and her people? Bently of Scotland Yard also takes a turn in horror, as MLJ parodies The Hunchback of Notre Dame in this issue.

This whole issue is a huge improvement over the previous. Even the art is better. Of course, in just a handful of issues, the entire tone of Pep Comics will ultimately change. But for now, I'm enjoying this WWII ride.

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