The Boy Who Couldn't Grow Up
One of the significant genre within the Captain Marvel Jr. corpus was what can be termed "Boy stories". These stories deal with Capt. Marvel Jr helping younger or about his own age boys. In this Otto Binder-scripted tale Cap Jr. helps 15-year-old Dick Sanders over come a most unusual problem. The theme of a boy out of control who the Blue Boy needs to protect from his own irresponsible actions would be repeated in other stories. In some ways Dick Sanders' repeatedly stupid actions seem more to fill out the requisite number of story pages than results of true motivations. Than again some teenagers especially bored ones can do repeatedly dumb things. In later stories Cap Jr. in this story relied on the help of an outside scientist to come up with an "elixir" but in later tales would do it himself. Interesting side note we are told Freddy Freeman's 1946 address in this story (85 Center St.). This would change a year later when the crippled newsboy moved into Mrs. Wagner's Boarding House. Very effective art by Bud Thompson.
For more on the "Boy Story" genre see the Blue Boy Chronicles #1
No comments:
Post a Comment