This zany humor strip appeared in Fox's FANTASTIC COMICS #1-13 from December 1939-December 1940. The series was created by writer/artist Fred Schwab under the pseudonym Boris Plaster.
Professor Fiend tries to patent a bladeless knife and gets kicked out of the office. His pride hurt, he contemplates committing suicide, but then decides to build a spaceship and fly to Mars! Upon landing, he finds the planet run by cigar-chomping, juvenile delinquents (one of them says to the other, "C'mon, Junior--let's burn down some more schools!"). The Professor jumps down what looks to be a Martian volcano where he finds all the grown-ups hiding from the nasty kids . . . in the middle of a beauty contest!
I don't have enough exclamation points to describe this nutty strip. The art and story has touches of Basil Wolverton and could very well be considered an early prototype for the types of weirdness that were found later in underground comics. It's Goofy, with a capital "G"!
This series launched just a couple of months after five cartoons by Schwab appeared in Marvel Comics #1, which marked the debut of the Timely imprint (later to become Marvel) and introduced both the Human Torch and Namor, the Sub-Mariner (although the latter had featured earlier that year in an abandoned comic intended to be given away in movie theatres).
ReplyDeleteOne wonders how he came up with the name "Boris Plaster".
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