The Eagle and Buddy the Daredevil Boy!

From Weird Comics #15, meet the Golden Age's shirtless anvil-smacker The Eagle and his Daisy-Duke clad teenage "ward" Buddy the Daredevil Boy. Another Obscure '40's misfit bound to be sumptuously painted by Alex Ross sometime in the next year or two, The Eagle soaked his cape in anti-gravitation fluid and took to the skies in pursuit of googly-eyed amputees, as you'll see when you read "The Beast and the Blindness Formula"

Right off the bat, I'm baffled here. If he pours the anti-gravity formula on his cape, shouldn't the cape just fly up by itself and, well, hang him? That would be cool.

Wealthy young scientist Bill Powers is apparently wealthy enough to have a big house, a butler, and a full-time rent boy, so he's probably just pissed that he didn't get in on some of that sweet blindness formula action for himself.

So the Eagle soaks his cape in anti gravity formula...before driving to the scene of the crime. No doubt sitting on the damp cape the whole way! Brilliant! Maybe he has to sit on the cape to keep it from flying off and strangling him...

Yeah, this one's for the ladies and some of the fellas. Feast your eyes on those pasty, doughy pecs and that rippling 1 1/2 pack! Duh-roool. Never let it be said that Again With the Comics skimps on the beefcake, folks!

Brace yourself for the greatest thing ever:

Wham! And so a doughball falls. It's surprising more villains didn't try hit and run, but then most superheroes -especially those named after fucking birds- would fly.

Bring out the Gimp:


The great thing about the Golden Age was that you could look like Marty Feldman with a garden rake for a hand, or be a bald jerk with a giant exacto knife for a prosthetic leg and be considered a major threat. Also, apparently having artificial limbs makes you EVIL.

"Let's see if you bounce!" Damn, that is cold-blooded. Uh, you know, that and the whole pitchfork-in-the-chest thing. It pretty much devolves into an orgy of pudgy shirtless violence from here on out, so I'll stifle it for now and let the story speak for itself:

Finally, finally, the Eagle sort of flies. More like "lunges" or "wafts', really. Ironically one good crack to the nut with an anvil is all it takes to put the Beast out of his misery. It's surprising really, just how many problems a well placed anvil blow can solve. But I digress...

There was actually a lot of crude charm in this goofy old strip, and I kind of liked it, for all I'm mocking it. The first page is credited to Lester Raye, but I can find nothing about him online, and my usual source for this sort of thing, the Grand Comic Database has nothing on him.