Monday, October 20, 2008

Read: Flash Comics #5


Issue: Flash Comics #5 (Reprinted in The Golden Age Hawkman Archives v.1)
Title: "The Kidnapping Of Ione Craig" (suggested title)
Published Date: May 1940
Generation: Golden Age Carter
Retcon Status: In Continuity

Summary: After reading about several assassination attempts on heads of state, including the President, Carter Hall happens upon an attempted murder on the street.  Saving the young woman, he soon learns that her name is Ione Craig, and that she is a secret agent.  Her mission is to go to Araby and get to the bottom of the Sect Of Assassians, who are behind the assassination attempts.  Carter decides that she needs a bodyguard and follows her as Hawkman.  Ione is kidnapped from the market district in Cairo, and taken to the palace of Hassan Ibn Sadah, the head of the Sect.  Sadah plans to kill off the leaders of several countries at once and place Sect puppets in their place, effectively making him ruler of the world.  Hawkman infiltrates the palace nd kills one of the assassians with his sling, but then retreats before Sadah's archers can get him.  Returning after dark, Hawkman attacks the hundreds of assassians head-on, frees Ione, and kills Sadah with one well-placed sling shot.  With Sadah dead, Hawkman figures the Sect will soon fall, and he and Ione escape to the desert.

Review: A short and sweet yarn, which is appropriate considering Hawkman himself expresses similar sentiment about the adventure!  Taking Hawkman out of the cityscape gives Moldoff a chance to draw some more fantastical elements, including an Arabian palace and lots of assassians and thugs who look like they stepped out of a Sinbad movie.  Hawkman is especially brutal this time out, killing two men in the span of ten pages.  Worth noting is that the story in the next issue of Flash Comics actually picks up right where this one left off, a first for Hawkman.

Image: Flash Comics #5, 1940, Jon L. Blummer.

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