Tuesday, May 10, 2022

NEAR-MYTHS" "FANTASY ISLE, CHAPTER 6" (AMAZING MYSTERY FUNNIES #22, 1940)

 Most of the fantasy/SF comics-features of the very early Golden Age are pretty forgettable, and as I was scanning through the Centaur publication AMAZING MYSTERY FUNNIES, I had the same impression of  this strip, FANTASY ISLE, in which a fellow with the risible name of "Tippy Taylor" keeps tumbling through various fantasy-scapes.




Chapter 6 at least steals from better sources than the usual feature of the period, though. In this installment, he comes across a vase, opens it, and is almost killed by a genie with a sword. However, the genie changes his mind and decides to give Tippy a magical summoning rin. Both the murderous genie and the obedient genie are taken from prominent English-translated stories from the 1001 Nights. 



The same "Queen of the Underworld" whom the genie mentions brings Tippy to her palace and proposes marriage to him. Tippy doesn't like girls (or at least overly forward ones) and refuses. She keeps him around until he wanders into a remote room and finds that she embodies another story-trope, that of BLUEBEARD.




On top of that, the royal bitch also likes to borrow tropes from the 1920 novel L'ATLANTIDE, whose queenly protagonist had the habit of killing her lovers and preserving them in statue form. One might expect Tippy to use his genie-ring to escape, but the idea never even passes through his tiny brain. However, a helpful serving-maiden helps Tippy escape with a pill that just happens to duplicate the famous motif from ALICE IN WONDERLAND, shrinking Tippy so that he can go on to some other thoroughly derivative adventure. But I'll give the strip this much cachet: it wasn't good, but at least it was eclectic in its swipes.

NOTE: I explored all the features published on DIGITAL COMICS MUSEUM and Tippy the Twit never does use any of his wishes. These early comics do however include a mildly interesting work by Tarpe Mills and some incredibly formulaic work by later wunderkind Will Eisner.

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