More Fun 101 – Green Arrow drives the Arrowcar, Superboy debuts, and the Spectre ends
Green Arrow and Speedy share the cover to More Fun 101 (Jan/Feb 1945), with no hint at all that this issue also includes the debut of Superboy.
An unusually dynamic splash page for the Green Arrow story in this issue. The story deals with a formula for synthetic silk, and hoods trying to steal it.
What makes this story worth inclusion is something else entirely. Catch the upper panel in which the car is called the Arrow Car, instead of the Arrowplane! It was a long time in coming, but from here on the car is always called a car, not a plane.
Towards the end, the phrase arrow-lines is used again, to describe the ropes attached to the arrows.
Superboy makes his debut in this issue, created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. This brief story just details his origin.
We get to see a bit more of the planet Krypton, rarely shown in these early days, as well as Jor-El and Lara.
The elderly Kents adopt the young boy, and the story cuts to Clark looking maybe 10 or 11 years old.
Up to this point, there had never been the notion that Clark used his abilities before becoming an adult, and the Superboy character is the first step towards the notion of multiple, parallel, universes within the DC Universe, as this Superboy must be a different person to the Superman currently appearing in Action Comics and his own book.
The story ends with young Clark showing off by lifting a car – the same activity as the cover of Action 1, which I doubt was just coincidence.
To make room for the new Superboy series, the Spectre’s strip was brought to an end with this issue. A year or more too late in my view.
As had become the norm, this is primarily a story about Percival Popp and some wacky mix-ups with real gems and fake ones.
The Spectre was no longer a part of the Justice Society by the time his series was cancelled, and his return had to wait until his appearance in Showcase in the mid-60s.