Thursday, November 5, 2009

World-Beater & Unggh in "The Invisibility Paint" (Prize; 1944)









After my Halloween-centric posts ran all throughout October, it was not my intention to launch into anything like another theme-oriented series this week, but with my Space Ace comic review, my critique of the ABC television series debut of "V" (which scored very well in the Nielsen ratings, after all), my scoop of a profile on Axel Medellin yesterday and his upcoming 50-Girls-50 scif-fi action series for Image Comics - it seems that I've inadvertently done just that - so I guess I might as well stick with it for the time being.

Today's golden age classic comic story is taken from Prize Comics #39 (Feb. 1944), published by a company called Prize. World-Beater and Unggh are a quirky pair of adventurers, World-Beater is a little guy from the far future who believes that his advanced knowledge will make him and his pal, Unggh (a caveman from primordial days), rich beyond the dreams of avarice. These two oddballs get into one unfortunate and silly fix after another, and they always seem to come out with the short end of the stick in a string of humorous back-up features that are really obscure. I doubt that very many people remember these characters.

The writer/artist on this eight pager is identified as Fred Morgan in the Grand Comic Database, and I found virtually nothing about the guy online. A different artist, August Froehlich, works on other World-Beater tales that I will eventually be posting here in the Catacombs. 'The Invisibility Paint' apparently picks up from an earlier story where World-Beater and Unggh were each rendered half invisible and, well, read this for yourselves and see if you can make heads or tails out of it. This one is a doozy, but at least the ending is quite hilarious!

The Catacombs is grateful to Don "Zu-Gogo" Falkos for providing the scans for this story. Note: The copyright for this issue, its contents and artwork belong to the original publisher and/or the creators and is reproduced here solely for entertainment purposes.

Enjoy!

8 comments:

Mykal Banta said...

Chuck: Wow, you get some sort of prize for this one - oddball comic of the month or perhaps year! Who could dream up this pair? I have never even come close to hearing about his comic!

And, it must be said, despite being called the "World Beater," the young fellow's abilities seem somewhat pedestrian. His cave-man buddy seems to do all the heavy lifting for the pair.

I loved this post! -- Mykal

Chuck Wells said...

Glad to hear that you liked this, Mykal. I have at least four more World-Beater stories in the queu.

Mr. Karswell said...

I second Mykal's praise, it's all too weird and funny to not be immediately likeable. I love stories like this that throw sense and caution to the wind and don't take themselves too seriously. Fun stuff, looking forward to more World-Beater!

THE APOCOLYTE said...

I have to echo the others, Chuck - this story was an insane wild trip from the get-go! (Girls were cute, too!) How much bizarre stuff like this is out there waiting to be discovered and shared?...Cool post! I'll be back for more!

=link said...

Oh, MAN. You have just GOT to post some more World Beater, puh-lease, I'm beggin' yuh!!! That stuff is so dada, surreal, and just plain mind-bloWing! Really, please, MORE! And thanks for the 2 episodes posted so far--they are just too cool!!!

=link said...

Thanks for this wild ride--I had SO much FUN. I'm not kiddin', you just gots to post some more of this shit--it is so righteous! I DO luv it SO.

Chuck Wells said...

Message received!

I WILL post another World-Beater tale here in the Catacombs sometime within the next week.

I'm glad that you liked his advventures and thanks for stopping by!

=link said...

OKAY. That makes THREE W-beater episodes!