Thursday, November 18, 2010

Lucky Coyne in "Evil Eye" (Chesler;1941)









Before this tale from Dynamic Comics #1 (Oct. 1941), a version of Lucky Coyne had last appeared in MLJ's 1939 series, Top-Notch Comics #1, which coincidentally had contents packaged by Chesler. While this story introduces Helen Jordan & the villain, "Evil Eye" Harms, the thing that I would like to point out is that "Lucky" may have been a misnomer for this particular character.

You see, Lucky was a detective who carried a coin, and when faced with a key decision he would flip it. If it came up heads, he would take action and do something. If it came up tails, he wouldn't. Lucky was also a gifted athlete and crack shot, but almost a year later Bob Kane & Bill Finger introduced a memorable villain over at National Comics in Detective Comics #66 (Aug. 1942), who "coincidentally" utilized the same shtick as poor "Lucky" to battle the Batman. Guess which one is most familiar to today's fans, Lucky Coyne or Two-Face?

However, Mr. Coyne was already flipping coins for nearly a year before Harvey Dent took an acid splash to the face, and since coincidences like this occurred a few times during the golden age, I'm including a text piece from this issue aptly titled "One In A Million".

Enjoy!

No comments: