Captain's Library GREEN HORNET "Kingpin of Crime"

For St Patrick's Day, we're featuring our favorite Son of the Old Sod...

...Michael Aloysious Axford, in a never-reprinted comic book tale adapted from an episode of the long-running radio show, The Green Hornet!

Most people don't know that the character of Mike Axford actually pre-dates the The Green Hornet, appearing on an earlier, but now forgotten, radio series, Warner Lester: Manhunter, by the same writer/producer team, Fran Striker and George Trendle!

Axford was a police chief suspected, then cleared, of corruption who resigned from the force and joined Lester in a detective agency.

BTW, It's mentioned on The Green Hornet that Axford is a retired policeman, but his rank was never specified.

It would make sense that Dan Reid would hire as presitigous a retired cop as possible to be his son, Britt's bodyguard, and who better than an ex-police chief?

There's more about Axford's long run on radio HERE.

Though the scripter of the adaptation from Harvey's Green Hornet Fights Crime #35 (1947) is unknown, the art is by long-time pro Al Avison.

And don't forget to visit...

The Classic Green Hornet Store

Captain's Library & Theatre: GREEN HORNET FIGHTS CRIME "Desperate Gamble"

Not a dream!

Not a hoax!

Not an imaginary story!

The Harvey Comics series had been adapting radio show scripts for years, but cramming a status quo-changing four half-hour episode arc into only two eight-page chapters took a lot of modifications...

Here's a link to the October 28, 1947 Green Hornet radio show episode "Exposed" that most of this comic story is based on.

There are some interesting differences, such as Clip Phelan being the murder victim in the radio episode, but Phelan's the murderer in the comic story and the murder victim is "Frankie Striker", a reference to Hornet co-creator Fran Striker!

The art on this lead tale from Harvey's Green Hornet Fights Crime #43 (1949) is presumed to be by Al Avison, but I believe he only did the pencils.

The inking looks a lot like Lee Elias, who was doing, among other things, The Black Cat for Harvey.

The writer of the comic adaptation is unknown.

This entry is part of our Retroblogs™ Masks Marathon, celebrating the new Dynamite comic series Masks which combines, for the first time, the major masked mystery men of pulps and comics including The Green Hornet, The Shadow, The Spider, Zorro, The Black Terror, The Green Lama, and Miss Fury (ok, a masked mystery woman), among others.

We'll be presenting more never-reprinted stories featuring these characters throughout the month of December.

Join us on Tuesday at 

Hero Histories™

for the astounding conclusion!

Captain's Library: THE GREEN HORNET "Crime at Floodtime" Conclusion

The original art for the cover for this issue

When last we left our hero...

In 1946, The Boy Heroes were watching a TV broadcast of The Green Hornet's "latest" adventure as he battles a group of criminals using a captured Japanese mini-sub to loot a flooded town.
Lenore Case, assisting Britt Reid in covering the flood for his newspaper, The Daily Sentinel, was captured after she inadvertently stumbled upon the crooks' base of operations in an abandoned lighthouse.
Casey manages to activate the lighthouse's lantern, in the hopes of signaling help...

You'll note at this point in time, Casey doesn't know her boss, Britt Reid, is The Hornet.
She admires The Hornet and believes he's a misunderstood "good guy", not a notorious criminal.
Within a year she'll learn her boss' secret identity both in the comics and on the radio show.
Speaking of which, most of The Green Hornet comic stories were derived directly from the radio show scripts.
This one, from All-New Comics #13, was, obviously, not.
And, there's no Kato, Black Beauty or gas-gun in the "tv episode"!
The scriptwriter is unknown, but the artist is Al Avison, who started in the business working for the Joe Simon/Jack Kirby studio and ended up replacing them on Captain America when the legendary duo moved back to DC Comics.

The Boy Heroes were a group of non-superpowered teens who battled everything from spies to ghosts.
Every comics company had at least one such kid group during the Golden Age, almost all of them created by the team of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, including DC's Newsboy Legion and Boy Commandos and Timely/Marvel's Tough Kid Squad. and, as we see here, Harvey's Boy Heroes!

And don't forget to check out...

The Classic Green Hornet Store

or the kool Green Hornet stuff below from Amazon

Captain's Library: THE GREEN HORNET "Crime at Floodtime" Part 1

This one's gonna require a bit of an explanation...

This is a never-reprinted Golden Age story from All-New Comics #13 featuring The Green Hornet...on TV...in 1946, when The Green Hornet radio show (which the comic was based on) was one of the top-rated series on the air!
Commercial TV broadcasting did begin in 1946, but coast-to-coast transmission wasn't a reality until 1951, and color broadcasting was over a decade away!
(Several syndicated series such as Cisco Kid, Superman, and Lone Ranger filmed later episodes in color, anticipating the reruns would sell better once color tv became the standard, but they initially-aired in b/w!)
And, The Green Hornet tv series wouldn't debut until 20 years later, in 1966!
Yet Simon & Kirby's Boy Heroes not only have a device that receives "coast-to-coast" signals, but it's in color as well!
Enough about the technical side! Let's see what a Green Hornet TV show might've looked like had it been produced in The Golden Age of Television...

Will The Green Hornet rescue Casey?

Can he foil the submarine bandits?

Is that TV set cable-ready or high-def-enabled?

The answers to some of these questions will be found right here...tomorrow!

Same Blog-Time!

Same Blog-Feed!

And don't forget to check out...

The Classic Green Hornet Store