"Yeow! He's no ordinary fiddler! He knows the destructive power of certain musical notes!"
Today brings us back to a peculiar super-hero who operated from 1942 to 1945, and was handled by such great talents as Bill Everett and Jimmy Thompson. Due to the application of a strange Egyptian flute, he can use any sound vibration (and particularly musical vibrations) to travel at the speed of sound to the scene of crime and nefarious activity, and also occasionally fashion weapons from sound. His first 14 stories were covered in a previous post here: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2014/08/the-adventures-of-music-master-1942-1945.html and now we'll be looking over the final five stories (there are actually six, but one is not available), beginning in September 1944.
Join us for the finale of this oddball character from the Golden Age - right after the jump!
Sadly, I don't have files for issue #27, so we'll skip forward one to #28, from January 1945. Cover artist unknown. Story by Douglas again, story artwork unsigned. This story is somewhat lackluster in the sense that Music Master solves the case with merely his wits and his fists, without using his special powers at all. Not the most imaginative writing. But first, an important message from General Arnold -----
One of the many delights offered at the back of this book is the four-foot-long Super Giant Telescope, with which you can view all sorts of interesting things like, BEACHES! And some other stuff, too.
Next up we have issue #29, from March 1945. I've included a lot of extra material from this one to give an idea of what the features and ads were like during this period of Heroic. The art credits throughout this book seem to be a mystery (at least to the Grand Comics Database), but the script for our Music Master installment is again by Stephen Douglas, who appears to have written nearly all of them. Some art credits are suggested by the Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. card included with the files of the book: the jet feature, Charlie Bange; and the Music Master art, Gus Schrotter. OK - let's go!
And now we'll head on over to MMs next-to-last appearance, now moved all the way to the back of the book. All of the other hero types have disappeared from Heroic, except for him. The cover for issue #30 (from May 1945) is by Harvey Fuller, the cool four-pager about the Gyro Pilot is drawn by Charles Bange, and our Music Master feature is by either Gus Schrotter or perhaps Jimmy Thompson.
And now, the final Music Master story, from Heroic #31, July 1945, with cover art by Harvey Fuller, and the MM art by Gus Schrotter. It's been rather sad to watch his stories wind down like this, but I wanted to do a blog feature that traces the entire run of a character (I have been sitting on a project about another comic book character who ran even longer, "Swing Sisson", the swing music bandleader form the 1940s who fights crime, and to get through all of his tales will be a monstrous undertaking...I haven't worked up the nerve yet to plow into them!).
Anyhoo - I hope you enjoyed the better moments from Music Master's three-year run during WW II.
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