by Frank Robbins
This is the first story in the first collection of the Johnny Hazard daily comic strip. The comic strip ran for more than 30 years and was written and drawn by the same person from start to finish.
Chapter 1: The Escape
Jun 5 - Jul 4, 1944
Jun 5-6, 1944 - Johnny Hazard, Loopy, and Scotty need a plane to escape from Germany. Johnny volunteers to create a distraction. He strolls up to a plane that a German mechanic is working on and does what he can to get the man’s attention.
I decided to go digital with this series, unlike Terry and the Pirates. This volume, and most of the others that I am aware of, only collects the daily (Mon-Sat) strips. The Sunday strips had their own continuity which as I understand it did not intersect with that of the daily strips. Each page has just two strips.
The editing on this collection was a bit sloppy. The last strip in this book is from Nov 1945. The cover implies that this collection includes strips from 1946. The individual pages are not marked with the dates that the strips are from but the individual strips are marked in the typical fashion that comic strips usually are, mm-dd.
03/20/21
Jun 7-8, 1944 - Johnny knocks out the mechanic, gets into the fighter plane, and gets ready to take off just as several German pilots come to see what’s going on. Scotty and Loopy start heading for a bomber while everyone else is focused on what Johnny is doing.
03/21/21
Jun 9-10, 1944 - Loopy and Scotty calmly walk to the bomber without drawing attention to themselves. The German airmen are focused on dealing with Johnny and the plane he stole. Scotty and Loopy board the bomber only to discover that it is already occupied. They eject the occupants unceremoniously.
This all seems a bit unrealistic but no more so than what one would find in a movie.
03/22/21
Jun 12-13, 1944 - Johnny sees three Messerschmitts getting ready to take off and come after him. He guns them down before they can get airborne. Scotty struggles with the German instrument panel but gets the plane ready for takeoff.
03/23/21
Jun 14-15, 1944 - Scotty gets the bomber airborne and narrowly misses crashing it. Loopy tries to hail Johnny on the radio and then spots him as he flies past them.
These strips must have been written and drawn before the D-Day landings occurred on Jun 6, 1944.
03/24/21
Jun 16-17, 1944 - Johnny gets in radio contact with Scotty and Loopy. They have about 200 miles to go but Johnny’s plane is almost out of fuel. He spots a German troop train and decides to use the last of his fuel crashing his plane into the train. Scotty and Loopy try to talk him out of his plan.
What a way to end the week! Great cliffhanger!
03/25/21
Jun 19-20, 1944 - Johnny cuts off his radio and prepares to crash the fighter plane into the troop train. Scotty spots a road that they could land on but with no way to contact Johnny he is forced to try something desperate.
I’m still chomping at the bit to see how this one turns out.
03/26/21
Jun 21-22, 1944 - Scotty’s ploy works. Johnny spots them and gets back on the radio. They explain to him about the road that they can use to land the planes.
Situation resolved but they still aren’t exactly home free.
03/27/21
Jun 23-24, 1944 - Johnny and Scotty land the planes on the road. Johnny lights up a German convoy before leaving the fighter plane and heading for the bomber.
The bomber is identified as a JU-88.
03/28/21
Jun 26-27, 1944 - Johnny gets in the bomber and they take off. They are almost home free but then it occurs to them that they are in a German plane.
Another dilemma!
03/29/21
Jun 28-29, 1944 - Loopy makes contact with their commanding officer, Major Hanks, who isn’t Johnny’s biggest fan but he agrees that they won’t shoot down the German bomber that the three flyboys are in. Major Hanks, or Hanksy as Johnny calls him, also informs Johnny that he will be getting promoted to captain.
The full names and ranks for the trio are Lieutenant Johnny Hazard, Lieutenant Michael Scott, and Sergeant Lucius Feinschreiber. They were shot down on April 2 while flying a mission over Paris.
03/30/21
Jun 30-Jul 1, 1944 - Major Hanks sends an escort of fighters to bring the bomber in safely. Johnny, Scotty, and Loopy are greeted by a squad of MPs, who have their guns drawn, when they get off the plane.
I’m guessing that last panel is just a bunch of false drama. I like how Robbins flips the perspective between the 3rd and 4th panels. First, the MPs and looking at Johnny and then Johnny is looking at the MPs.
03/31/21
Jul 3-4, 1944 - Everything gets sorted out. The MPs stand down, Johnny gets promoted to captain.
Thus ends the first chapter of Johnny Hazard. It was a short one. The next one is a little longer but the two after that are considerably longer. I’m not blown away at this point but the strip is good enough that I’m happy to continue reading.
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