When we last saw Sniffer and the Deadly Dozen, they'd reunited and joined the army, with the USA now at war with Japan and Germany. So now let's take a look at what those twelve notorious murderers got up to in battle!
There aren't as many war stories as you might think. Starting with this issue, Daredevil #12, Lev Gleason's Comic House comics went bi-monthly. Wartime paper shortages and rationing are presumably to blame, though it seems to have hit them more quickly than other comic publishers. This one came out two months after #11, and that's the interval between issues going forwards, at least for a while.
Sniffer is once again promoted very strongly on the cover, as "America's sensational comic find of the year" - they're still keen to stress that he's hugely popular with readers, and they've had time to get actual feedback on him now, so I assume a lot of kids really had jumped aboard the bandwagon and become Sniffer fans! He certainly holds on to his spot in "Daredevil", even when paper rationing really kicks in and despite various tone-changes in the comics...
Daredevil's double-length story (16 of the 64 internal pages of the comic) has him fighting a murderous circus strongman, with brief prologue and epilogue reminding us DD is in the army now bracketed around what's presumably a story written pre-war. There are a couple of very gruesome deaths in this one! But further into the comic we can find some real wartime adventures for our hero Sniffer!
We last saw the Deadly Dozen in the army, but we start this next adventure with the announcement that they've been transferred to the marines. But we do start with a nice splash-panel lineup of our heroes! The story itself, though, is like all the wartime adventures not the high point of Sniffer's career. He's a character suited to loveable scams and comical low-level borderline-criminal activity (his original introduction as a killer was very quickly ditched). Adapting him and his eleven sidekicks to war-themed stories always feels very awkward. Carl Hubbell is still the artist; writers of these stories are a matter of conjecture.
It starts with the general, feeling that Sniffer is too rough and needs to be brought into contact with breeding and culture, introducing his nephew to our hero. The nephew is camp and limp-wristed, and his speech bubbles are decorated with musical notes. He doesn't really fit in with the Deadly Dozen. They take him to the toughest bar in town the night before shipping out, and it looks like we're going to get a hilarious culture-clash storyline, but then the nephew just disappears a page later, and the rest of the story involves Sniffer first finding Japanese spies at the docks, then capturing the crew of a Japanese submarine. Satan, Egghead, Giant Killer and Owl each show up for a panel or two, but as is usual for these guys, they don't really do anything. And then the end of the final page harks back to the opening of the story, which the reader has probably forgotten all about...
Also in this issue of Daredevil - two pages of letters from children who had been evacuated from London to Moulton, Lincolnshire, England. Just next to Spalding and practically next door to my old stamping ground of Boston. They weren't fans of Daredevil, but "a very nice lady" in New York had sent her brother, who lived in England and was in charge of the school, five dollars to organise a party for them. The Daredevil comic printed the address of the school and urged readers to send money of their own over there. Letters pages became a regular feature of Daredevil (with letters from actual readers in America) long before they were normal in American comics.
The next issue is a big one for Daredevil, though even he might not have realised what has begun here...
Yes, as announced on the cover, it's the first appearance of the Little Wise Guys! And, with Daredevil nowhere to be seen, this story sets about introducing them at length. Fat kid Meatball runs away from the orphanage when an overly motherly woman tries to adopt him. Lanky idiot Scarecrow runs away from his boss after being swindled out of money. Little kid Pee-Wee is being shaken down for protection money when rich kid Jock comes by and beats up the bigger bully effortlessly. Pee-Wee tags along back to Jock's house, where they find Meatball and Scarecrow hiding in the barn, and a gang is formed! Later, the new friends are being chased by a bull when a boomerang saves them - it's Daredevil, making his first appearance on page 10, and making friends with the kids! Then they have a somewhat incoherent adventure about Nazi infiltrator doctors killing innocent Americans, coupled with a moral that lynch mobbing of suspected murderers is sometimes a bad thing. But the point is, the Daredevil comic has made a radical change of style with this issue - although the solicitation of reader feedback about the Little Wise Guys is rather more even-handed than the one that got Sniffer his own series. Although with a special prize for the best "is Daredevil better or worse with the LWGs?" letter, most readers probably hedged their bets by writing in and saying they loved the new characters!
Sniffer, meanwhile, is right at the end of the comic this month, but still continuing his tour of the armed forces!
With a shared credit between Hubbell and Dick Wood, presumably the writer, it's an all-action adventure for our heroes! Although they start out still in the marines, the Deadly Dozen are soon in trouble for fighting with their new athletic coach, and transferred to the commandos. On the way there, a rich lady is shocked by Skully's appearance (and no wonder, because he's drawn rather more skully than usual here), but charmed by Lady Killer, who chats her up for the sake of her $20,000.
And when they arrive at the camp, Sniffer finds out about a Japanese battleship in the area and wants to take out a little boat to capture it. The commander won't hear of it - boats cost twenty grand - so the Dozen just steal one, knowing they can pay it off with Miss Tiddle's money. They sink the battleship, of course, with some comical banter along the way!
The cover of our next issue of Daredevil shows the range of different strips to be found inside:
The 'special' Daredevil story has him and the Little Wise Guys stumble upon and thwart a German plan to capture Rudolf Hess, who's apparently being held somewhere around the Canadian border - it's not really all that special, but these comics really are a fun read. Sniffer, meanwhile, is still battling the Japanese - the various stories in Daredevil are split pretty evenly between Germany and Japan.
Meanwhile, there have been thousands upon thousands of implausibly quick responses to last issue's question about the Little Wise Guys, and it's all very much like how Sniffer and the Deadly Dozen got started!
And the next issue of Daredevil is a shocking one!
The chance to win a boomerang just like Daredevil's must have lured in a few readers, and the inside front cover tries to encourage them to read the other two titles in Lev Gleason's line, too!
Iron Jaw, arch-foe of Crimebuster over in Boy Comics, will eventually turn out to be an important figure in Sniffer's ongoing saga. The advertised comic, Boy Comics #8, promises on the cover in big letters that "IRON JAW DIES in this issue!" but reports of his death eventually turn out to be exaggerated. At this point he's entirely unconnected, but just remember that name for future installments!
Meanwhile, Daredevil's story has an unexpected twist, to say the least. For one thing, it's barely a Daredevil story at all - the focus is entirely on the Little Wise Guys. They're playing a game of American football against another kid gang, the Steamrollers, to raise money for the USO. The Steamrollers cheat to win the game, and also pocket the money for themselves, and they're also stealing tyres from cars under the leadership of their young adult boss, Tyglon. The leader of the Steamroller kids is a skinhead called Curly. The Little Wise Guys declare war on the Steamrollers... and they're not kidding when they say 'war'. The two sides set a date and lay down the rules - no guns, knives or razors, but anything else goes. And they meet in gritty and very deadly serious violence on the battlefield. Curly pretends to join the Little Wise Guys but is secretly still working for the Steamrollers. Pee-Wee saves Meatball from a violent beating, so when Pee-Wee is captured by the enemy, Meatball feels he has to be the one to save him (knocking out Scarecrow to get his way). Meatball hides in a freezing pond in the course of rescuing his friend, they escape through the snow, but Meatball is feeling ill, and subsequently dies of double pneumonia.
Then there's the competition to win Daredevil's boomerang - all you have to do is choose which character you want to see promoted to their own 64-page comic!
Sniffer will have to be content with playing second fiddle to Daredevil. And his latest adventure can't compete with the Daredevil story that precedes it!
The Deadly Dozen get lost on their way to a commando raid, and come across what the dialogue calls tigers but the artist draws as lions. They belong to a circus that had been stranded in China when war broke out, and when Japanese soldiers land on the island, the Deadly Dozen beat them by pretending to be circus performers. It's a story that's trying to be funny, but falling flat more often than not. It's strange to see a deadly serious war in a kid-gang story followed by a cartoon-style romp from the grown-ups...
Moving into 1943 with Daredevil, the war is passing quickly...
The inside front cover is taken up with a message from Lev Gleason, apologising for being busy with his air force training, but assuring readers that Comic House is safe in the hands of Charles Biro and Bob Wood. Most publishers were shadowy, anonymous figures to the readers, but Lev Gleason maintained the kind of personal connection that Stan Lee would have huge success with in the sixties at Marvel.
The Little Wise Guys are missing Meatball, set out to raise money to buy him a tombstone and end up thwarting a counterfeiting ring based at a reform school (most of whose inmates end up dying in the course of the story, poisoned by the evil boss). Curly shows his worth and is accepted as a member of the gang. Daredevil is more actively involved in this one, but still feels like a guest star in his own series. He'll continue to fight, and ultimately lose, a battle for primacy in the comic for the next few years.
As for Sniffer, he's up to his usual wartime antics...
The Deadly Dozen are "somewhere in the Solomon Islands", tramping through the jungle. They stumble over a Japanese plan to build a warship, naturally, and Sniffer ends up in a fight with a giant sumo wrestler, which he wins by accident. But he's only really motivated by wanting to get with a beautiful Japanese refugee woman, and the rest of the Dozen jeer at him for it. None of the Dozen get names or any kind of personality in this one - having twelve characters in the stories really should provide more potential than this, but we're limited to making fun of the Japanese for the duration of the conflict...
The next cover of Daredevil promises some real wartime action...
The Daredevil story inside isn't anything to do with that scene. Rather than plunging into the valley of death, the Little Wise Guys just have to deal with Jocko's father noticing three boys are living in his barn and telling them to leave. But then he's shot by an assassin, the Wise Guys (who all happen to share his blood type) give life-saving transfusions, and it's all a happy ending. Daredevil tracking down the killer / blackmailer / generally unpleasant man takes up most of the story, and it ends with our hero promising to tell his origin to the Wise Guys next issue!
The stories are fluctuating wildly between childhood larks and deadly warfare. Sniffer has the same problem...
He creatively uses his sniffing powers to get information from a captured Japanese pilot. This, combined with his drinking and insubordination and complete unsuitability for the army, leads him to be transferred to the secret service and shipped off to Australia - without the Deadly Dozen. This gets him out of uniform and back into the kind of environment he works best in! Told to find a saboteur called Croaker, he wanders off, gets into a fight, loses his sense of smell, joins a gang of crooks and seems quite happy to go back to that kind of lifestyle. When his sniffer recovers, he realises he's working for Croaker, and gets into a fight with the whole gang (who are basically just presented as a rival mob). He's saved by the Deadly Dozen, who the army sent after Sniffer when he was believed to have gone AWOL. It's a fun romp for our hero!
Daredevil #18, like all the comics published in the spring of 1943, is less weighty than before. It's been reduced to 56 interior pages instead of 64, due to the strict paper rationing that was affecting all comic publishers.
There's still room for the usual "double length" Daredevil story behind that cheerful cover (check out that Mickey Mouse doll - Disney's lawyers would be after any comic that did that today!), and most but not all of the usual backup strips. There's also an advert for a home weather forecaster, because radio and newspaper forecasts have been stopped for the duration!
Daredevil, meanwhile, is telling his origin story to the Little Wise Guys - a first taste of what will later become a standard theme for a while, when rather than having adventures himself Daredevil will tell the Wise Guys a story. This one, though, describes how his parents were killed when he was a baby, he was raised by "pygmies" in Australia, and rose by the age of thirteen to become the chief of their tribe, inheriting the red and blue costume that the chief inexplicably wears. Then he tracks down and kills his parents' killer (well, he jumps out of a window and breaks his neck; superheroes killing people was out of fashion by this point), and concludes the story by showing his face to the Wise Guys. It's the first time readers have seen it for a good long while, too - Daredevil in his new role as the LWGs' supporting character has been seen only in costume for months.
Daredevil did have a completely different origin story when he first appeared in Silver Streak Comics, but everyone had apparently forgotten about that one by now. As for our hero Sniffer, he's up to his usual tricks...
Crusher is starting to become the foremost representative of the Deadly Dozen - he serves as sidekick at the start of this adventure, but then Sniffer goes chasing after pretty girls on his own. One of them is sad because her father has disappeared after being taken to hospital, and foul play might be afoot. Sniffer isn't interested in helping out, but then he accidentally falls down a manhole, ends up in hospital and exposes the doctors there - they've been drugging patients to make them blab military secrets, then killing them and selling the information to the Nazis. Between this and the recent Daredevil story the readers of this comic are repeatedly being told never to trust doctors! Sniffer resolves the whole situation, turns the evil doctors over to his secret service bosses and rescues the girl's father without realising he's doing it!
After the Sniffer story, we get an ad for the other two Comic House titles - Crime Does Not Pay stresses that it's the ONLY magazine of its kind, but in fact it was so popular it soon spawned a huge number of copycat titles from other publishers! It's a little harder to see how Boy Comics is "the original, the one and only", but the superheroes are starting to fade away and crime comics are starting to become the new big thing.
A very atmospheric cover for Daredevil #19, but it's interesting to see how wartime stories are disappearing from the comics. The kids and the US servicemen who were forming an increasing part of the audience perhaps didn't want to read about the heroes beating up the Japanese or Germans...
Readers could be forgiven for wondering who Tonia Saunders is - Daredevil's nominal girlfriend hasn't been seen for a year and a half, shoved aside by the Little Wise Guys. But she's back in this one, and she's getting married to someone else! Daredevil, when he hears about it, is keen to stop her, and enlists the Little Wise Guys' help to try to trick her into falling for him again. Incidentally, despite the more personal nature of this story, DD is once again only ever seen in his full costume. They all stumble into a murder mystery with a cabin full of theatrical actors, Daredevil eventually captures the villain, and Tonia ditches her fiancé in favour of being Daredevil's girl again.
Also in this issue, we announce the lucky readers who've won a boomerang just like Daredevil's!
Sniffer got the most votes, the text announces as a matter of academic interest. There's no mention of the most popular character getting his own 64-page comic, or even a 56-page one. If not for paper rationing, would we have got a Sniffer title, and would it have been a big hit? I guess we'll never know. In the pages that follow, he's still fighting the war in his own way - but, interestingly, his stories are extended to ten pages long from this issue onwards, having varied from six to eight up to this point.
Despite the splash page, this is another rather more domestic story. The chief of the secret service needs a babysitter for his annoying little son Lindsay, and picks on Sniffer for the job. The king of smell has been out shopping, with Giant Killer this time, on his day off, but can't get out of a two-week assignment looking after the brat - mainly because Lindsay has Sniffer's photo in his famous-gangster collection, and threatens to tell his dad about his villainous past unless he does what he's told. Sniffer decides to leave town, but Lindsay follows him. They run into a group of Japanese soldiers in the woods, but when they're surrounded by wild animals, the Japanese spend all night lighting fires to keep them away and tire themselves out. Sniffer, who could smell that it was just kangaroos rather than lions and tigers, is able to capture the whole gang and give Lindsay a well-deserved spanking for good measure.
And the line at the bottom of the final page is interesting...
The indicia of Daredevil #20 says the comic is now published nine times a year - Lev Gleason is juggling things around, to try to make the best use of his paper allocation.
The Little Wise Guys see a poster offering a thousand dollars to anyone who can last three rounds in the boxing ring against The Unholy Terror, and run to ask Daredevil to do it. They seem to be motivated purely by wanting the money to buy things for themselves - you'd expect some kind of charitable motive, or helping the war effort, but apparently not - and Daredevil cheerfully agrees to do it. Despite the Terror resorting to the old classic trick of a horseshoe in his glove, DD of course wins, and when the Terror and his managers scarper rather than pay the money, it turns out they're murderers and thieves of petrol ration coupons, and our heroes have to beat them up and teach them a lesson in the traditional way.
Sniffer, though, is looking a little different.
It's now "by Hall" rather than "by Hubbell", and the change is noticeable, especially in this first one. To be fair to Dick Hall, he probably drew this in a hurry, and he does copy Sniffer's likeness well. It's just that the backgrounds are minimal, and the figures all look like stiffly posed dolls, without the sense of movement we got in the Hubbell-drawn stories.
The story is fun, though - assigned by the secret service to track down the distinctive-smelling enemy agent who stole from a post office, Sniffer starts by going there with his tommy gun and asking "Where's the safe, bud?" And after a few more misunderstandings along those lines, our hero successfully captures the "one of Australia's most important officials" who has been selling battle plans to the enemy. It's entertaining, it's just not as well drawn as we're used to...
Daredevil #21 poses an interesting question...
Meanwhile, Sniffer's still in Australia:
"R. W. Hall" gives us a fuller signature this time, and there's more dynamic posing and background detail than the previous one. Sniffer is unusually determined to go and sort out the mighty Japanese warrior Kolo, considering him "an insult to Americanism", and goes out to the jungle to find him. He fights Kolo with his bare hands, loses, subsequently goes back again and wins. It has to be said, it's not much of a Sniffer story, although he still has his loveable speech patterns and does give a mention of his powers of sniffing. He's confident he'll get a promotion for his work, as the story ends...
