The Newsboy Legion - Boy Commandos Special featuring both of the famous World War II era DC kid gangs by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby is a bit of a puzzler. I love the cover, but for fans of Roy Harper and Rip Carter enjoy it since that's all of those guys you will see. This is a modern comic in many respects in that there's an inordinate amount of just sitting around and talking, which is the antithesis of a classic Simon and Kirby yarn. They were famous for their slam bang action sequences but this comic goes a different way.
The story as much as I can decode it has the Boy Commandos (minus Rip) getting involved in a possible mystery which leads them to first London then New York City in pursuit of some dangerous material. That same material is discoved by the Newsboy Legion in NYC and they follow their own exceedingly static investigation and of course eventually the two teams meet. They uncover a threat to the nation and take steps to end it but frankly I'm not one hundred percent sure what happened.
There's a scud of cameos in these stories and I figured out most of them (I think). We have Ernest Hemingway, Walter Winchell, and Ring Lardner fulfilling at various times the adult roles typically filled by Harper and Carter. Don't know why Chaykin made these changes, but there it is. I cannot really recommend this one; it's too odd and somewhat indecipherable. It is pretty but for two two-fisted teams like this I expected much much more action.
On the other hand there is a wonderful Simon and Kirby classic from the pages of Star Spangled Comics. "Cabbages and Comics" is a pure delight.
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