ACG's Magicman from the pages of Forbidden Worlds is a sometimes fascinating comic book from the 60's. Alas why there are several aspects of the strip which I find keenly interesting, I cannot really say this is a good comic book in most of the ways that matter. It's sure goofy and I like goofy and the craftsmanship is adequate if not inspiring. Pete Constanza who draws the interiors is a workmanlike artist who did good service on Fawcett's Captain Marvel and frankly this series reminds me a lot of those vintage "Big Red Cheese" comics. But that means the work here feels very dated and not of the era it was created in. This comic as written by Richard Huges (under the oddball pseudonym of "Zev Zimmer") feels a great deal like a later Golden Age comic rather than a sleep modern (at the time) Silver Age comic.
It all starts in Forbidden Worlds #125 in Vietnam where we find the Communist forces under siege from a new threat -- Magicman! We quickly learn he is the immortal son of Cagliostro who have lived many lives always taking care to keep his identity a secret. He joins the U.S. Military as "Tom Cargill" and ships out to Vietnam because as he put it "Well...Why Not?" He gets a rep as a magician and entertains his fellow troops and then a U.S. Senator is kidnapped and a buddy of his is killed and so he adopts the guise of "Magicman" and heads out to rescue the Senator and avenger his friend. He becomes a one-man army fighting against the "Reds" in Vietnam.
In the very next issue he meets A-214, a deadly agent of the Communists in Vietnam. Turns out A-214 is a man who can pass for a small child and uses that bit of chicanery to steal secrets and assisnate targets. We also meet Sgt. Kilkenny, Tom Cargill's immediate superior who is mistaken for Magicman and taken captive. Magicman must rescue him and stop the plot against his own life. Needless to say his success as Magicman doesn't help Tom get any respect from Kilkenny.
Somehow in the next issue Sgt.Kilkenny and Cargill end up on leave together and investigating the mysterious deaths of young vital men who in fact turn out to be old men made young as leverage to make them betray their country. This is a convoluted tale which sees Kilkenny (already a rather annoying addition to the stories) masquerade as Magicman and we follow him through some hapless love affairs. This is clearly an attempt to add humor but it all too often falls flat.
Next Magicman travels through time and even enlists the help of his own dad Cagliostro to stop a magician who is stealing in the modern world of 1965 and making off with the goods in the past. Once again Kilkenny tags along and provides some help after creating many problems beforehand. Clearly Kilkenny is supposed to be some sort of modern-day Woozie Winks, but is sadly minus the charm to make his appearances something to savor.
Next we find Magicman and Kilkenny as defacto partners helping the "Ministry of Space Exploration" deal with an alien invasion. After defeating alien infiltrators, the pair rocket to the planet of "Astra" to put the stop to the invasion of Earth.
It's magic versus science as Magicman must try to quell the threat of the "Wizard of Science" a meek-looking villain who uses all sorts of mechanisms to defeat Magicman when Fidel Castro pays him ten million dollars to do so. To my disappointment the cover of his issue is not included in the Dark Horse Archive collection, and I don't have any idea why not. For the record the covers for the Magicman stories in Forbidden Worlds were done by Kurt Schaffenberger under the names of "Lou Wahl" and "Pete Costanza" the artist who did the interiors. Clearly the quintessential Lois Lane artist did not want his editor Mort Weisinger to find out he was moonlighting at ACG.
Next Magicman and Kilenny take on ghostly pirates and Dr. Oswald a parapsychologist who makes use of them for his own greedy ends.
Tom and Kilkenny (we never learn his first name) are out of the army in this issue and are roommates. As civilians they take on the awesome might of a giant ape unfrozen from Arctic ice. He's so mighty that he seems an utter threat in the hands of a mobster until Magicman learns more about his origins. This one showcases some of the best action sequences in the series.
Magicman meets Dragonia, the sorceress who is positioned to become both his love interest and primary rival in the series. Dragonia has the awesome power of a supernatural panther at her command and uses her powers to steal jewels and gold. The story flips into the past again as Magicman and Kilkenny try to find out what happened to a shipment of gold lost during WWI.
Sadly this cover is missing also from the collected edition and it's especially hard since it's one of the best done. (Note: There are small images of the two missing covers along with the Merlin cover on the back of the dust jacket for the tome.) Chang is a ultra-effective secret agent who has infiltrated the United States and is stealing secrets and killing top officials. The less said about this story the better as it offers some nice twists and turns.
Magicman must once again travel through time to save his father Cagliostro from a deadly mystical enemy. The zany in the series, always pretty operating at a high level seems amped up even more in this one.
Forbidden Worlds #136 finds the star of Adventures of the Unknown guest starring. Nemesis is a ghost who not unlike the Spectre from DC is sent back to the living world to bring justice to the people. He and Magicman mix it up when a robot duplicate of Magicman causes some trouble. The problems are cleared up but the story ends with neither Magicman nor Nemesis liking each other much. It doesn't help that Kilkenny made a play for the girlfriend of Nemesis either. (More about Nemesis next week.)
The goofy factor is elevated again when Magicman is brainwashed by aliens and becomes a legit menace to the Earth. It's up to Kilkenny to bring Magicman around in time to turn away the invaders and the means another mission into deep space.
Magicman returns to Vietnam where he faces off against Dragonia again. She is now working for Mao Tse Tung. It's a wild ride but by the end we get the sense that Dragonia might be on the road to rehabilitation as a villain though her large black pussy is no less dangerous. The stories are getting less interesting to read as the words are being increasingly shoved into smaller panels. The out-dated Golden Age flavor of the art is only getting worse. Also sad is that this is the last issue of Forbidden Worlds to showcase Magicman on the cover, but it's a beauty.
Magicman has three more adventures in the series but all are increasingly silly. In "Dare the D-Dimension" he and Kilkenny shrink to microscopic proportions to find a cure for radiation sickness. In "Beware the Chinese Sorcerer" Kilkenny is finally squeezed out of the series due to lack of space as Magicman infiltrates a carnival suspected of espionage. And the final Magicman story titled "You Think It's Easy?" is an adventure told by Magicman to a hot dog vendor about how he broke up a theft ring. The series does indeed go out on a whimper. In only a few more issues Forbidden Worlds itself will be cancelled as ACG Comics closes up shop. Aritsts Pete Costanza and Kurt Schaffenberger head over to DC and other locations for work as does writer-editor Richard Hughes.
I wish Magicman was better than it is. Kilkenny is never as funny as the creators want him to be and his presence soaks up page time which might've been better spent sharpening Magicman's personality, which is stunningly bland for a guy who has lived for hundreds of years. Also unlike Herbie, this series clearly seems to have been written for one audience only -- kids. I want it to be zany and capture some of the offbeat magic of Herbie perhaps but it just doesn't. It's goofy sure, but rarely clever and it seems lost in time as Magicman himself was so often in the stories.
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