Lost Crossovers: WOW COMICS #33

It was a relatively rare thing for the characters from one comic book or title to meet characters from another strip during the Golden age of Comics. Outside of the regular gatherings of the Justice Society of America in the pages of ALL-STAR COMICS, most heroes tended to remain in their own little worlds, battling evil and injustice without any indication that there were other like-minded crusaders out there. But Fawcett was a bit more liberal-minded in this regard than most, and so they did a number of stories over their publishing history in which the heroes of one strip met and fought shoulder-to-shoulder with those of another.

This issue of WOW COMICS includes one such instance, a story that bridges two of the long-running series in the book: THE PHANTOM EAGLE and COMMANDO YANK. Strictly speaking, the Phantom Eagle wasn’t really a super hero, he was one of the many aviator heroes that littered the skies back during the time of the War. But he was a popular second banana in WOW COMICS and thus able to be involved in such a venture. (His strip, drawn by Mark Swayze, was also better drawn than the Yank’s was.)

This story wasn’t given a cover call-out or any sort of recognition at all–the idea that two heroes meeting each oher might be a sales draw appeared to be an alien thought to those at Fawcett. In any event, writer Otto Binder wrote both chapters of this self-contained crossover.

This is probably about the best that Commando Yank, who was a sort of low rent Captain America, ever looked.

The second half of this adventure runs directly after the first in the book, and was illustrated by Carl Pfeufer, who would later become the regular artist on the Sub-Mariner strip for Timely.

The whole matter is wrapped up in a dozen pages and with precious little in the way of teaming up–Commando Yank takes the ball and runs with it from where the Phantom Eagle has left it in his story, and the two spend relatively little panel time together.