THE CLOCK: HIS FINAL ADVENTURES (1941-1944)

This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post wraps up the last of the 86 Golden Age stories about the neglected character the Clock. He debuted in 1936, so BEFORE Superman and Batman. 

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #17 (Oct 1941)

Title: Killer Kale Dies Tonight

Villain: Killer Kale

Synopsis: Gangster Killer Kale is executed in the electric chair, but his thugs steal the corpse from the hearse and force a scientist named Dr. Jennir to use his new method for bringing the dead back to life. The Clock and his chauffer Pug Brady investigate when Kale murders Dr. Jennir. The pair find the new hideout of Killer Kale and his gang, burst in and defeat all the gangsters in a lengthy fight. Killer Kale is dead again by story’s end. 

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #18 (Nov 1941)

Title: The Clock vs the Terror

Villain: The Terror

Synopsis: New York City Comptroller Ezra Davis is killed at home by a cyanide gas bomb. A new supervillain called the Terror takes credit for it and takes to personally taunting the mayor that he is next to be slain. The Clock saves the mayor from a garage bomb rigged up by the Terror and then spends the next two days exhausting his criminal informants throughout the city. At last he learns that former racketeer “Bumps” Bale is really the Terror. The Clock exposes him and turns him over to Police Captain Kane.

NOTE: Brian O’Brien reflects to himself that Pug Brady has retired in between the previous issue and this one.

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #19 (Dec 1941)

Title: The Acme Arms Plant

Villains: Nazi saboteurs

Synopsis: The Clock interferes in an arrest to prevent the cops from blowing his ongoing plan to nab a quintet of Nazi saboteurs. This causes our hero to fall under suspicion from Captain Kane and another cop but our hero sticks to his plan. He catches the leader and his four underlings red-handed targeting a munitions plant and turns them over to Captain Kane.

NOTE: Even though the U.S. had not yet entered the war when this issue was being put together, plenty of superhero stories were already using the Nazis and Imperial Japanese as villains.

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #20 (Jan 1942)

Title: The Gelton Gang

Villains: The Gelton Gang

Synopsis: A quartet of brothers called the Gelton Gang have pulled off a crime spree beginning in Chicago and most recently hitting Boston. They arrive in New York City and resume their armed robberies. Clip and Spike Gelton steal bonds and kill the bank courier and a guard. Clap Gelton is robbing a wealthy man at gunpoint when millionaire Brian O’Brien spots him, becomes the Clock and defeats Clap. For the finale, our hero outfights Clip, Spike and an unnamed 4th Gelton, then turns them over to the police.

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #21 (Feb 1942)

Title: Meet Butch

Villains: Cokey Coen and his Drug Dealers

Synopsis: The Clock invades the dockside hideout of Cokey Coen and his gang of drug pushers. He winds up shot multiple times but gets away from the villains, only to collapse on reaching the waterfront shack where streetwise tomboy “Butch” Buchanan lives. She nurses the Clock back to health and shows him where Cokey Coen’s new lair is located. Our hero fights and takes down Cokey and four of his thugs, while Butch manages to knock out one. She then gets the Clock to accept her as his new sidekick by pretending to cry when he initially says no.

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #22 (Mar 1942)

Title: Victims of the Fagin

Villain: The Fagin

Synopsis: Captain Kane complains to millionaire (and former D.A.) Brian O’Brien about the depredations of a new supervillain called the Fagin, who abducts children, subjects them to a brain-washing drug and makes them steal for him. (Obviously, he based his nom de guerre on Fagin from the Dickens novel Oliver Twist.)

The Clock and Butch track down Fagin, capture him and his adult minions and free his army of child thieves. Butch fights armed with razors this time.

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #23 (May 1942)

Title: License of a Murderer

Villain: Crime Boss Magoni and his men

Synopsis: Millionaire Brian O’Brien sees a dead body get thrown out of a car that goes speeding by. The dead man is the District Attorney and a note attached to the corpse warns the authorities to lay off organized crime. The Clock sets to work and soon he and Butch are fighting their way through Boss Magoni’s underlings until they reach his main office.

The pair outfight the roughly half dozen men on hand including Magoni, with Butch (at right) ingeniously using a rat trap to save her and the Clock’s lives at one point.

Readers get a great bit with Butch running across the rooftops alongside the Clock as well.

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #24 (Jul 1942)

Title: The Knife Throwing Gang

Villains: The Knife Throwing Gang

Synopsis: The title villains, a group of 7 former circus knife throwers turned paid killers, have just claimed their 10th victim. In another case of Butch ex Machina, the young lady has once again located a villain hideout while peddling her newspapers. She and the Clock surreptitiously approach the waterfront warehouse being used by the knife throwers. In a chaotic battle throughout that warehouse, our heroes whittle down the numbers of their opponents with Butch taking down 2 and the Clock defeating 5.

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #25 (Sep 1942)

Title: The Copycat Crimes

Villains: Gonky, Rip and Slug

NOTE: The cover shows the Clock’s new domino mask. I preferred his full-face mask, partly because this one makes him look too much like the Spirit, whom he predated by four years. In a meta joke, they even have the Clock scoff at the Spirit.

Making this new mask even more annoying is the fact that Quality Comics used this same suit, hat, tie and domino mask look for two of their other heroes, too – Midnight and the Mouthpiece.

Synopsis: Both the Clock and Butch try going undercover as diamond thieves Rip and Slug after beating them up. They confront their boss Gonky (Gonky?), take him down and recover the diamonds.

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #26 (Nov 1942)

Title: The Head of All Crime

Villains: The Head and Eightball

Synopsis: The Clock and Butch – who wields a club and a handgun in this story, unlike the bricks she threw last issue – go up against a team of villains who have just killed the new D.A. and plan a war on the police next.

The Head uses gimmicks to make it look like he is a disembodied head to scare his victims, while Eightball is just bald. Butch kayos a miscellaneous thug and the Clock defeats the Head and Eightball. 

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #27 (Jan 1943)

Title: The House of Horror

Villain: Cyrus Vultan

Synopsis: The Orchid, the mysterious female crimefighter who has guest starred in several previous Clock stories, surfaces again to summon our hero and Butch to Morganville in upstate New York. She warns him about Morgan Mansion, a supposedly haunted house which is really a murder house and headquarters for Cyrus Vultan, head of an auto theft and chop shop ring. Vultan goes over a cliff while fighting the Clock, who also frees Cyrus’ sister Cora from the room where he has kept her imprisoned for 10 years. The Orchid disappears, as usual.

NOTE: As if it isn’t questionable enough that Brian O’Brien has the teenage girl Butch living with him, she gets very jealous of the flirty relationship between the Clock and the Orchid. She even calls our hero “a two-timer.” Ugh. 

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #28 (Mar 1943)

Title: The Kiss of Death

Villains: Dagga Valenz and her minions

Synopsis: The enigmatic Orchid has the Clock and Butch come to Cuba this time to help her defeat sultry villainess Dagga Valenz. Dagga runs a network of agents through which she is trying to take over the country. Butch again makes things awkward with her jealousy of the Orchid (lower right), even saying “If she thinks for a minute she’s got a chance with you, she’s nuts!”

Okay, Clock, what are you and Butch doing in your down time? Anyway, Dagga’s network of American businessmen and Cuban criminals gets shut down by our heroes.

Dagga proceeds to kill herself with a cobra, whose venom she used in her Kiss of Death.

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #29 (May 1943)

Title: Who Done It?

Villains: Big Ed Gloyne and Joe Glynn

Synopsis: James Post, a crusading newspaper publisher, pushes reports about the graft grabbing of Big Ed Gloyne, the New York City Treasurer. Big Ed starts pressuring the paper to stop the stories and leans on City Editor Joe Glynn to do something about it.

James Post gets shot to death, prompting the Clock and Butch to investigate. Our heroes survive a drive-by shooting, and when reporter “Smitty” Smith gets killed at a meeting with a source, the Clock exposes Ed Gloyne and Joe Glynn as ex-cons Ed and Joe Glane, who have been abusing their government and press positions to further their racketeering. 

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #30 (Aug 1943)

Title: Joe Miles

Villain: Larry Logan

Synopsis: Honest Joe Miles has periodic amnesia and his roommate, career criminal Larry Logan, convinces him that during those blackouts he (Joe) is committing murders and jewel robberies that are really being committed by Larry.

The Clock and Butch investigate and manage to clear Joe Miles while simultaneously proving Larry Logan’s guilt. They also recover the stolen jewels.

NOTE: Captain Triumph’s clown assistant looks goofy as hell.

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #31 (Oct 1943)

Title: Gun + Killer + Victim = Murder

Villain: Unnamed Armed Robber

Synopsis: Butch witnesses a stick-up artist kill his latest hold-up victim, a store owner. She follows the thug back to his hideout and calls in the Clock. The robber tries to kill Butch, who holds him off until the Clock arrives and defeats him.

NOTE: My God, the Clock stories have become so boring with no more gimmicks like his gadget-laden cane or the knockout gas and tear gas spritzers in his tie. He really is nothing more than a discount Spirit now. 

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #32 (Dec 1943)

Title: Vote for Grafft

Villain: Hinton Grafft (How lazy)

Synopsis: No Butch this time, but she’ll be back for the next story, just in case you’re worried that the Clock did away with her to keep her from talking. (I’m kidding!) The boredom never lets up in this tale of a dishonest politician named Grafft, who is using fake ballots to beat the incumbent Senator, a friend of Brian O’Brien.

NOTE: With fellow superheroes like the Black Condor, Alias the Spider, Red Torpedo and others now gone from Crack Comics, it’s just the Clock and Captain Triumph backed up by several “funny” characters. 

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #33 (Spring 1944)

Title: The Kosky Gang

Villains: The Kosky Gang

Synopsis: Not only is Butch back this time, but their series is now called “The Clock and Butch.” Unfortunately, it’s like our heroes are being dumbed down into one of the “funny” series in Crack Comics. Butch tries to help a man recover his stolen flea circus, a case which crosses paths with the Clock’s efforts to bring down the Kosky Gang of fur robbers. Our hero nabs the gang and Butch’s acquaintance gets his flea circus back.

NOTE: Wartime paper shortages have made this publication one of the many, many comic books to become very irregularly published for a time.   

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #34 (Summer 1944)

Title: Moose Mangle

Villains: Moose Mangle and his gang

Synopsis: An idiotic subplot about Butch’s correspondence course in becoming a ventriloquist continues from last issue. Her ongoing threats to sue the company because the course did not make her able to throw her voice are not all that entertaining.

In the main story, she and the Clock clash with Moose Mangle and his men, who use Moose’s “amnesia spray” to pull off jewel robberies, then make everyone present forget they were ever there.   

CRACK COMICS Vol 1 #35 (Autumn 1944)

Title: Footprints That Vanish in Thin Air

Villains: Liverlips and his gang

Synopsis: Okay, so with Liverlips the Clock’s foes are becoming imitations of Dick Tracy villains. At any rate, for two weeks the Clock and Butch have been clashing with Liverlips and his gang while they pull off assorted robberies and escape during the fighting. They’ve also been spotting a character called The Little Man Who Wasn’t There, who seems to be part of the gang. In the end our heroes bust Liverlips and his three thugs and learn that the Little Man is really an inventor who came up with an invisibility formula. He hoped to capture the criminals himself to impress the public.

*** And, not a moment too soon, the 1936-1944 adventures of the Clock come to a close. The character wasn’t used again until 1992, by which point he was in the Public Domain. In the intervening decades the comic book world mostly forgot about this breakthrough character and especially forgot that he came before Superman, Batman, the Spirit AND Captain America.

FOR PART ONE OF MY LOOK AT THE CLOCK’S STORIES CLICK HERE.

FOR PART TWO OF MY LOOK AT THE CLOCK’S STORIES CLICK HERE.

FOR PART THREE OF MY LOOK AT THE CLOCK’S STORIES CLICK HERE.