It’s enough to make sticking pieces of wood into Snoopy seem reasonable…

So, a little while back, I found an affordable copy of Master Comics #45, from 1943. One of the features was “Balbo the Boy Magician”, which I had never heard of before and I’m now sort of fascinated with. Two reasons for that: one, it’s a “magic” character but the stories have a strong skeptical bent, and two, Balbo’s partner is a man named John Smith, an African-American character not drawn in a stereotyped manner or speaking in dialect. In 1943. Giving the lie to the defense of characters like Ebony and Steamboat, that we shouldn’t consider those portrayals offensive because “no one knew better back then.”

Anyway…Balbo is performing a trick for a packed house when one spectator becomes agitated.

It seems that Mr. Walsh panicked because he’s being tormented by a man claiming to be immortal magician Caliostro who keeps threatening to show him things that grow bigger. Uhm…okay. I’m not sure why that’s so terrifying, but Balbo and John agree to help Walsh and expose this Cagliostro as a fraud.

Balbo chooses the wrong time to get smug.

After our heroes are tricked and overpowered by a dwarf, Cagliostro appears and delivers the least menacing line in super-villain history.

And now, terrifying “wearing glasses” horror!

Oh no! It’s a…larger than average guinea pig…

Ah, look at the apparently terrifying giant animals playing!

Uhm…that’s clearly an octopus…

John Smith saves the day with dwarf-tossing!

I have to admire the dwarf’s loyalty…after being tossed through a glass tank at an octopus, he’s still not betraying his boss.

Okay, so a villain who casually tosses off misspelled references to Lovecraft is kinda cool.

And now, Cagliostro’s peculiar plot explained!

And rationality triumphs.

The Left-Handed Hummingbird, 1993, Kate Orman
Orman’s part of the “Alternate Universe” saga is a bit of a romp in comparison to some of the others, with the Doctor and his companions bouncing backwards and forwards in time, crossing time-lines with the supporting cast, in their quest to defeat an evil alien psychic vampire that has disguised itself as an Aztec god. It’s the book that gained some infamy in certain Who-fan circles for featuring scenes of the Doctor taking LSD.

“What sort of things, Joe?”
“Oh, you know…talk up how great he is to women in bars.”
“So you’re saying that Robin is some sort of cock-blocker?”
“I suppose you could say that Sam. He’s certainly a scrub of some sort.”
“Ah. I thought you were going for a pederasty joke.”
“Too easy, Sam. Too easy.”

The Black Casebook is fantastic, people.

And here’s a handy blank for you.

The Dimension Riders, 1993, Daniel Blythe
Another split-location story, with Benny in Oxford investigating strange events, while the Doctor and Ace are on a space station in the future investigating strange events. To the surprise of few, the events turn out to be linked and related to a menace from Gallifrey’s past that was now never defeated because the same force that was meddling in time went back and, er, undefeated them.

The Black Pirate’s later career as a Foxxe Newse commentator went unrecorded in most histories of the era.