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BOOK REVIEW! THE COMPLETE MIGHTY MITE (Gwandanaland Comics, 2019) 

The Golden Age of Comics might have unleashed a whole passel of memorable costumed crimefighters that I'm sure even the youngest comic book fans know and love eightysome years after the fact. Howevah, who out there wouldn't admit that there were quite a few turdburgers mixed in with the wowzers as even a quick perusal through many of these titles woulda let on to even the doofiest of comic fans extant. Even a dabbler in comics such as I can think of many superhero losers who shoulda been exiled to Earth XXXXX ages back given some of the "mistakes" I made at various newsstands and flea markets over the years. And with these PD reprints courtesy Gwandanaland boy are we up front and center for some real losers who mercifully have been forgotten as the years rolled on, only to be dug up and exhibited like those dead nuns that the communists in Spain oh so proudly put on display way back in the thirties.

I dunno if you'd call Mighty Mite a superhero in the strictest form, but this half-humorous (and I'm being generous!) feature made for some of the hardest comic book reading I've had to endure in ages! Lemme tell you, I've had to suffer through many a lousy comic in my rather long span of existence but this one was like the printed page version of a King Kong-sized anal probe!

Mickey Mite, while dressed as a caped crimefighter at a costume party, quite by accident stops a holdup committed by your typical forties hood types which, come to think of it, is pretty much the same origin story of Don Martin's Captain Klutz a good twentysome years later. Thus is born Mighty Mite, a hero who I don't think is gonna be up for membership in the Avengers even if he was a Marvel-Age character, which he wasn't much to Marvel's credit. Later on Mite gets some actual powers thanks to a magic ring, one that turns him into Master Mite, the character that I assume Mickey was dressed up as at the party. Even later (in perhaps in yet another origin saga) a fairy princess bestows upon Mickey the ring (talk about a twisted continuity!), only this time the brat conjures up Gazooka, a guy who looks just like Mighty Mite grown up and with a five o'clock shadow. Gazooka comes off comparatively uncouth and irritated by his lot in superherodom, and given the stories he's in its not hard to wonder why.

Add in the usual one-dimensional galpal (who changes appearances drastically throughout the "hero's" thankfully short run) and some rather doofus storylines (like the one where Mite and girlfriend fly through the air in what looks like an inflatable wading pool with two kiddie balloons attached) and you got one reason to ditch your comics and do your homework like you're supposed to! There have been many a flub and misfire when it came to comic books and the characters that some detached publisher hoped woulda captured the public's imagination, and who other'n the creators' mothers would admit that this fart on the printed page's just but one of 'em.