As promised in issue #21, Jerry Acerno’s Shadow Lady is back in BIG BANG COMICS #26 , with the thrilling conclusion to “Murder By Microphone!”
In it, crazed genius Maurice Dvorak continues his crusade against radio station WXKZ, who claimed the patents for his invention, the Vocal Resonator due to the fact that he was their employee and developed it at work. Previously, Dvorak has been killing the radio station’s stars, but tonight’s diabolical plan will kill everybody at WXKZ’s live Scientific Awards show.
While Veronica Prescott searches the banquet hall for the lethal Resonator device, her duplicate alter ego the Shadow Lady is on the trail of Dvorak. Their conflict reached its thrilling climax high above the city in an autogyro, which the mad scientists flips over, dropping our heroine to her apparent doom. Luckily, Shadow Lady drops into the beam of a searchlight and rides it back up to the flying machine where she dropkicks Dvorak out of the cockpit. Her powers and strength fading due to being too far away from Veronica, she is unable to save him and he plummets to his own doom.
Shadow Lady attempts to land the autogyro on the roof of the WXKZ awards show, but the out of control autogyro plows instead through the window and into the banquet hall. There, Veronica and her duplicate find and dismantle the remote control murder weapon.
This story and the previous chapter’s of Shadow Lady and “Murder By Microphone” (which appeared in issues 16, 17, and 21 of Big Bang) were the written and drawn by Jerry Acerno. Like them, the art and the heroine are gorgeous, and the story is full of glamour, mystery, science fiction and satire.
Also in this issue is the debut of another fighting Femme Fatale by the name of Blue Bird. Written by Brian Petersen and Terry Pavlet with art by Terry, the story begins in the Austrian Alps in 1947, with our bird of prey on a motorcycle chasing down a former Nazi prison guard. After a brief battle, the fight ends badly for the Nazi.
A week later, Blue Bird reports to her boss in the White House, who sends her on a new case. Intelligence reports indicate a Nazi gathering in Argentina, but the agent sent to check on it never returned. Our heroine travels south to gather info as sultry torch singer Linda Somers. After a show in Cordoba, Blue Bird heads out to meet her contact, Emile Scarenga.
Together they travel into the jungle, and discover military vehicles containing soldiers and ammunition entering a hidden cavern inside a mountain. They disable the guards and sneak in to find a hidden Nazi base, containing a large contingent of soldiers and weapons. The Nazi War Machine is still rolling on, two years after the death of Hitler! But before they can go to report their find, they are captured by the Nazis. Unfortunately, the story was never continued or concluded as we promised.
Not too long ago, Terry Pavlet wrote: “I loved working with these (Big Bang) guys. I did Blue Bird, which I created for them. It was a combo of Black Cat and Black Canary from the ’40’s. I drew in a Lee Elias style. She also appeared in History of BB Comics volume 2 where I did to pseudo/faux covers where she was main character. Brian Peterson helped me write it. Still have all of that art. I hope you enjoyed it.”
All in all, another fun issue! The frosting on the cake was a painting of Thunder Girl on the back cover by the amazingly talented Andrew Sheppard. Conforming with the rest of the issue, it sports a 1940s feel with a stern looking World’s Strongest Girl soaring through the sky with some warplanes.
This and back issues for most Big Bang’s are available for purchase for $3 at our back issue store: https://bigbangcomics.com/products-page/comic-books/image-comics/
Gary Carlson
4/22/2020
Big Bang Comics, Thunder Girl and all related characters are © and TM Gary Carlson and Chris Ecker. Shadow Lady is © and TM Jerry Acerno. Blue Bird is © and TM Brian Petersen and Terry Pavlet.
