Captain Daring

by Reed Crandall, Matthew H. Gore (Preparation)

Reed Crandall's classic Captain Daring pirate stories from the golden age of comics collected into one volume! Boardman Books' "character" collections bring together the adventures of rather obscure golden ago comic book characters in single volumes. The point of the volumes is not to focus on a particular artist but to rediscover a character generally lost to comics fandom. Stories are reproduced from vintage originals from the collection of the publisher (and other sources) with only rudimentary cleaning to make the art more legible and therefore suffer all the drawbacks that implies. If you are looking for an exposition, or diatribe, on this artist or that, these books are not the place to find it. However, if you wish thrilling adventures as only comic books can convey, these might be the publications for you.

102 pages, Paperback

First published November 13, 2014

Reviews

[Josh Burns · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this collection! As one Amazon reviewer pointed out, it may not be "perfect," but the publisher is up front about the varying quality at the beginning of the book. Whatever one thinks of the reproduction quality, these stories are a blast to read! As to another Amazon reviewer's claim that these scans are all readily available on the internet, who has the time to go searching for the stories all over the internet (not to mention the time it would take to make sure you're reading them in order)? Not me. Some of us still prefer pages to computer screens anyway, and Mr. Gore (publisher of Boardman Books) has already done the collecting and ordering for us here. I say thanks, and good job!

Two caveats that kept me from giving the book a five star rating:
1. One of the stories ("Disaster on the Sea — Disaster on the Land") is actually missing the final three pages.
2. The claim on the cover that these were stories by Reed Crandall is what first drew me in and, consulting the contents page, all but two of the stories do credit him as artist. However, although these are the same art credits that were listed on the Grand Comics Database at the time of publishing, the art (some of the pencils and much of the inks) does not appear to be Crandall throughout. If one compares the art in the first story (undeniably glorious Crandall through and through) to some of the later stories credited to him, it's just not quite up to snuff (did I just make a pirate joke?) as far as being 100% Reed Crandall. Indeed, multiple Captain Daring art credits on GCD have since been updated with other inker information, or occasionally just question marks to show that it is not certain that Crandall did the art at all.

That being said, I found Captain Daring to be an incredibly fun character no matter who was drawing, and still wholeheartedly recommend this collection!