Johnny Comet

by Frank Frazetta, Peter dePaolo, Earl Baldwin

Stapled, wraps. B&W daily comic strips. Color panels on rear cover.

Paperback

Published June 1, 1990

About the author

Frank Frazetta was an American fantasy and science fiction artist, noted for work in comic books, paperback book covers, paintings, posters, record-album covers and other media. He was the subject of a 2003 documentary.

* Complete list of his book covers.

Reviews

[Al Berry · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd duck of a newspaper comic, it’s an action serial focused on the title Character, Johnny Comet a midget race car driver other main charters are Jean Fargo who owns a garage and Pop and Ma bottle who run a gas station.

The action is pretty unique there aren’t many race car or specifically midget race cars in any comics. Art is very varied however some of that may be part of preservation process, several strips of this book are just completely missing with apologies from the publisher that they couldn’t locate any strip for the date in question.

Some of the stories aren’t the best, and I think it never really took off. Near the end of the run, they tried to change things up a bit, by renaming the character from Johnny Comet to Ace McCoy, not changing the character from the strip like Mitzi McCoy to Kevin the Bold or Robotman to Monty, but just renaming without any real substantial changes.

The Sundays (produced here without color) were a different continuity than the daily’s, which I prefer, however at some point the Sunday’s switches to from serialized Action to one off Gag strips, which are enjoyable.

I can see why the strip didn’t last too long despite its various charms. Midget racing is so niche that it probably couldn’t grasp a large market, despite being claimed to be written by Peter DePaolo, winner of the Indianapolis 500 in 1925, ( he’d answer some question about cars in a panel of most Sunday’s)

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked the dailies. The early Sundays were good, but the stories weren't quite as interesting as those in the dailies, and later when the Sundays became one-off gag strips featuring Johnny's supporting cast, they became a bit of a slog to read despite Frazetta's art.

I am not sure if it was intentional or not, but Johnny has a resemblance to pictures of a young Frank Frazetta I have seen. There are also a few ghost artists who chipped in from time to time, incluing a couple of Sundays by Wally Wood during the Ace McCoy period.

For those not familiar with the premise, Johnny Comet is a race car driver, and most of the stories focus on racing at smaller circuit tracks in California. OFten there is some kind of plot against Johnny's race team or a friend of his that results in sabotage or attempted murder, that Johnny attempts to get to the bottom of. As the strip progresses, he is recruited to become a Hollywood star and stuntmen and takes the stage name Ace McCoy but the adventures continue is a similar fashion. The stories can be a bit samey if read in succession, but are well paced seat of the pants adventure thrillers filled with chills, spills and excitement, and if read at the rate they were released rather than in one giant binge, the feeling of sameness would be far less. Each has a call to adventure, a building of suspense, a dramatic reveal or plot twist and then races to a conclusion, which is a very effective structure for a daily strip. The Sundays are paced a little differently because of the nature of their frequency (the dailies and Sundays had different story continuities)but essentially follow a similar structure. Frazetta's art is gorgeous throughout, he action choreography is magnificent, and I love the broad diversity in his faces and body types for the supporting cast and extras in each strip. His visual storytelling is also very good.

All in all, an enjoyable, if short-lived run of strips.

[StrictlySequential · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very frustrating strip to read! First off, the weekdays are horrid compared to the Sundays and so often done by ghost artists that you will wonder why you read them at all once you get to the Sundays. There is zero consistently at any point. I did however thoroughly enjoy watching how his signature progressed over the entire run.

The writing is 50's always-about-to-die adventure-type fluff where somebody is trying to kill him at all times for ANY old reason to the point of hilarious insanity. There's also a lot of Cold War influence since there seems to always be somebody in the shadows working against him. Plot decisions are terrible four out of every five times yet the fifth was compelling- sometimes brilliant.

Frazetta was clearly half-assed about deadlines at this point and if I were his boss I would have been infuriated because he turned in a lot of garbage as you can tell by the days when it is good/great.

There are two introductions that are very well written and encompass his entire career in comics along with a lot about him as a person yet I with hindsight it seems like they were apologizing for what I was about to undertake. You'll just have to see what I mean by that.

I walked away from this having said " TIGHTEN-UP FRAZETTA!" a few dozen times.

[Nik Havert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frank Frazetta puts more artistic talent into a three-panel newspaper comic than many artists put into a 24-page comic book. The detail he puts into hair and clothing alone is a master class on how to draw. The strips themselves are fun. Poor Johnny Comet (also known as Ace McCoy for a little while) is always getting mixed up in wacky and dangerous shenanigans involving race tracks, stolen loot, jealous competitors, and all the while somehow not noticing Jean Fargo's affections for him.

The Sunday strips are mostly humorous ones with Johnny and his mechanic pal Pop Bottle getting beaned by Pop's wife and / or Jean after they screw up yet again.

It's a fun collection if you can track it down.

[Greg L Goldstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun to re-read the classic Frank Frazetta strip. You can see why it was short-lived; tonally all over the map with odd segues from humor to dramatic action.
But Frazetta's art? Just great.
Thi review is for the old hardcover which is a proper horizontal format.