Overlooked Gems of the Golden Age (circa 1940) - Part One

Red, White, and Blue

Debuting in All-American Comics #1, the feature told the adventures of Red Dugan, Whitey Smith, and Blooey Blue childhood friends who had enrolled in the Aire Force, Army, and Navy respectively.  The three are hand-picked by Army Intelligence to undertake special missions at home or abroad.  The fourth member of their group was FBI agent Doris West who was their handler and typically already undercover and thoroughly mixed up in whatever the team was asked to investigate.  The strips have good clean art from William Smith (better than a lot of the 1939/1940 art) and a setup that served a wide variety of stories from Jerry Seigel in one of his earliest non-Shuster collaborations.  The majority of the adventure/war/detective strips seem limited in their plot repertoire, but Red, White, and Blue plots range from confronting saboteurs and fifth columnists to racing foreign powers to lay claim to a natural resource.  There is a formula: Doris normally gets in over her head, Blooey normally bungles his way into and out of trouble, with Whitey and Red bringing in the cavalry.  The antics of Whitey and Blooey provide comic relief without veering into full-on slapstick and the attraction between Doris and Red gives Seigel the opportunity to write a lot of romantic comedy banter in the nature of Myrna Loy and William Powell.