When Lloyd Jacquet, who helped edit New Fun Comics and was prodicing a line of magazines at Centaur struck out on his own with the Funnies Inc. shop, one of his first clients, after Martin Goodman and Timely, was Eastern Color, publisher of the seminal Famous Funnies.

Jacquet drafted some of his best talent to provide features for Reg'lar Fellers Heroic Comics, including Bill Everett, Tarpe Mills of Miss Fury fame and Carl Pfeufer, who would later draw Subby.

The title, which lasted 97 issues until June 1955, a respectible run, is a hodge-podge of original stories mixed with newspaper reprints, most notably Gene Byrnes' "Reg'lar Fellers". But the stars of the first issue were the Funnies Inc. crew.

Everett had a penchant for aquatic heroes. The most famous and only surviving creation is the Sub-Mariner, created for Motion Picture Funnies Weekly and later adapted to Marvel Comics. But he also created the facinating Fin for Daring Mystery Comics and for Heroic he introduced an odd watery feature, Hydroman.

Mills did the lion's share of the first issue, providing "The Purple Zombie" and "Mann of India", and Carl bowed in with reprints of his newspaper strips, "Don Dixon and the Hidden Empire", and "Tad of the Tanbark!", plus "Gordon Fife and the Boy King".

Heroic No. 1, August 1940, starts out with a bang, a gorgeous Everett cover featuring Hydroman in action. Eastern Color's presses lived up to their reputation, with beautiful hues throughout. Open to page one and it starts right in. "This is the story of Harry Thurston's great discovery - 'Hydroman'."

Young Harry is busy mixing alcohol, water and sulphuric acid (sounds like a typical Saturday night to me). "Let's see what happens! Yeow!" he says as the beaker explodes. I have to warn you, the story is not one of the most intelligent Everett ever wrote. Anyway, Harry's accident has made his hand turn into water, really!, which is spilling on the floor in what appears to be a never-ending cascade. His first reaction? "Get Bob Blake on the phone." Right. Who needs 911?

    Bob is found in a smoking robe at home with cute girlfriend Joyce Church, decked out to the nines. They arrive at the lab and Harry's assistant Tom Kinsman trips and spills a whole beaker of the stuff on Bob. "Look out, stupid!" Harry yells. Guess Tim isn't unionized. Bob immediately goes up in a gyser of water.

    OK. Now, there's a puddle of water on the floor saying "Holy thunder, Harry! What have you done to me?" So, not only does this liquid turn you into a puddle, by some magic you can still talk. Yeah, baby.

    "Tom [otherwise known as "Stupid"] throws a gallon of counteractive chemical on the pool." I always keep some anti-Hydroman chemicals at my house, too. "Bob rises, like a spectre, from the magic liquid." Clothes and all!

    So what would you do in this situation? Whatever it is, it couldn't be this goofy. Harry: "Might inject some of that stuff into you bloodstream, Bob, if you're willing to have an experiment." Bob: "Sure thing." Did I mention that Bob is a moron? I think Harry's just trying to get Joyce. Anyway Dr. Mengele, I mean Harry, does the deed and Bob is full of beans (or magic fluid, whatever). "Say, this makes a swell protective camoflage. Just what I need when I tear into this mysterious league that's trying to wreck the country."

    Bob dons some tights and boots Harry has left over from Haloween "Might as well look in character," he says. Instead of a mask Harry puts on an aviator's helmet and goggles. No shirt (probably hoping to be featured on "Cops"). Good thing he's a fine figure of a man. "Robin Hood himself. You're a nut, Bobby," says the girl.

     "It's not so funny, Joyce...From now on you can call me Hydroman!" Oh, it's funny, all right. I would have called him Roto-Rooter Man.

    Cut to a secret meeting among some Chinese fellows and gangsters. The Asians are wearing spiked helmets with additional spikes all around the brim, green capes, a black halter top and cute little red shorts. For the after-party, I guess. "Wong, [no, not you, Wong, this Wong] you shall have charge of all the Chinatown section and Soo Lee will..." "Hey now, yeller puss" says the fat gangster, "who's running this shebang, you or me?" Hah. Yeller puss.

     Just then Hydropuss crashes the party. The crook shoots as Bob does his shtick, and becomes a fountain. "Oh no you don't, fatty." The wave of water swirls around the no-goodniks, drowning the gangster. Bob lets the others go as a warning. "Bah!" says the red-shorted menace, obviously unimpressed. I mean, who would be? It's just a guy who can turn himself into water at will. "The great one is far too powerful for you or any of your miserable countrymen. Out of my way!!!"

    Hydroguy's eloquence would make Dickens blush. "Not so fast chum. I'm an American and so are my people [well, duh] and Americans just won't be whipped," he says slugging the nasty. "Tell that to your boss, imbecile!" Lot of insulting in this story. He can't call him  "Stupid", that's Tom's name. And so it ends.

    As usual, Everett's art rocks. But I don't think they put much thought into the story. The character is pretty goofy, so goofy Marvel Comics later ressurected the concept as a Spider-Man villian.

    Besides Reg'lar Fellers, Heroic's strip reprints also included "Flyin' Jenny" by Russell Keaton; "Sgt. Stony Craig" by Frank Rentfrow and Don Dickson; "Dinky Dinkerton" (no relation); "Kitty Moran"; and "Daredevils of Destiny", also by Rentrfrow, Dickson and Dinkerton (uh, not Dinkerton).

     Better than Hydroman is "The Purple Zombie". It's splash shows the creature standing in front of a coffin, being acosted by a skeleton (not Jack Skeleton, or Red Skeleton, Skelton, whatever). Tarpe Mills, perhaps the most successful female comic book creator, was twisted. The story starts with Dr. Malinsky shooting his assistant Kim Hale (that's all we know) because he wants to stop him from creating an army of Zombies.

    But our purple friend kills the evil doctor. "So I am a zombie without a conscience...Aye, [I guess when alive he as a sailor] but not without a brain. You and your backers sought to gain power by violating the dead...but you reckoned without me!" Right away Purple checks the doctor's records to find the financial backers, and starts eliminating them. With extreme Zombie prejudice. Doesn't say if he eats their brains.

    On the third page Purple carjacks a passing vehicle. Zombies can drive! ["The Ford Fairlane--Favorite of Zombies!"] He goes to the Ritzmore Hotel and rides the elevator[!] to the 18th floor and his two victims. At the end the police trap him in a net. It's only four pages, but kicks bottom! I couldn't wait to read the next issue.

    The ubiquitious military strip is "Sergeant Stony Craig" by Frank Rentfrow and Don Dickson. Thankfully the strip is blessed with entertaining dialogue: "Now do you lunkheads savvy this is to be a mission of PEACE. That means no scrappin'! Break out your blues."  Most war strips leave me cold, but this one's a lot of fun. Almost reminds me of Sgt. Fury, but more cartoony.

    The center of the book is filled with strip reprints, the best being Don Dixon. Carl Pfeufer did an admirable job imitating Alex Raymond, and gave the strips a breezy, fast-paced style, nicely detailed and realistically drawn, with great shading.

    Tarpe returns later in the comics with "Mann of India" (probably designed to remind one of the title used by Otis Albert Kline, "Jan of India"). It begins with Chickering Mann (I know, I would change my name, too), an American writer residing in India. Naturally he's attacked in bed by a cobra. Like all good reporters, he sleeps with a gun, so shoots the beast. He catches the native who loosed the snake, who said he was doing Kalla Khan's bidding. Kahn is trying to deliver ammunition to a local temple: "The time has come for us to throw off the yoke of foreign rule." Sounds OK to me, but Mann starts gumming up the works. The last panel has him being attacked by a vault full of tarantulas. I don't even know if there are any such spiders in India. Purple Zombie it ain't.

    For the book's remainder, there's "Bill and Davey", sort of a poor man's Terry and the Pirates; and "Dare-Devils of Destiny" by Rentfrow and Dickson again, a one-pager about the 1804 U.S. Navy;