Number 1480: Thanksgiving Turkey Award 2013 featuring Shock Gibson

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Number 1480: Thanksgiving Turkey Award 2013 featuring Shock Gibson

It is time again for our annual award, the Thanksgiving Turkey Award, which is given to the comic book story I think is the most oddball, stupid or awful (or some combination) that I have encountered in the past year. The judgment of what wins the award rests solely on me. You don’t get a say in the matter, so if you don’t agree with me you can tell me, but my decisions are final.

The 2013 Turkey Award story was a clear winner, which I picked out of Speed Comics #8 (1940) this past January. I figured I wouldn’t find a more worthy candidate for the honor of accumulating gobblers than this story of Shock Gibson’s trip to Africa to end the slave trade, wrestle a gorilla, fight a knight from a lost city, build a pyramid single-handed, rescue the sexy queenֹ’s son from some other knights, and reject the queen’s marriage proposal. (We are not told what happened to the former king, the prince’s father.)

The Grand Comics Database gives credit to writers Maurice Rosenfeld and Bill Scott as “Maurice Scott,” (it took two guys to write this?) and art credit to Norman Fallon ?, with that question mark meaning they aren’t sure. Whoever is to blame, it earns a solid three-and-a-half turkeys out of a possible four.