This is a collected edition I picked up on a complete lark. I was in the Half-Price Bookstore in either Kentucky or Georgia (can't recall which at this point), and I happened to see this hanging in a plastic bag near the front counter. I was curious as to whether this was some kind of magazine, or prose story, or a comic book, so I had the young lady behind the counter take it out so I could examine it. Imagine my surprise to discover it was a collected edition of a newspaper strip from the late 1930s and early 1940s about a young woman flyer. The price was definitely right, so I picked it up and brought it home, and I have finally sat down to give it a read.
Flyin' Jenny was a little known newspaper strip that ran from 1939 through 1946 (so I don't think this book collects all the published strips, although I could be wrong). According to the introduction, the original creator, writer, and artist for the strip, Russell Keaton, graduated from flying school himself and obtained a pilot's license the same year this strip was first published. Flyin' Jenny came out just two years after Amelia Earhart made her fateful flight, and as indicated in this book's introduction, the character was inspired by a real plane, the JN-40 World War I training plane affectionately referred to as the flying jenny (based on its call letters). The young aviatrix who is the star of the strip is a blonde pilot who is not only a superstar at flying, but she also knows the mechanics of the planes she flies.
The art is magnificent. I'm not sure, but I'm guessing Arcadia enlarged the panels for this publication, as there are only six panels per page, and they are considerably larger than a normal size panel you would see on the funny pages in the newspaper. The line art, though, is magnificent - and while the characters themselves are a bit on the cartoony-side at times, the backgrounds are fleshed out nicely, and the aerial shots are amazing and spacious, giving the reader a real sense of being in the open air. Jenny Dare herself is drawn as a beautiful blonde bombshell, despite her pants and leather jacket, and her hair style is a typical grown-out bob, with lots of voluminous curling at the bottom (sort of the same look Russell Tandy gave the original Nancy Drew on those early covers in the 1930s). While Jenny does not have any boyfriends to speak of in these early strips, it's clear that the men admire her for her beauty and her brains!
The stories are fairly simple in the beginning. The strip opens in this collection with Jenny getting hired by the Swiftwing Aero Fuel Coporation, at the insistence of its sales manager, Hoot Sasser. He knows having a "Swiftwing Aero Girl" for the company will boost sales, and he's determined to play her up as the "Glamour Girl of the Air"! Her first assignment, however, sends her to get a contract for the fuel company with Blackdart Airlines - run by a woman named Wanda Blackdart, who happens to hate Jenny. Thus,she has to somehow prove herself in order to get that contract and keep her job - and that opportunity opens itself up when a mail plane goes down, putting the delivery behind schedule, which would be a black mark on Blackdart's record. So, Jenny goes, grabs the mail, and gets it back in record time to save the company's record, much to the gratitude of Wanda's father, who owns the airline, and who immediately signs the contract with Swiftwing!
This leads directly into the second storyline, as the man who was competing for the contract is fired, and his position is given to a woman named Dolly Flash. Dolly is determined to prove she is better than Jenny, so she challenges her to a cross-country race (can you see a pattern developing of strong female characters being threatened by Jenny's success?). But both woman face problems when the man Dolly replaced suddenly throws himself into the race with the goal of showing up both of them. Jenny has a pretty good lead, until she sees a smoke signal and lands to discovery a downed pilot who is injured and needs help. Despite knowing it will lose her the race, she aids the man, getting him back to the final landing place well after Dolly has arrived. But news of Jenny's rescue travels fast, and she soon becomes the object of the news reporters, who see her as a hero.
Unfortunately, the head manager at Swiftwing doesn't see it that way, as he fires Jenny for not winning the race - only to rehire her shortly thereafter, when it turns out the man she rescued is the son of Swiftwing's biggest shareholder! This takes readers into the third storyline, in which Jenny is sent to a boat service between Shark Island and the mainland to discover why their planes are having trouble after using Swiftwing gas. This turns out to be the most interesting - and dangerous! - stories thus far. Jenny discovers there is sabotage, but her nosing around puts her in the crosshairs of the saboteurs, who end up kidnapping her and are prepared to kill her - when one of the saboteurs discovers the other is actually a member of the Fifth Column Legion! "I'm a crook but I ain't lost my patriotism! He can't pick on my country!" the man says about his co-kidnapper. Thus, Jenny gets aid from an unexpected source, and she ultimately brings both criminals to justice and saves Swiftwing's contract with the boat service at the same time,
It's a thoroughly enjoyable strip, and quite frankly, the character would have made a great children's series book protagonist, similar I suppose to Ruth Darrow, Airplane Girl, Linda Carlton, Dorothy Dixon, or the Girl Flyers.
RATING: 10 samples of sugar-filled gas out of 10 for a high-flying adventure strip with a plucky female flyer who should never fade into obscurity!
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