Clue Comics 1 (Paperback) | Released: 05 Dec 2015

1. The Boy King and the Giant Featuring The Boy King2. Checking the Checker Featuring Nightmare and Sleepy3. The Origin of Stupid Manny Featuring Stupid Manny4. The Origin of Micro Face Featuring Micro-Face5. Smoke Rings of Death6. He's a Blitz on wheels! Featuring Zippo7. Origin of the Boy Rangers Jackie Law and the Boy Rangers8. Murder Before the Footlights Featuring TwilightUnfortunately, as sharp-eyed Spoilerites will have noticed, this is a story that takes place in 1943, a time things in Europe had erupted into all-out World War...Lots of superheroes of the time period were forged in the shadow of war, and even the heroes who predated America's entrance into the conflict spent a lot of time fighting fifth columnists and such, but I can't think of any who are so directly affected by Nazi aggressions as our young King, as he and his entire village are SUMMARILY EXECUTED by the invaders to their land.Or, so it seemed...rince David finds that his father, too, has survived, but only long enough to pass along a prophecy to his son. Years ago, the great seer Nostradamus foresaw war enveloping Europe, and prepared for the day by creating a mechanical giant to rebuff such perfidy. For centuries, the Giant has lain dormant under Swisslakia, it's location known only to the monarchy. Seconds before he dies, the King passes his crown to young David, naming him the new kind and sending him off to uncover the powerful artifact...As he stomps away in a petulant rage, The Boy King is stunned to feel the Earth shaking beneath his feet, turning to find that his desperate gambit has worked.His first act as King-without-portfolio-but-with-massive-stone-slave is to return to the capital and literally stomp a mudhole in those who would attempt to occupy his homeland...The quisling who sold out his mother and father nearly gets away, but The Giant swoops in and......crushes him to death. On-panel. Without a shred of hesitation. This, my friends, is why you don't tick off a prepubescent, because someday they might have a giant. As the issue ends, The Boy King sets off for New York (by having the Giant wade across the Atlantic, natch), leading us to this issue's second super-star: NIGHTMARE. Weirdly, the first five pages of his feature are dedicated to setting up a villain called The Checker, who is evil enough to punch out an old man for trying to hide assets while being robbed. Cue our heroes!The glow-in-the-dark costume idea is pretty clever, to be honest, although it doesn't necessarily deal with the problem of getting shot by thugs in your heroic identity. Our heroes make short work of Checker's thugs, but he has planned ahead enough to have a system to dump them and his robbery victims into the sewer, where they're forced to save the day and earn their heroic noms de guerre in the process.I'm gonna be honest, this story is super-long for the Golden Age, and might be a tiny bit incoherent, involving missing buildings and flooding the city and... Let's just cut to the chase, shall we?Nightmare's unorthodox costume eventually gets replaced by a more standard blue jumpsuit with a big "N" chest symbol, but his skeleton-suit is one of the few costumes of the age designed to frighten mooks that might actually be frightening if found in nature (at least if you encountered him in the dark.) Hey, speaking of awesome costumes, meet Stupid Manny!(Retro Review by Matthew Peterson)These books are constantly updated with the best version Enjoy a nostalgic trip down memory lane with the best titles from the golden age of comics. The comic reprints from are reproduced from actual classic comics, and sometimes reflect the imperfection of books that are decades old