Truly Gone&Forgotten : BOOM BOOM BRANNIGAN

 

Boom Boom Brannigan
Original Creator Unknown / Further Developed by Charles Voight
Appears in Prize Comics vol.1 No.44-No.66

In the canon of American cartoons, Joe Palooka is comics’ preeminent pugilist – he’s the only one with a mountain named after him, anyway. 

Prize Comics’ Boom-Boom Brannigan may not have the notoriety, the longevity, the financial success or the cultural reach but, pound-for-pound, I’ll take him over Palooka any day of the week. Got a problem with that? Well come over here and do something about it, ya lousy mug!

Boom Boom making an impetuous pledge
to an imaginary woman

“Boom-Boom” Brannigan – He did everything Indiana Jones did, but backwards and in boxing gloves! Professor of Archaeology, world heavyweight boxing champ, crime-buster and, just as a side hustle, an all-around good guy! 

The multi-hyphenate heavyweight stands for clean sports, clean living, and backs it up with his two rugged fists through twenty-five baddie-besting adventures in Prize Comics’ masthead title (of the same name)! 

Like most boxing characters, Brannigan boasted no special powers – just a keen mind and fit physique. 

However, the covers of Prize Comics might have had you thinking otherwise. There, Boom Boom crashes through windows in only his trunks, fearlessly fights off a tiger with chair wielded in gloved mitts, boxes his way through a crowd of zombies and knocks a gangster for a loop while balanced on a tightrope. 

What brought Boom Boom to this energetic new way of life? Made aware of a gambling syndicate on the campus where he taught, and positive that “any scientist with a knowledge of math and an adequate physique can defeat the champ,” college professor and former inter-collegiate boxer Dennis Phillip Brannigan talks his way into a match with then-World Heavyweight Champion, the crooked Tiger Tyrone. 

During a sparring match, suspicious of Brannigan’s motives, the powerful Tyrone makes short work of the overconfident prof —  who gets knocked so hard that he wakes up in Ancient Greece! That’s quite a punch!

…what?

In this distant time and place, beset by bad timing, Brannigan happens to stumble across the mythical Pandora just as she impulsively releases all of the evils known to mankind into the world. 

Although he’s helpless to prevent the spread of murder, greed and misery that pour from the notorious box of myth, Boom Boom makes a perhaps-impulsive pledge to Pandora before waking in his own time, flat on the canvas – to commit the rest of his life to battling evil in his own time. 

Primarily, this is done through a boxing-specific lens, but a social worker named Pandora Rogers (coincidentally an identical twin to the mythic Pandora) invites the young professor to help with the hard cases on her caseload. 

Eventually, Brannigan takes the title from Tiger Tyrone, but only after dispatching a couple of heavies, rescuing Pandora from kidnappers, and exposing the former champ’s role in a match-fixing scandal.

Anyway, all of that Pandora stuff – modern or mythic – is pretty much forgotten when the feature is handed off after a handful of appearances to Charles Voight. A highly-skilled creator who came to comic books in his middle age after a successful turn in the newspaper funny pages and magazine illustration, Voight brought exceptional craftsmanship to the strip. Visually, it exhibited a delicious gestural motion, while the plots grew more sophisticated and the dialogue brighter. 

A lot of the latter has to do with Brannigan’s colorful new trainer – the fast-talking “Character” Conklin. 

A hustler with a heart of gold, Conklin is described as a “queer Broadway creature Boom Boom saved from the chair,” although we never hear much more about that. He’s given to grandiloquent speech and low-born sentiments, which is, of course, great. “My theory is to make the green stuff fast, then retire to a chicken farm” he barks at Boom Boom in his first appearance, having just been stiffed by his bookie, “Then my feathered friends’ll work for me!”

Character gets rolled by an escort,
costing Brannigan his borrowed cufflinks.

Brannigan’s adventures at this point are largely split between taking on weird opponents in the ring and mopping up cheap crooks on the streets. 

He faces off against the fancy feet of Pierre “La Savate” Charpentier, draws the curtain on the mind-reading “Snake” Hippo (a malevolent hypnotist otherwise known as Radar the Great), and narrowly survives a bout with the rampaging Urko the Afhanafhian Terror – actually a shaved gorilla! 

There are evil eyes, freeze rays, ancient spirits, and phrenology, not to mention a deceitful dwarf slugging his way through a tournament for toddlers! Between these in-ring opponents and the usual assortment of racketeers and jewel thieves, by gosh, Boom Boom’s got a full plate!

Outside of his odder adventures, Brannigan also had opportunities to solve some basic murders, rescue an imperiled princess, recover a few stolen jewels and keep his pal Character safe from matrimony. Standard work for any Professor of Archaeology or World Heavyweight Champion, really. 

Voight’s untimely death in 1947 coincided with the transition of Prize Comics into a Western title, which rang the bell on Boom Boom Brannigan. Had Voight continued, the feature might have survived in the post-superhero era that signaled the end of the Golden Age of Comics. Given time, it might’ve even stuck around long enough to challenge the uncontested champ, Joe Palooka. Or at least Curly Kayoe. 

My readers talking about me.