When Last We Left Our Hero...
Rescuing a villager from the Japanese, Sgt Rip Jagger is shot and wounded.
As the Japanese close in on him, a number of guerrillas, armed only with poles, knock out the heavily-armed soldiers and take Jagger and the villager to their hidden base, where he learns the person he rescued was the leader's granddaughter!
To reward him, Rip was trained in martial arts by Bushuri, the field commander of the guerrillas and second in-command of the group...
The first issue of JudoMaster (#89* in 1966) was out six months after this tale appeared in the final issue of Special War Series in 1965.The series would continue until #98 in late 1967.We mentioned previously that Frank McLaughlin had created 2-3 page features about martial arts in Charlton's spy comic, Sarge Steel.
This issue presented another of those features...
Note how McLaughlin, like any true martial artist, emphasizes that the best path is, when feasable, to not fight!
Trivia: Bushuri may look familiar to readers who know the Japanese films of the 1950s/60s...
..which made their way to American art houses and television.I'm very sure McLaughlin had seen some of them including, likely, Yojimbo and Seven Samurai, so he used the actor I consider the "Sean Connery of Japan", Toshiro Mifune, as the visual model for Bushuri!
Sadly, though DC has reprinted other 1960s Charlton Action Heroes, they haven't done so with JudoMaster!
*Charlton took an existing Western comic called GunMaster (which, ironically, McLaughlin was inking) and retitled it JudoMaster.
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Animated feature with the only appearance of Rip Jagger in any DC movie/TV project.
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