“HAW-W-W-W-W!” That sound can only mean one thing—it’s time to ring out the old year and ring in the new with that Bachelor of Artifice, Knight of Calamity and an alumnus of Doctor Merlin’s Camelot College for Conjurors—Phineas Pinkham.

It was reported that plans vital to the Allied cause had been stolen from a certain general in a hotel in Bar-Le-Duc. Potsdam’s spies had been out-snooping the Allied slewfoots. Things were known on the German side that should not have been known—and wouldn’t have been unless there was skulduggery on the Democratic side of the lines. Washington, London, Rome, and Paris were getting inklings here and there anent a mysterious Teuton Intelligence Dynasty. The scions of a well-born family irrigated with blue Dutch blood were spread all over the Western Front. A lot of practical brass hats called it an Old Wives’ tale. They said that it was propaganda to irk the morale of the Allies. But when a certain concentration center or important dump was shellacked with deadly precision, the same brass hats began to bite their finger nails and believe in anything—even a pilot called Patrick Henry the Third!

From the pages of the May 1937 Flying Aces, it’s another sky-high “Phineas Pinkham” mirthquake from the Joe Archibald—It’s “Wrong About Face!”

When Patrick Henry the Third shoved his super-schnozzled pan into Major Rufus Garrity’s flight office, the ozone above the drome rang with the patriotic cry of “Give me a Liberty or give me a Hisso!” But before long someone started to play a game that called for an aunt instead of an ante. And Phineas? Well, he played a Pat face against a Pat hand.

• Download “Wrong About Face!” (May 1937, Flying Aces)