HOVERBOY #26
"WHEN YOU FISH UPON A STAR"
Early Fall of 1953

Sporting another fantastic cover painting by Nelson Rosetti, this issue sees Hoverboy fighting crime at the Center Town Fishland Aquarium.

When tourists at the aquarium start dying mysteriously, Hoverboy goes undercover as a merman in the "Fishland Singing Cetaceans Show" to solve the mystery.

Though gorgeously illustrated by a now confident Bob Stark, the story is difficult to follow as complication is heaped upon complication. A real mermaid shows up early in the story, illegally selling cigarettes from Mexico without a customs stamp, a harp seal named Daisy turns out to be an FBI agent in disguise, and the dolphin trainer announces he's really an alien from Saturn, bent on world domination. In the end, the mysterious deaths turn out to be the result of poorly refrigerated smelts, sold at the

snack bar as crab cakes, accidentally poisoning the diners. When Hoverboy realizes all the startling complications in the case amounted to nothing more than "red herrings", he has a hearty laugh over the body of the snack bar's last victim.

Of note: Directly after this issue goes on sale, Hoverboy Comics attempts an ambitions weekly publication schedule, instead of the bi-monthly schedule it had been on for more than four years. Within three issues, however, Stark and Nutt are unable to maintain the grueling workload and publish the next seven issues with blank interior pages, calling them "Hoverboy stories YOU can create at home". The regular bi-montly issues, with fully illustrated stories within, resume with No. 36, later that same year.