Lay off my roof, goof!
Here's a funny Wolverton strip from Daredevil Comics #22, February 1944. Can it really be that I haven't posted a Basil Wolverton strip since Pappy's #3? To rectify the situation, Jason, here's a hip strip to make you flip!
Calling all Video Rangers!
To celebrate Pappy's #300 I'm bringing you two stories drawn by George Evans from Captain Video #1, a Fawcett comic from 1951. Evans went on to comic book glory with his stint at EC Comics. Fawcett stopped publishing comics in 1953. Captain Video lasted six issues as a comic book, and vanished from the airwaves as the network carrying his adventures went out of business in 1955.
To read some background on the TV program and the DuMont Network where it appeared, read this article. The show had its fans in the larger Eastern U.S. markets where it was carried. In the American hinterlands where I was raised, we had no idea it existed except for the Fawcett comic book and the great parody by Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis in Mad #15.
The Secret of Sun City
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The Creatures of Doom!
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Billy and Bonny Bee to the rescue!
From New Funnies #79, September, 1943, comes this excellent 6-page strip by Frank Thomas.
As I explained the last time I posted a Billy and Bonny Bee story, the Frank Thomas who drew these characters was not the same Frank Thomas who was one of the Nine Old Men at Disney. But there is some sort of Disney connection: Billy and Bonny appear to be influenced by Disney's Bucky Bug. In my last "Billy and Bonny" posting I called it a funny animal strip, but "funny insects" is a sub-genre of "funny animals." A really small one. Get it? Insects, small? Oh well…maybe you had to be there.
Ghost Rider and The Haunted Tomb
Ghost Rider makes an appearance in this blog after several months. Last time I posted a Ghost Rider story was "League of the Living Dead." "The Haunted Tomb" is the cover story for Ghost Rider #7, from 1952, written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Dick Ayers and his cousin/assistant Ernie Bache. Love the cover: big snake and skulls. Yow. A Doc Wertham special!
The pencil checkmarks in some of the panels mean this particular copy is from the Cosmic Aeroplane collection, which turned up in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the late 1970s. The man who owned the comics had bought them off the stands from 1939 until his death in 1961. Several of the comics used in this blog have come from that collection, including all four issues of Jet by Bob Powell.
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Say what?
It's nice that some folks can keep it in the family!
Pussycat wins!
What a babe! With a body like this Pussycat isn't built for speed, but she wins anyway. With guys especially. With protests over the upcoming Beijing Olympics headlines the past few weeks it's time to run an Olympics related story, and this is the only one I have. It's a funny Bill Ward story from the only issue of Pussycat, published by Marvel Comics in 1968.
There's another Pussycat strip by Ward in Pappy's #148.
Melvin Monster and Crazy Klutch
The Stanley Stories website has a funny Melvin Monster story from Melvin Monster #3. The lead-in page also tells of Stanley's lifelong battle with depression, which probably affected his themes and storytelling. He refused to seek treatment, instead letting his depressive episodes run their course. In that way he was like Charles Schulz, who worked out his depression in his comic strips for 50 years, refusing treatment because he thought it would take away his gift.
Ain't it funny how funny people can be so sad?
The Melvin Monster stories were written and drawn by Stanley, and they have a dark side to them. Melvin's parents threaten to turn him over to a bogeyman. As we find out in the story from Melvin Monster #5, Crazy Klutch isn't how he's portrayed by the parents. The strip is constructed like a shaggy dog story, ending different from what is expected.
As smart and good a writer as Stanley was I can't figure out him spelling daisies as "daisys".
Mr. Sardonicus
Author Ray Russell wrote the short story, "Sardonicus," which was made into the 1961 William Castle film, Mr. Sardonicus. It has nothing to do with this story, "Death Takes Four," from Strange Mysteries #13, October, 1953, but I thought I'd impress you with my knowledge of arcane trivia. Risus sardonicus, called rictus sardonicus in this strip, is a pretty horrible condition that contorts and freezes the face into a smile. You know, like all of the contestants on American Idol when they're being ripped a new blowhole by one of those idiot judges.
The sardonicus sufferer in "Death Takes Four" is a murderer who fakes--or think he's faking--insanity. It's by the Jerry Iger shop, and it's published by Superior, which used the worst printer in comic book history. My copy of this issue was a target. It has a couple of b-b holes through it, which shows what the previous owner thought of it.
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Say What?
No wonder they call him Sad "Sac."
Bikini babes in space
Trust Fiction House to come up with undressed heroines to the rescue. This tale is from Planet Comics #69, Winter 1952, in turn reprinted from Planet #20, 1942. According to the GCD the breathless artwork is by Saul Rosen, an artist I'm not familiar with.
Fiction House plots are usually unmemorable for me. I just re-read this interplanetary story of jewels and a queen, also eventually undressed, and better write this while I can still recall it. The girls in the stories I can recall because they bought their work outfits from Frederick's of Hollywood.
Doll Man meets the Mother Goose Gang
Al Bryant drew this entertaining tale from Doll Man Quarterly #7, Fall 1943. The Mother Goose gang lives up to its name with members like Simple Simon, Humpty Dumpty, and Jack and Jill. Jill is a bad girl, and you can tell because of the comic book law: girls dressed in red are bad girls. Jack's sin seems also to be sartorial. A green suit with a red striped tie. Those wartime shortages were tough if that's all he could find on the ready to wear rack at his local J. C. Penney's store.
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Nothing He Couldn't Do!
I have two gruesome postings for you today. What the hell, it's Monday, I've got to go to the dentist. I'm sympathetic with Jonesy above and the spike through his face.
Recently Karswell of The Horrors Of It All had a request for a wild story from Charlton's The Thing, but said he didn't own any. I have a copy of The Thing #16 from 1954, and one of the wildest stories ever, Dick Ayers' "Nothing He Couldn't Do." The panel above was reprinted in Time Magazine during the uproar over comics that resulted in the Comics Code.
Hangman and the Executioner
Correspondent 1506NixNix sent me these scans from Hangman Comics #3 and commented, "Hard to believe this bloody stuff is from the same guys who came up with Archie and Betty and Veronica." For the few of you out there who might be unaware, MLJ, publisher of Hangman Comics, became the Archie Comics publishing company.
The racism is that of its era, typical of American attitudes toward Asians in 1942, and especially our then-enemies the Japanese. The graphic gore is the sort of thing that got noticed by the bluenoses in the early days of comics. MLJ, showing its pulp origins, didn't have a monopoly on violence, but in this example they did it with flair, that's for sure. Grand Comics Database says the art is by Mort Leav ? and John Cassone ? which I guess means they think it might be, maybe, kinda, probably those artists. Whatever. The art is done skillfully, and is all the more effective for it.
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Dan D.'s dumb blonde
"Stan and Dan," Stan Lee and Dan De Carlo, do some funny stuff with the radio/TV dumb blonde, Irma Peterson, in this issue of Atlas' My Friend Irma. It's a coverless copy, so I don't know the number, but it's from the early 1950s. The vaudeville-style jokes come fast, and De Carlo's artwork is always excellent.
The My Friend Irma radio and television series lasted several years, and featured Marie Wilson as Irma. There were even a couple of movie versions. You can read more about the series here.
I posted another story from this issue in Pappy's #138.
Supermouse Underwater!
Here's a Supermouse story from Standard Comics' Supermouse #12, April 1951, drawn by Milton Stein.
For you Supermouse fans--and I know you're out there because you write me and tell me you want more Soupie--this is the second-to-last story I have drawn by Stein; sometime in the future I will be posting from Supermouse #22, and unless I get more Supermouse comics, that will be it. If you're new to Pappy's Supermouse stories by Stein have been posted in Pappy's #126, Pappy's #202, and a story drawn by an unknown artist in Pappy's #246.
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The Face On Mars
When this picture was released by NASA in 1976, showing the famous face on Mars, I knew I'd seen it before. Sure enough, Jack Kirby had covered it back in 1958 in Race For The Moon #2.
"The Face On Mars," which concludes this issue, is among my personal favorites of great Kirby short stories. Al Williamson did the dynamic inking.
In 2001 NASA debunked its own picture. They spoiled the fun by showing us the face is a natural formation, and our imaginations were filling in the details. With all due respect to the joykillers at NASA, I'll always prefer the Jack Kirby version.
Ghost Patrol
Another from the Pappy archive, a story in the form of tear sheets given to me over 25 years ago by a man who bought the comics off the stands, then clipped out stories by artists he liked. To a comics fan this should be considered a crime, but I couldn't be showing you this stuff at all if he'd kept his comics intact and they'd had any monetary value.
"Ghost Patrol" was one of those secondary features produced for DC Comics' titles. I appreciate these back-of-the-book strips, which made do with characters not strong enough to star in their own titles. Many of them were illustrated and written by the same top talent that was producing the star features. In this case, "Marked For Danger" comes from Flash Comics #98, August, 1948. Talk about top talent: it's drawn by Carmine Infantino and inked by Bob Oksner.
I like the ghost character playing baseball out in the universe, whacking meteorites!
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Bang!
This is another of my favorite fanzines, even if I can't read it. Bang!#7/8 (double issue) was published in Barcelona, Spain in 1972. The cover features a character called Grogui. The bulk of the issue is a retrospective on science fiction comics, mostly Spanish, but with the clear influence of Alex Raymond's Flash Gordon.
The top illustration and this entire 4-page strip are by Emilio Freixas. "'Grap', El Pirata Subterraneo" is from the 1949 publication, Chicos, done with a strong Raymond style.
From what I could find out from the Internet, in English, Freixas went from comics into illustration, which is why when looking for information I found this picture on a photo hosting website.
Freixas died in 1976. You can see more of his work, and the work of other Spanish comic artists, at this amazing blog, viñetas.
This page from the daily comic strip "El Planeta Del Horror" is written by V. Mora and drawn by J. Remeu, published originally in 1954.
The Al Williamson page is from the Spanish translation of Williamson's greatest (to me) version of the Flash Gordon strip, done for King Comics in the mid-1960s.
Bang! is a great looking magazine, 112 pages, professional all the way. It's probably not even fair to call it a fanzine.
A Face and no head
"The Headless Monster of Bloodrock Castle," drawn by Mart Bailey, is the second story from The Face #2, published in 1943 by Columbia Comics.
This almost looks like a storyboard for a 1940s movie. It's a potboiler, set in a "haunted" English castle with a spook ("This castle has more spooks than a wheel!" as Tony Trent/The Face puts it), a sinister butler, a bride left at the altar by a Nazi boyfriend.
The main quibble I have is something I've complained about before, The Face himself. Just because he sticks on a mask, which is actually more stupid than frightening, doesn't mean he's really disguised from anyone. They're telling me a guy Tony Trent's build, height, weight, walks like Trent, talks like Trent, wearing Trent's clothes, can put on a Halloween mask and not have people know who he is? Caw-mahhnnnn… Maybe somebody finally broke Tony's self-delusion: "Uh, Tone…you might think you're fooling us with the dopey mask business, but we all really know you're the Face." Mart Bailey might've thought that too, because later on Tony Trent dropped the Face persona.
Other Face stories posted in Pappy's are here and here.
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Pappy--I just want to thank you for the great job you do on your comics site. I check you out every day, always amazed at what you put up.
--Ralph Bakshi
Is there any scanblog better than this?
--www.awesome-engine.com
