Number 465


Old Bugeyes is back


Froggy went a'courtin' — horror- — in this slimy tale from Journey Into Fear #19, from 1954.

Sorry about the reproduction; Journey Into Fear was published by Canadian publisher, Superior, whose printer was definitely inferior.

Number 464


Li'l Melvin


In the early 1950s the longtime feud between successful cartoonists Ham Fisher, creator of "Joe Palooka," and Al Capp of "Li'l Abner" fame, hit its peak. Fisher had once been Capp's employer. During the time Capp was Fisher's assistant (and some describe his job as more of a ghost while Fisher lived the high life afforded him by his successful strip), the hillbilly concept was born with a character called "Big Leviticus." At some point afterwards Capp quit, created his successful hillbilly strip, "Li'l Abner," and a feud was born. It ended when Fisher took sequences out of "Li'l Abner," doctored them to look like Capp had hidden pornographic images. Capp easily refuted them by showing the original material. The result was disgrace for Fisher, who committed suicide in December, 1955.

This satire, drawn by Will Elder for EC's Panic #3 in 1954, was done well ahead of Fisher's suicide, but devotes the last page to a lampoon of both Fisher's forgeries and Dr. Fredric Wertham, who said in Seduction of the Innocent that pornographic images were hidden in comic books.

Will Elder always did a great job lampooning other cartoonists' characters. There is a running gag throughout that issue of Panic about Walt Kelly, and the last panel features the only non-Elder art, a Basil Wolverton paste-up. Since I've seen most of the Mad imitators and featured a few here, no one ever imitated Mad as well as the creative people who helped create Mad. Harvey Kurtzman was missing from Panic, but his artists were there. Even with them Panic was never as great as Mad, but in its own right it could be very, very good, and "Li'l Melvin" is one of those examples.

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Speaking of hidden porn, my friend Clark sent me this sheet of images he's culled. I've scanned it from a photocopied sheet.

Number 463


"Shoot me for a kiyoodling coyote..."


Vigilante is radio singin' cowboy Greg Sanders, who moonlights as the bandanna-wearin', two-fisted do-gooder. He's aided by yet another version of Robin, "Stuff," a kid from Chinatown. In this particular silent opus, we have to imagine the squawking sounds from the strings of the villain, the "frustrated concert violinist," Ben Bowe, aka The Fiddler. I guess if ever there was a real excuse to be a criminal, not being able to play Carnegie Hall would have to top the list.

Didn't The Flash also have a foe called The Fiddler? Checking with the Grand Comics Database I see a notation about this episode of Vigilante: "The Fiddler is not the same villain as Flash's." Aha. Two villains with the same name working for the same comic book company? Who's in charge of continuity here?

Whoever wrote this story gave it some pretty snappy dialogue. Vigilante: "Are you hurt, Stuff?" The boy replies, "I'm not feeling kittenish." ...whatever that means, and maybe it meant something in 1943 that is lost to us now, but I think it's funny.

Mort Meskin, as "Mort Morton," and "Charley," Charles Paris, did the art chores on this story from Action Comics #59, April 1943. Meskin created the character with Mort Weisinger, and I've included the origin story from a DC reprint of the early 1970s. Meskin's artwork is dynamic and dramatic, aided by the equally dynamic and dramatic inking of Paris, who worked a lot on the Batman comics over a couple of decades. I believe, except for some occasions, that Meskin was essentially THE Vigilante artist. Vigilante, who also appeared in Leading Comics with the second banana group, Seven Soldiers of Victory, was one of the more popular features in Action Comics for years, and might be the most popular DC character who never earned his own book.

Number 462


What the Heck...?


I like the job Don Heck did on this well-drawn strip. It's obvious he put a lot of work into this five-pager from Strange Worlds #1, 1958. You'll probably recognize the last panel of this story It's a tale told in various forms over the years, with the same punchline.

I've now posted all of the stories from Strange Worlds #1, which was the reintroduction of the old Atlas line after a hiatus of over a year, when publisher Martin Goodman sold his Atlas distributing company.

Number 461


Oh, you Boodyful Babe...


Boody Rogers' exquisite creation, Babe Boone, returns to us in this story from Babe #8. The story is bizarre, the dialogue, told in dialect, practically needs translation, but as always, the drawings are hilarious.