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Wednesday, June 11, 2008


Number 322


How deep is death? How much salve do I have to sell to win a pony?


From Mystic #31, 1954, comes this tale of getting in over your head; getting wet without going near the water. Jack Katz drew it. He went on to do The First Kingdom for Bud Plant.

By coincidence, the back cover of this issue is an ad for White Cloverine Brand Salve*, which uses the underwater motif.

I hope the kids did better than the murdering husband in the Jack Katz story.






*Ads like these were all over the comics for many, many years. I was surprised to find out the salve is still being made, although not by the original company, and it's not being marketed the same way, either. It was a product just made for comic books and young entrepreneurs.

4 comments:

Chuck Wells said...

I liked this story and the Katz artwork.

I've heard of his First Kingdom stuff and seen the ads selling the series way back when, but I have never so much as read an issue of it or even seen one.

Mr. Karswell said...

That's one cold blooded jerk... good timing on this story too Paps, I was actually just reading about a kid recently who died of "secondary drowning" in his bed at home, two hours AFTER he was done swimming. Seems he swallowed a bunch of water or something while at a pool, but since his lung had a tear in it it somehow caused him to drown later in the day, well after he got home, after he took a bath, after he played in his room for awhile, and THEN later after he layed down to take a nap he was found dead with foam oozing out of his nose and mouth. Totally weird.

bzak said...

Howdy,

Funny, I just last night pulled out my oversized collection of the first six issues of "First Kingdom" and thought the art was cramped, overly rendered, and just bloody awful. This is really good Katz!

Brian James Riedel

Fast Talker said...

Wonderful!! Thanks for Sharing this rarity !!