Number 385
"You're big...and ugly...and crude...but I love you!"
...and speaking of love, I really love the breathless Mickey Spillane-styled prose in these Johnny Dynamite stories. You just don't read this stuff anymore, like the caption of the panel above, or the panel on page two: "He moaned as the flesh was laid open to the bone and fell in a stupor as his teeth crumpled under the impact."
How about, "What was left of his face slobbered and drooled as I pumped a bullet into his guts."
Has a certain poetic quality to it, don't you think? There's probably a pretty good reason you don't read stuff like that anymore.
The story is from Dynamite #4, November, 1953; patterned by writer William Waugh after Spillane's popular Mike Hammer series of paperback best-sellers, and drawn by Pete Morisi. Waugh's violent and turgid descriptions and dialogue are more interesting than Morisi's workmanlike drawing. I posted the first story from this issue in Pappy's #264.
7 comments:
I'd seen some reprints in Ms. Tree years back and the 90s miniseries from Max Collins and Terry Beatty. I can see why Collins loves this character.
I love Johnny Dynamite, although just about every story I've ever seen ends like "I, The Jury."
Hmmm ... maybe that's why I like him.
Yeah, this is definitely the cream of the 50's crime noir crop. Nobody beats Johnny D cuz he plays just as dirty as the crooks. Funny reading the comments on the link from your first post, where I commented long ago in hopes to someday "own some Golden Age Dynamite." Well I do now! If your readers need an excuse for murder and are interested in more go here:
http://thehorrorsofitall.blogspot.com/2008/06/excuse-for-murder.html
I bought the first issue of a modern Johnny Dynamite mini-series a few years ago but was disappointed and didn't buy subsequent issues. Was this by Collins? I know he's a Spillane-kinda guy.
As far as I'm concerned Johnny Dynamite doesn't update. The attitudes and dialogue belong in that post-WWII/Cold War noir world of cynicism, nihilism and angst. Or maybe I read that in a book somewhere.
Tawny with jet black hair and milk-white skin? And do all of these stories end with Johnny shooting a skirt?
Pappy, after the Walter Lantz post the other day, I was already smiling due to your postings, but the Pete Morisi Johnny Dynamite story really made me sit up and grin.
And the scans were nice and large too. Oh, happy day!
Pappy,
Max Collins owns the license to JD these days. He bought it in the late 80s when Charleton-owned properties were sold off. I enjoyed the miniseries, more or less, but I'm a sucker for Collins and Beatty.
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