Number 620


Halloween tales of sex and death


It's a special Halloween edition of Pappy's today, featuring two of my favorite all-time subjects, sex, as in illicit and otherwise not normal, and death, as in dead people up and walking around, looking for that aforementioned sex.

What better way to remember deceased loved ones than to have them coming in the door at midnight stinking of decomposition, rotting flesh dripping from their bones, maggots crawling from their eyesockets, looking for a little lovin'! Works for me!

First up is a tender tale of unrequited love from Twisted Tales #1, written by Bruce Jones and drawn by the incredible Alfredo Alcala. Then a story of a love worth waiting for, even after death! It's drawn by Good ol' Ghastly Graham Ingels from Vault of Horror #19. The original art scans are taken from the Heritage Auctions site.

Bonus!

From Creepy #3, a 1965 Joe Orlando-drawn tale of morbid revenge that fits into our theme. This seems like Horror Comics 101: husband killed by wife and her lover, then returns from grave. It's written by Arthur Porges, a prolific author who wrote hundreds of stories that appeared in mystery magazines like Alfred Hitchcock's, etc. So what was he doing writing a pseudo-EC Comics story for Creepy, when Archie Goodwin is credited for all other stories in the magazine? Damned if I know!

I believe it was Porges' only story for Creepy. I wonder why he named the cuckolded husband Arthur, after himself...?

UPDATE: I am writing this on September 19, 2018. Recently I checked the Grand Comics Database to check on this story for purposes of reference. I was surprised to see that the GCD credits Russ Jones, writing as Arthur Porges, for the story. I did a double take and a comic bookish “What th — !?” For any interested person’s information, Arthur Porges was a real person, as I mention above. He was born in 1915, and died in 2006. He was a math teacher until he quit teaching for the life of a free-lance writer. He wrote for mystery and science fiction digests, preferring the short-story format over the longer form of novels.

I still don’t know if  “Return Trip” was his one-and-only story for Creepy, but I can tell you that if he is credited on the title page, I believe firmly that he wrote it, and if Russ Jones had anything to do with it, I don’t know what it was, and I won’t speculate. Sometimes I wonder where the GCD gets its information. As someone who is trying to provide information on old comics, knowing who wrote them or drew them is important to me. I hate seeing someone lose credit because of bad information.

And believe me, I am as hard on myself as I am on other sources of information. When someone convinces me I am wrong I am happy to go back and set the record straight. That is the good thing about the Internet...unlike print, we can go back and fix our mistakes.

Number 619


The Spirit of horror comics


Halloween is tomorrow. Usually Will Eisner did a Halloween story with the Spirit every year, but while this 1950 Spirit episode isn't a Halloween story, per se, it is about a guy drawing a horror comic and the Spirit shows up in the last couple of panels. That's close enough for Pappy's.

I scanned it from a British fanzine, Comic Media #10, published in 1973.

(I wonder if this story with its onomatopoeia influenced Harvey Kurtzman to write the Wally Wood story, "Sound Effects," in Mad #20?)

Tomorrow I come back with a special Saturday posting, three horror stories for Halloween!

Number 618


Babe and the Magic Lamp


Boody, a book of Boody Rogers' comic book stories, compiled by Craig Yoe and published by Fantagraphics, will give you an outstanding look at the entertainment Boody Rogers produced during his career in comics in the late 1940s.

There are examples from Sparky Watts, Babe, and a story from Dudley. At least a couple of the stories have been seen here. All the stories Craig has chosen are good. It's a book I highly recommend.

Here's a story from Babe, Darling of the Hills #10, 1950. It's full of the same inventiveness, manic energy and fine cartooning we expect from Rogers. If you want other stories of Boody's buxom beauty, or any of the other Rogers stories we've shown, type Boody Rogers into the search engine in the upper left corner.

Number 617


As the twig is Bentz, so grows the tree


Dear Editor, Gangsters Can't Win,

All my life I wanted to be a master criminal. I didn't want to be a chump and work. I wanted to steal jewels and money, live the high life, have expensive cars and fast women...or is that expensive women and fast cars? Anyway, that was the type of life I wanted to lead. No one could dissuade me from my goal to someday steal a million dollars and live the life of a king.

Then a friend gave me a copy of your Gangsters Can't Win number two and told me in no uncertain terms, "This could be you!" I have been forced to see the error of my ways. Reading the story of Eddie Bentz, his capture and punishment, has made me take a hard look at myself and realize that my dream of criminal glory was wrong, so wrong.

I owe it all to Gangsters Can't Win because now I know that...err, well, gangsters can't win! Crime does not pay! (Oops, sorry, am I plugging your competition?) I am a better person today because I read the story of Eddie Bentz, and now I think a life of crime is a dead-end road full of potholes and you fall into one of those potholes and it's so deep you can't get out and you cry and scream for your mommy and she won't come because you're a wicked, wicked boy who's gonna end up in prison, you mark my words, and she's got the whole damn family against you and...whew. Well, I think you get the picture.

I think all boys and girls should have to read Gangsters Can't Win, even if some sexy mean girl wearing knee-high spike-heeled leather boots with spurs has to stand over them with a whip and make them read it because it's for their own good.

Your friend and reader for life,

Pappy