First up is Green Mask, who wears a green mask. By golly, that’s clever. He teams with “Domino, the Miracle Boy,” who wears a small domino mask. More cleverness!
The story, from Fox’s The Green Mask #9 (1942) is credited to Walter Frame. According to the Grand Comics Database the artist was Arthur Cazeneuve, another journeyman workhorse of the early comics. The GCD says Walter Frame was a pen name of Cazeneuve’s. But I believe that pen name came from the phonetic spelling of the name of the original artist, Walter Frehm.
I got an e-mail from reader, Darci, who let me know the following about the use of the pseudonym, Walter Frame: “Comment #1 from Jim Van Dore 2015-02-01 --- Jerry Bails says Walter Frame is a Fox byline used for stories by several artists (including Frehm). He also says Frehm was gone from this feature in
1940. The blog notes that Frehm had earlier done the feature.”
Thanks, Darci, and thanks to Jim Van Dore.
Shown in February, a Green Mask story from Mystery Men Comics #3. Click on the thumbnail:
7 comments:
I think Walter Frehm drew "Ripley's Believe it or Not!" for some time after Robert Ripley died. (His later Ripleys have a "wf" signature.)
rnigma, thanks. I think one of the ideals for comic book artists of that early era was to break into more lucrative art markets. Ripley's was widely syndicated and popular so Frehm probably had a steady job for the long term.
You're reminding me why I hate all superhero comics. They are just too stupid. Horror is stupid also, but a transgressive and creative kind of stupid, so that's a totally different thing. Superheroes are just stupid, period.
AB, your opinion is duly noted, but sorry, I've got a couple more superhero comics coming up this week.
Hmmm…. The vigilante hero begins with a counter-attack against a vigilante whose actions … perfectly justified. Great.
I would someday like to see or to create a meta-hero who leapt into the stories of other comic-book heroes, and punched them into the advertising pages for their misdeeds and failures.
Daniel, you know the hero's intelligence, knowledge or judgment can't be any better than that of his writer or editor. If you want to kick butt, why not go to the source?
Elliot S. Maggin is protected from me by my free-speech absolutism.
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