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Friday, January 02, 2015

Number 1678: A good girl in bad company

Sally Gant is a decent gal who made a bad mistake. She tried to cover for her brother who shot a cop. Tsk tsk. Sally should know that shooting a cop is a bad rap and she would end up in the joint. Apparently Sally has a kindly jail matron who warns her of “tough” females. That doesn’t stop Sally from going to her bunk bare (okay, so her arms and shoulders are bare. I am letting my imagination run away with me). Anyway, after getting out of jail and being shunned by her slovenly father, Sally gets with Irma, one of those tough girls she was warned about by the matron (who, by the way, thinks Sally is a “sweet girl.” I am always reading things into these types of situations, I know, and it is true I have seen a lot of women in prison movies). Irma also kicks Sally out but just in time! The place is about to be raided, and Roger, The Guy Who Really Loves Sally comes to her rescue.

As far as I can tell, Sally was doing just what Irma was doing to be busted: violating her parole by consorting with known felons. Tsk tsk, again. She’s fortunate to be “in” with the parole officer.

The story is from Our Secret #4 (1949). You will notice at the top of each page it says My Secret, but that is because for the first three issues that was the name of the comic and the Jerry Iger Studio, who wrote and drew the contents of this comic, already had the job in to the publisher when the change was made. The publisher is Superior, a Canadian publisher who is more infamous for its line of horror comics, also drawn by the Iger gang. This is probably the most decently printed of any Superior comic I have ever seen, since in my opinion Superior had an inferior printer.

So is this a love story or a crime story? What makes it a love story is Sally ends up in an embrace and not the electric chair, a sure sign of a crime comic.







7 comments:

Unknown said...

Whew! You had me worried, Pappy, when there was no posting this morning (or afternoon). Glad to see your new story, cuz that means all's okay!
Speaking of the story, it was pretty tame for a pre-code crime strip. Rather than "Caged Heat," it was more like "Caged Tepid."
Uh-oh, that police station is number 13. Doesn't bode well for Sally and Roger...

Anonymous said...

The comics story was all right but what really amused me is your synopsis/analysis, Pappy. Heh-heh. Good work!

Pappy said...

Ryan, as I've mentioned before I do these postings two months ahead. Before they appear online I can go back in and edit them if necessary, or even move the posts around to show up on different dates. For some reason at some point in the past few weeks I dropped #1678 and forgot to replace it until I discovered it when checking my blog later in the afternoon of Friday, Jan. 2.

I can sometimes screw up even such a system: "The best laid plans of mice and men..."

Pappy said...

7f7, thanks. And that was the best story in the book, too.

J_D_La_Rue_67 said...

"Uh-oh, that police station is number 13. Doesn't bode well for Sally and Roger..."

Right! Looks like the parole officer could use some help from Napoleon Wilson if the going gets tough...
I'm not into "romantic" comics, but this Jerry Iger studio guy sure knew how to draw fine gals.
Some panels look inspirational to Roy Lichtenstein, but I noticed this in many 50's comics.

J_D_La_Rue_67 said...

I wonder how many female artists were involved in this kind of comics... assuming there were some.
Just a curiosity.

Pappy said...

J D, there were some female comic book artists in the early years. I don't know how many were working in love comics, nor how many women actually wrote the stories aimed at women and young girls.

At one time in the late forties romance comics were the best selling comic books, which to me meant that as many young men as women read them.

I'm not an expert on Lichtenstein. The paintings I'm familiar with were taken from DC Comics...war and love comics. There has always been a controversy about how much he owed the original comic book artists who drew the panels he swiped.