Sally is smart, Sally is beautiful, Sally is tenacious, Sally can handle a gun, Sally can handle men. Now that is a great character. According to the website, Public Domain Superheroes, Sally was created by Frank Kearn, Toni Blum, and Chuck Mazoujian.
Pen Miller is a successful cartoonist who lives in a penthouse with a man servant. As Don Markstein remarked on his Toonopedia web page, Pen was the “cartoonist’s ideal self-image.” Indeed. Since cartooning for a living is a full-time job, one would think Pen would not have time to do a successful comic strip and still solve murder mysteries. But that would be part of the “ideal,” or at least a stereotype among non-cartoonists that all cartoonists do is sit around, knock out a few funny pictures, then haul in the big bucks.
Pen also has a name that leads to my speculation that it may be a private dirty joke. The second caption of the story says “‘Pen’ is busy . . .” The letterer must be careful of letter-spacing in a sentence like that. The talented Klaus Nordling, who also did Lady Luck, is the artist.
These are their first stories, from National Comics #1 (1940).
First impressions on these:
ReplyDelete1) The real Blue Bloods! :)
2) "Velly solly...is not oliginal". Is the character speaking of himself?
I really like Sally O'Neil. Fast paced story, appealing character, beautiful dynamic art. Catching "Saponi" was a ...slippery case, she did well.
The second story is a little less interesting, but the idea of a cartoonist detective almost even the score, though I guess the little guy does all the dirty work of ghost writing, inking etc., while Pen does the layouts and gets the cash.
All in all, a honolabe plot. The writer loves to play with words. Nokky, Gouge, Dr. Mujik… I wonder if the Turanian Embassy is located near the Cimmerian Delegation.
In the Sally O'Neil story, as in a lot of early comic-book stories, the hero — or, in this case, heroine — is largely just in the right place at the right time. Whatever particular plan she might have had is unrevealed; a fortuitous challenge of one thug by another provided her not only with evidence of a crime but with the crime itself.
ReplyDelete‘Pen’ Miller is perhaps not merely an expression of ironic fantasy, but of crushed hopes. In the early days of the comic strip, a relatively high proportion of the artists achieved celebrity and wealth. A large share of those who ended-up as low-paid comic-book artists had begun aspiring to be comic-strip artists in that earlier era.
I don't think that I'd previously seen anything by Nordling from this early; his later work was of course a lot more polished. And the Sally O'Neil story that I recall seeing was beautiful work by Al Bryant from 1942.
J D, I'm not sure where the Turanian Embassy is. I wonder where comic book countries find room in Europe? I have looked on a map and can't find any of them. Maybe they are like Monaco or the Vatican, taking up a very small amount of acreage.
ReplyDeleteI also like the word play. "Gouge" sounds like a name Will Eisner would use for the Spirit. I assume National Comics #1 was produced by the Eisner-Iger Studio, so Eisner may have had some input on each feature.
Daniel, I go back to observation I've used before that the hero (or heroine) is more lucky than good.
ReplyDeleteJust as Pen Miller is a fantasy of a "famous comic magazine cartoonist" so Sally is a fantasy projection of a policewoman. She works for a captain loosey-goosey enough to send a rookie to spy on a major criminal armed with just her beauty and a .22.
I agree that not only did Nordling get more polished, many artists working for Eisner and Iger, Al Bryant included, were probably in the top 10% of skilled artists during the original comic book boom.
Oooh Sally saves a famus Hollywood star next! I wunderer who it is yo mayB Will Smith yo #BADASS OMG that Pen Millerer story is 2 much like reel life. What cartunist DUZNT smoke a pipe & have a racy stereo-type boyfrend?
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