Number 2121: Poor humanfly

Tomorrow is Halloween, so this is the last of my Halloween stories. I showed “Bug-a-Boo” by Doug Wildey first in 2007. It is time to bring it back again with new scans from my personal copy of Mysterious Adventures #17 (1953).

Wildey went on in his career to create Jonny Quest for Hanna-Barbera. But he had his apprenticeship doing comic book stories, as quoted in the Wikipedia page for Wildey, for “every publisher but EC, ‘the good one.’” His technique on this story is inspired by the look of EC.

As for the story, some soldiers and a scientist go into the unexplored part of the Amazon jungle for a secret project. As a horror story it uses the EC template of rough justice: a person does something awful, and a doom equivalent to his deed kills him.

Enjoy your Halloween!

Number 2120: The witch came back

Damn! That old witch is hard to get rid of! Just when you think she’s gone she pops up in a cat’s body, and after that, she takes over the lady of the manor.

Halloween is not complete without a witch story, and “They Burned a Witch!” from Ace’s The Beyond #16 (1952) fills the requirement. (Take note, though...no broom riding in this tale.). It is the second of my Halloween postings, with the third coming on Monday.

Grand Comics Database gives Dick Beck credit for the  artwork.

Number 2119: Imitator of the dead

Halloween is next week. I’d better stock up on candy for the trick-or-treaters, and hope this year I don’t eat it all before the kids show up at my door. At least with a Halloween tale or three before Halloween I don’t rot my teeth...just my mind, already long rotted to the consistency of melted nougat.

I have planned horror stories for posts today through Monday, beginning with “Terror of the Burning Corpse.” It is at least well drawn, if totally lacking in a plot with any credibility of all. But that is my assessment. I leave it to you to decide if you can accept a man taking on the looks and persona of a rival to the woman he loves. After killing him, of course. And we all know what happens when someone is murdered in a horror comic...they find a way back from the dead to wreak their own revenge.

Grand Comics Database doesn’t guess who wrote it, but they think Hy Fleishman (with question mark) drew it. It is from Dark Mysteries #18 (1954):

Number 2118: “Hot dawg! Ain’t I nifty?”

 I have seen many examples of stereotypes in old comics, including some really egregiously racist portrayals of African-Americans, and in this story, a “minstrel face.” Caucasian male ZX-5 is the face behind the make-up, in this tale from Jumbo Comics #101 (1947). Artist Jack Kamen used ink lines on the face for shading, and then the colorist added the brown color over the lines. It isn’t as bad as I have seen in other places, where the minstrel make-up is solid black, but it is still insensitive, a relic of its era.

I like when ZX-5 and his platinum blonde partner, Rita, go into their soft-shoe routine. It makes for an amusing two panels at the top of page 4. That ol' devil weed, marijuana, also figures into the story. The artwork shows that Jack Kamen, who later went on to EC Comics, could draw pretty girls, but his action panels always looked stiff to me.

Even after having shown two other ZX-5 stories,in 2008 and 2013, I still knew nothing of the character. I went to Public Domain Superheroes, where I lifted this:

Created by Will Eisner

Origin

Agent ZX-5 was one of the top US spies. He answered to his superior Major Jason, who gave ZX-5 missions around the world fighting the Axis powers during WWII. He would continually come into conflict with foreign spies such as Madame Terror. After the war, he goes on to become a private eye.

He was known for his charm and carried a trick cane with numerous buttons each with a different function such as one for tear gas.

ZX-5 gets a ringing endorsement from his boss in the next to last panel: “For the first time, I like you...you’re actually human!” Not only that, he had staying power. ZX-5 appeared in all 140 issues of Jumbo Comics.

Number 2117: Enter Calamity Kate

This story is for reader Darci, who asked  in a comment to a previous posting for another Calamity Kate episode from The Westerner Comics. So I am showing the first Calamity Kate, from The Westerner #26 (1950).

Calamity Kate is the masked identity of Miss Patricia Layne, the daughter of a deceased sheriff. She fakes being a stage robber, but in conjunction with Wild Bill Pecos goes in pursuit of the real bad guys. Something I noticed: Wild Bill knows who Miss Layne is, behind her disguise. In that way he is different than the hundreds of other comic book characters who don’t recognize the face under a domino mask.

Another thing about Wild Bill: his clothing style is...well, wild. He is color coordinated in purple pants with a matching neckerchief (which looks more like a shorty necktie), green shirt, cowboy hat and boots. No one else would look to see who Calamity Kate is, because their eyeballs would be too busy bouncing off Bill’s colorful outfit.

The story is drawn by Mort Lawrence.

Number 2116: Stormy Foster was a jerk

Stormy Foster the Great Defender may have had one of the longest superhero names, but his run was of short duration. He appeared in Quality’s Hit Comics from issues #18-#34 (1942-44). Stormy, in his civilian identity, was a soda jerk in a drug store. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, a soda jerk was a person who prepared ice cream confections for customers of pharmacies, many of which featured that service in days gone past. Long past, I might add. I had experienced them a time or two in my youth, and my youth is as long gone as those soda fountains. Enough said about that.

Stormy found a “supervitamin” which gave him the strength of 10 men for a limited period of time. Some kind of super steroid, perhaps? Stormy should have turned that “vitamin” over to the War Department for the sake of national defense, but he kept it to himself. Even patriotism has its limits, I suppose.

He was also a grown man with another minor child as a sidekick. In this case it was Ah Choo, a Chinese youngster. The Public Domain Superheroes website, from which I am taking this information on Stormy, calls Ah Choo “horribly stereotypical,” yet if compared to Blackhawk’s hideous teammate, Chop Chop, at least Ah Choo looks human. (A note for my readers in non-English speaking countries: “Ah choo” is a sound effect many comics used for a sneeze, so Ah Choo’s name is a lowbrow pun.) And speaking of lowbrow, Stormy’s costume looks incomplete. He forgot to put on his pants. Stormy wears white briefs along with his white socks and slip-on shoes.

Grand Comics Database gives Max Elkan credit for the sharp artwork. From Hit Comics #24 (1942):