What was a I saying? I remember: Professor Memory. He is helped by Green Lantern and GL’s little buddy, Doiby Dickles. Since we have featured some superheroes with boy sidekicks recently, along with my snarky comments, it is a relief to tell you that Doiby is an adult. Or, presumably so. He is a taxi driver and a good guy, except for mangling the English language. More snarky comments on dialect-writing are in order, but offhand I can’t remember any.
The story, from Comic Cavalcade #10 (1945) is from the period when publisher Maxwell Gaines decided to pull his comic book line, All American Comics, away from DC Comics. Later, as the story goes — if I remember it correctly, and I believe I do — Gaines sold his business, and his paper ration, to DC Comics. The war ended shortly thereafter and Gaines made enough to start another company, Educational Comics (EC), which eventually became the infamous Entertaining Comics (EC), with the late Mr Gaines’s son, William (Bill) Gaines) in the publisher’s chair.
The story is drawn by Jon Chester Kozlak, whose comic book career was mainly for DC in the forties. Also according to the Grand Comics Database, the script is by Alfred Bester. He later became a top-selling science fiction author who did classic novels like The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man.
Here is another tale of Green Lantern and Doiby, originally posted in 2012. Just click on the thumbnail.
5 comments:
We were unequivocally told that the Checker Mob “always wear checked caps” (3:7), but then they didn't (10:2 – 13:2). And, in the midst of this narrative betrayal, we are presented with κυνες εξ μαχινα (in modern parlance, “random dogs”).
I think that the presence of Doiby Dickles made this series poisonous to writing with emotional investment; I guess that the Green Lantern was reduced to something like filler, with Wonder Woman, the Flash, and Mutt and Jeff carrying most of the burden of motivating purchase of Comic Cavalcade.
I am amongst those irritated that the character of Alan Scott was hijacked for purposes of virtue signalling; I thought that his relationship with Molly Mayne was fairly interesting. But, given that he was to be recast as a homosexual, plainly Doiby should have been his lover.
Daniel, what?! Alan a homosexual? I wouldn't think so, considering how the colors of his costume clash. (Wow. I am stereotyping. My apologies to my gay readers.)
Anyway, I stopped reading Green Lantern (the Silver Age revival) after a few issues...I did like the multiple Earth stories featuring old and new characters, but beyond that I thought GL a dull character. But it makes me think, if Alan Scott is gay, what did he think of Hal Jordan?
Okay, Daniel. Your dog joke is excellent. I absolutely laughed out loud. But wouldn't it be "ἀπὸ μηχανῆς κυνες" in Greek?
Thanks for the bizarre story, Pappy! Happy Holidays, everybody!
I think the consensus that given their levels of sales compared to marvel, D.C. Was chock full of dull characters in th 60s?
Mr. Cavin—
You're quite right about the usual Greek idiom. I confess that it has been many years since I last encountered it, but I didn't bother to double-check, and just snapped the Latin back into Greek.
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