Number 2061: Get outta my face, Micro-Face

Micro-Face, created by Al Ulmer for Hillman’s Clue Comics, was yet another short-lived costumed, gimmicky hero of the World War II era. Here's what Public Domain Superheroes has to say about Micro-Face:

“Tom Wood was a factory worker and a failed inventor. Years ago, he invented a "Micro-Mask" - a full-face mask that contained a built-in microphone (which allowed hm to amplify and throw his voice), a hearing amplifier, and ‘photoelectric lenses’ that gave him x-ray vision. He could also attach telephone wires to his mask to make phone calls.” The desire to carry a telephone on one’s person has come true.

I admit to being intrigued by the character’s name, originally picturing him as being along the lines of a Dick Tracy villain, with a tiny face planted on a normal-sized head. Not so.

Both Micro-Face’s name and his powers are at least unusual.

I couldn’t resist showing a panel of Micro-Face tweeting (above). “Tweet” is a word that in our era has taken a new meaning.

From Clue Comics #2 (1943). Signed by Ulmer in the last panel.

Number 697


The Castle of Nonsenso


In preparation for this post I read the short novel, The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole, first published in 1768. The things I do for you readers! The suffering I do...egad. I fall to my knees and weep for my personal sacrifices.

OK, OK...so I exaggerate. It wasn't all that bad.

Anyway, this 7-page adaptation of the famous "first" Gothic novel is from Adventures Into the Unknown #1, from 1948. The script was written by Frank Belknap Long, known amongst us cognoscenti for his contributions to Weird Tales and his friendship with H. P. Lovecraft. Long wrote the first two issues of AITU, but I don't know what else he wrote for the comics. If he was like some other writers, he wrote for the comics in a sub-rosa fashion, without announcing it as such.

According to the Grand Comics Database it's drawn by Al Ulmer.