Number 2066: Ramona Fradon puts us through the wringer

Ramona Fradon was a comic book artist off and on for decades, beginning her career  in 1950, and along the way drew Aquaman for Adventure Comics, Metamorpho, the Element Man, and Super Friends. She left comic books to draw the Brenda Starr comic strip until her retirement in 1995. As of this writing, Ms Fradon, at age 90, is still doing commission work.

Fradon had a looser, more cartoony style than many of her male contemporaries, which serves the funny “Through the Wringer,” written by David V. Reed and published in The Amazing World of DC Comics #10 (1976).

Number 1437: Orlando issue

I thought Amazing World of DC Comics, DC’s in-house fanzine, was a fine product. It featured not only an insider look at the operations of a comic book publisher, but sometimes unpublished stories from the DC inventory.

The “Special Joe Orlando Issue” spotlighted artist/editor Orlando. He edited some of the mystery comics, and the humor comic, Plop! The issue has an unpublished story from Plop!, written by Mad-regular Don Edwing and drawn by Dave Manak. There is also the story, originally from EC’s Weird Fantasy #18 (1953), drawn by Joe, “Judgment Day.” It was one of EC’s “preachies,” as EC publisher Bill Gaines called them, stories that featured social issues. In this case it is racial segregation. The story loses some of its punch with black line printing, since the idea is the robots are blue and orange.

Then, as now, DC and Mad were owned by the same company, so seeing an EC story in a DC-published fanzine wasn’t so surprising.

An interview with Orlando was headed by this vintage  “Artist of the Issue” photo from EC Comics.

Number 985


Tomahawk begins


For a non-super character, Tomahawk lasted a long time for DC Comics. He was featured in Star Spangled Comics as a back-up strip, but soon took as cover feature. His own comic book lasted over 20 years, until the early '70s.

I liked the idea of Tomahawk set in a time frame of the American Revolution, a white man trained by Indians. But as we've shown before, DC Comics, who never met a wild concept it didn't like if it involved dinosaurs or gorillas, went far afield of the original frontier concept. A typically wild Tomahawk tale of the Go-Go Checks DC Comics of the 1960's was shown in Pappy's #848.

But this is the original Tomahawk tale, shown in Star Spangled Comics #69, from 1947. It's written by Joe Samachson and drawn by Edmond Good. Later on Tomahawk was taken over by writer France "Eddie" Herron and artist Fred Ray, but this first story paved the way, establishing Tomahawk for the next 25 years.

Number 737


The old-timer


When it comes to the history of comic books and men who began their careers when comic books were first published, you can't find anyone more historic than Sheldon Mayer. He was not only with comic books when they were born, but when they were embryonic. Before he went to work for Max Gaines at All-American Comics as an editor/cartoonist, Mayer, who was barely 18 in 1935, was working as a production assistant to Gaines, cutting and pasting up comic strip original art into comic book format.

Mayer's career is recounted in The Amazing World of DC Comics #5, published in 1975 when Shelly was still working for DC, albeit on a mostly part-time basis. He had trouble with his eyes and gave up cartooning for a time. The examples of original art shown here, culled from Heritage Auctions, are of strips done after the operation to remove his cataracts.

The Sugar and Spike story, from The Best of DC #41, is from 1983.

There's a story to the autographed digest comic you see at the top of this posting. I found it a few years ago in a thrift store. I always pick up and look at comic books in thrift stores and when I saw the autograph I...well, you've heard the expression, "clutched it to my bosom." I held it in a death grip until I paid the 50¢ they wanted for it and was out the door. I still puzzle over why it was there, who "Steven" is, or why he let this go. It has a good home with me, though, and I'm glad I was the one who got it. Whatever collecting gods there are made sure I was in that junky store on that day, at that time, and that I, of all people, was the one who found it.

The original art featured in this post is taken from Heritage Auctions web site.

Sheldon Mayer, cartoonist, editor, writer, and one of the most important men in the early history of American comic books, died in 1991, aged 74.
























There's another great story by Shelly Mayer in Pappy's #664.