Number 1840: Love and fraud for Claude

Who can resist a story about a gigolo? I can’t. When I was 14 our assignment in English class was to write a composition, what career we wanted to pursue when we grew up. I put down “gigolo.” I explained it was because it meant that girls would pay for dates. I thought I was being funny, but I got the paper back from my (female) teacher with “gigolo” underlined in red pencil and a stern note: “You need to look up this word for its precise definition.” I did. I defend it as a career choice, but unfortunately for me it was not to be. What I need now in my dotage is a gigolette. Also not likely to happen. (Especially if I want to keep Mrs Pappy.)

We meet both gigolo and gigolette in this story, drawn by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito for Heart and Soul #1 (1954). The art team had their own short-lived comic book line that year. Unfortunately, they came to publishing at a bad time for the industry, with titles crowding each other off the racks. Heart and Soul lasted only two issues.

Louis Prima and Keely Smith did “Just a Gigolo/I Ain’t Got Nobody” on a television program in 1959. Years later Van Halen ex-lead singer David Lee Roth remade the Prima version of the song.

Number 828

Wolves of Wednesday

Halloween is fast approaching. I suppose one of these first days I'll have to buy a bag of Mentholyptus cough drops, one cough drop each for the kiddies' trick or treat bags. Hey, nothing's too good for the kids in my neighborhood. All 600 of them, many of them with mustaches and tattoos. And those are the girls. Without costumes.

Anyway, speaking of the hirsute, how about a bit of werewolf action? First up, "Wanda Was A Werewolf" is from DC's House Of Mystery #1, 1952. "Wanda" is my mother's name, and, while not wishing to disparage her memory, there were times when she sprouted long pointy teeth and deadly sharp claws. I exaggerate, but "my" Wanda did sometimes let out her inner beast on me, especially when I was guilty of something (which was often). The Grand Comics Database says Win Mortimer ? (question mark means they're not sure) drew it.

Second, "Your Grave Is Ready," originally published in The Unseen #9, in 1953. This version is scanned from Eclipse Comics' Seduction Of The Innocent, #6 in a series of 6, from 1986. It's drawn by the team of Andru and Esposito.

Number 380


Couples therapy


Here are a couple of stories about couples, by a couple of art teams.

Ross Andru and Mike Esposito spent most of their careers as partners, Andru penciling and Esposito inking. "One Man's Poison" is from Mysterious Adventures #17, 1953, and is about a married couple who just love visitors. Recently Hairy Green Eyeball showed a story from Andru and Esposito's Get Lost, a Mad imitation from 1954.

The second story is by another comics team, Edwin Goldfarb and Bob Baer, who had work all over the place during that time period. Their couple in "Paralyzed" is a standard married couple from the horror comics: one partner cheating and the other choosing murder instead of divorce.