Number 2545: “Just try one and you’ll never be without ’em!”

This story, from Avon’s Realistic Romances #16 (1954), is reprinted from Romantic Love #6 (1951). It is anti-marijuana, which was the vogue in drug stories of the era. The lovely Claire is led into marijuana addiction, saying, “I lost popularity with all the boys at the school! Before I knew it, I had the habit...with all the evil consequences.” Later, she ends up behind bars in a mental hospital. She is shown a woman who is completely gone from smoking the devilish weed.

Need I say it? This is a love comic. Love wins out, and Claire finds her happily ever after.

I chose this both for its cautionary tale, circa early '50s, and the artist, Everett Raymond Kintsler. Kinstler went from the comic books and pulp magazine illustrations to become a highly regarded portrait artist. Kinstler is deceased now, and his history of portraits of several presidents of the U.S. is well known. He also regarded his early work in comics and illustration as being part of his artistic growth.

 

Number 2343: Wallace Wood in the Stone Age

I believe that Wallace Wood drew better when he got a story he was interested in drawing. This story, “The Lost Kingdom of Athala” is one of those. It has a prehistoric setting, it has a beautiful girl in an abbreviated animal skin. And it even has a Wood-version of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. I read it, but I more-or-less dismissed the story to look at the artwork.

However, during a second look I did read it, and note, this is a spoiler: sexy Rhoa, the cavewoman ruler, says she wants to be like other girls of leading man Jack Rance’s world. I doubt she’ll be thinking that when she gets to that era in the time machine Jack and his young friend traveled in. She just doesn’t fit into that early '50s era, when women were expected to be in the kitchen or taking care of the kids. And speaking of time machines, that odd-looking mechanical device looks clunky to me, not as sleek as the devices we are used to seeing Wood draw.

The story was printed originally in Strange Worlds #4, an Avon comic from 1951. My scans came from a 1958 IW reprint, Strange Planets #9.

Number 2168: Just a harmful young lady

In March I posted a crime comics story featuring a female criminal. I have chosen another. (Look back through the history of this blog and I have showed several stories featuring bad girls. I will let you decide what that means about me. You are probably right.)

I don’t know if there was a female criminal named Mara Hite, who earned a death sentence in 1937. In crime comics if they didn’t really exist they made it seem like they did. In this story, illustrated by Syd Shores for Gangsters and Gun Molls #4 (1952), Mara is a murderer, even using the desperado tactics of traveling gangsters like Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde, shooting at cops from the window of a speeding getaway car. It is a timeworn tale, but the drawings by Shore make it worth a look.

Shores was an early comic book artist who worked with Simon and Kirby early on, and worked freelance in comics for many years until his death from a heart attack at age 59 in 1973. Gene Colan described Shores as a “big smoker,” and we know that smoking will kill you more surely than any gangster, male or female.

Number 2141: Check this out: “The Kissing Bandit”

Edna Murray was known as “the Kissing Bandit” for a kiss she gave a victim of a robbery she committed. She was an all around public enemy, whose associations were with criminals, as she is portrayed in this story from Avon’s Gangsters and Gun Molls #2 (1951).

Like most “true” crime comic book stories, there is a mix of some fact and some fiction. Some names are changed, but Edna’s is not. I have wondered in this blog if changing the names of criminals in crime comics was a way to avoid being sued by that person if they were still alive when the comic was published. But Edna lived until 1966, and she is named, so I guess my theory is still just that. Edna was involved with the infamous Barker-Karpis gang in that late Wild West era of the early 1930s. She went to prison. She was involved with Volney Davis (re-named “Owney” Davis in the story), who went to Alcatraz, and was eventually released. He died in 1979, not in a shootout with the police in front of Edna, as portrayed in the story.

The story is drawn in a striking Wallace Wood style by artist Sid Check (his name is on a teller’s window in the splash panel). Despite appropriating the style of someone else, Check was a talented artist about whom not much has been published. Alex Jay of the Tenth Letter of the Alphabet blog, has done an outstanding job of collecting what is known of Check in the public record. Check left comics about 1958. His comic book career began about 1950, and he was part of that talented group of comic book men, including Wood. Check was born in 1930, and died just short of his 72nd birthday in 2002.

Number 2044: The Devil made her do it

Tanya is a young woman who is blessed with beauty, but cursed by Satan to use it to make men of her village fight over her. What the story, “Satan’s Woman Prize,” calls a curse I call immature teenage behavior, but that’s just me. When a writer needs a good villain, Satan is always a good choice.

The story is scanned from Super Comics’ Mystery Tales #17 (1964), which is a reprint of Avon’s Eerie #14 (1951). The Grand Comics Database mistakenly credits Martin Nodel for the pencils, when they mean Norman Nodel (identified correctly in their listing for Eerie #14.) Vince Alascia inked it.

Number 1997: Kit West and the stockade full of suspects

For an 8-page story there is a lot going on in “Murder in the Stockade,” from Cow Puncher Comics #6 (1949). There is a cast of pretty gals, with an equal number of embittered-in-love types, one of whom is apparently murdering said pretty gals. There is also a handsome frontiersman, Dan, who, when one of his fiancées gets killed by person, or persons, or thing unknown, just takes up with the next gal in line. I have to say that the solution to this mystery is about as off-the-wall as a mystery by, say, Edgar Allan Poe, who is obviously the inspiration here.

Kit West, heroine in buckskin, is buxom, bare-legged, and bold. She even sets herself up to be killed, just so she can solve the mystery. Add “brave” to her description.

The Grand Comics Database lists Jill Elgin as the artist.

Originally posted in 2012, another Kit West story. Just click on the thumbnail.