Number 2235: Goodbye Black Pirate

All American Comics #102 was the last issue before it turned into All American Western. It featured the first Johnny Thunder story, and the last stories featuring Green Lantern, Dr Mid-Nite, and Black Pirate, which I am showing today.

It was a good run for all of those characters, especially in the here today/gone tomorrow world of 1940s comic books.

Black Pirate appeared in three popular comics titles in his career. Created by Sheldon Moldoff, he first appeared in Action Comics #23, then switched to Sensation Comics beginning with issue #1. After 50 issues, he then moved over to All American Comics, bumping out The Atom. Not bad for a comic book character who never had his own book, or was on the cover of any issues of the comic books where he was a second tier feature.

I have read less than half a dozen adventures of Black Pirate, so I can’t give an opinion of how Jon Valor (Black Pirate’s secret identity) fared as a pirate, but in his final adventure he was inland, and rode away on a horse.

Artwork by Arthur Peddy and Bernard Sachs.

Number 2192: Good night, Dr Mid-Nite

Dr Mid-Nite, the secret identity of blind Dr Charles McNider, was a stable, if second tier superhero, for DC Comics from 1941 to 1948. His Wikipedia entry claims he was the first superhero to have a physical impairment. He pre-dated Marvel’s Daredevil by a couple of decades. His first appearance was in All-American Comics #25 (1941), his origin told by creators Chuck Rozenstein and Stan Aschmeier, who signed his work Stan Asch.

Once again, as we showed with Green Lantern a few weeks ago (Pappy’s Number 2180), the hero disappeared after a final appearance in All-American Comics #102 (1948). The only warnings to the reader were replacing Green Lantern on the cover with the Western star, Johnny Thunder, and an announcement on the bottom of the one of the pages to watch for all new adventures of Johnny Thunder in the new All-American Western.

The decision to replace the superhero contents of All-American with cowboys probably disappointed those superhero fans still left, but such is the nature of the business. The characters served their purpose, but when they no longer sold other genres were tried.

No scripter is listed by the Grand Comics Database for this final Dr Mid-Nite story, but the artwork is credited to Arthur Peddy and Bernard Sachs.

Number 1726: Pyramid scheme

We have our final posting for this theme week, Deceased Comics, presenting stories from comic books DC cancelled many years ago. Our story today is from Danger Trail #5 (1951), the final issue of that title.

Alex Toth and Bernard Sachs did the effective work on this Egyptian adventure amongst the pyramids, when our hero (not named until the last panel, when his new girlfriend tells him her name), falls in with some crooks involved with stolen antiquities. The writer is listed by the Grand Comics Database as David Vern.

As to why Danger Trail was cancelled I don’t know. I have speculated before that editor Julius Schwartz might have been too busy. (See the link below the story.) What throws my spec off is that with issue #5 the title of the comic appeared ready to change, dropping Trail. This half page house ad from the issue, with all of DC’s titles listed, shows just Danger. Also, the title between the DC colophons at the tops of each page is blank.

Maybe for a time someone at DC thought the book was worth saving, and that could be done by changing the title. Maybe, as I have also speculated in the past, sales were just bad for a book of stories featuring exotic locales and adventurous characters. It is a bit late for us to know for sure.

As promised, the link to another Danger Trail adventure. Just click on the thumbnail.

Number 1561: Hidden people

Having had a close relative, now deceased, who “saw” invisible people I can tell you that those hallucinations can be very real to the person having them.

In this story from Strange Adventures #13 (1951), Scott, our main character, sees invisible people after an eye surgery. Really sees them. That’s because in fantasy and science fiction we accept as literal the extraordinary things happening to the characters. Yet when reality touches fiction, people would react to someone seeing invisible people as the extras do here, by assuming the person seeing said invisible aliens from Venus to be mentally ill. And how do we know they aren’t correct — perhaps Scott Fulton is hallucinating, and we are just seeing what he thinks he sees? Well, because this is a comic book, that’s why.

One thing bothers me, though. At the end of the story Scott is married to the invisible girl from Venus. So who conducted the ceremony? “I now pronounce you husband and, errrrr...uh...invisible wife.”

Story written by Edmond Hamilton using the pseudonym Hugh Davidson, pencils by Bob Oksner with inks by Bernard Sachs.

Number 1276: “It's a woman's world!”

This is the fourth and final posting of our silly science” theme week. I've saved this one for last, because when I first read it I was slack-jawed with amazement. Yep, sixty years ago in these United States we had a whole different mindset about gender roles, did we not? I grew up in that era; my mom was a housewife and stuck to her “traditional female” role. It was how we saw the world, and role-reversal is the gimmick of this story, from Mystery in Space #8 (1952). Boys reading it in those days would think this would never happen! When Mrs. Pappy and I got married in 1969 the feminists (we called them “women's libbers”) were making headlines, and from my own spouse I could feel the change a-comin’!

In 1971 feminism was so threatening to some men that a book like this could be published.

This Mystery in Space story, written by John Broome under the pen-name John Osgood, and drawn by Bob Oksner and Bernard Sachs, had a publication history that straddled the feminist movement, before and after. It was reprinted the same year as The Feminists, in 1971 in From Beyond the Unknown #11 (where I first saw it), and in 1980 in the Simon and Schuster compilation, Mysteries in Space, the Best of DC’s Science Fiction Comics.

The last two panels of the story are howlers. You'll see when you read them. Talk about a male fantasy. “Okay, you chicks had your fun, now move on over and the boys are back in charge!” As all of us have noticed in our 2012 society that kind of talk may have worked in 1952, but not now.

Number 1265: Sideways in Time!

The comparisons to Planet of the Apes jump out of this story. But it was published years before Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel was published in France, and adapted as an American movie in 1968. I'm not claiming any kind of plagiarism, but it’s an interesting coincidence. The idea of apes evolving as apes with human-like abilities wasn't a new idea even in 1951, when “Sideways in Time!” appeared in Strange Adventures #12. (And, of course, there's that whole thing of gorillas and DC Comics, told several times in this blog.)

The term “alternate universe” wasn't used in the story, but that’s what writers Jack Miller and John Braillard were describing.

The artwork is attributed by the Grand Comics Database, via editor Julius Schwartz's records, to Mel Keefer and Bernard Sachs.