Number 2400: The flesh and blood ghost

Halloween is coming up in a couple of weeks so I looked for a ghost story. The splash panel of “Ghost of an Old Romance” looked promising. However, this is not the ghost of a dead person, but the other kind of ghost...the symbolic type that is alive but haunting. (Good drawing, though.)

Elaine has a good thing going with Paul, but she makes the mistake girls make in love comics: she falls back in love with her original beau, Dud. When I was in a U.S. Army artillery battery, we called a howitzer projectile that did not explode a dud. A person can be a dud, also. This dud, Dud, wants Elaine back. Elaine falls for his smooth words and slick demeanor. In a love comic girls invariably screw up a current relationship for an old one. Think, Elaine! Why did you break up with Dud in the first place? Uh-huh. I thought so. You know deep in your heart that Paul is the guy for you, and Dud will just repeat what he did to make you leave him originally.

Also, Pappy’s rules for love includes an admonition against pencil-thin mustaches. You see a guy with a meticulously trimmed mustache and you know he is trouble.

From Love Letters #11 (1951). Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr gives credit for the artwork to John Forte for pencils, and Bill Ward for inks. We get a lingerie panel in the story, which is a clue Ward worked on it.

Number 2357: It's “curtains” for Lora Dunbar

A couple of years ago the news outlets were full of stories of predatory men in positions of power acting in sexually inappropriate ways with females. One of them was a famous movie producer who used his power in the industry to mistreat women. And so it is with this tale of a young woman who wants to be in movies. She meets a nice guy, but nearly ruins her chances with him and finds herself in the unwanted embrace of a notorious Hollywood rogue! We know he is a rogue because he has a pencil-thin mustache. Since it is a love comic we know Lora will be spared that fate, and she does go back to the arms of the more worthy man.

So Lora will have her chance in movies, but she has already shown another talent. On page 5 she takes in hand a drape from the window and in the next panel has turned it into a slinky gown, just right for the image she wishes to project as a sexy, seductive siren (the cause of her trouble with the grabby guy). Lora’s seamstress talent with a drape shows if she does not make it as a movie star there will surely be a job in the costume department.

“Promise of Passion” is from Quality Comics’ Hollywood Diary #2 (1950). Grand Comics Database credits the pencil artwork to Sam Citron and guesses the inking is by Bill Ward.

Number 2233: Blackhawks caught in communist time trap

The communists have finally got Blackhawk where they want him. They have caught him and his Blackhawks gang and taken them into the future, to 2100, a time when the commies have conquered the world. They supposedly took over the United States in 1965. The world in which they have taken the Blackhawks looks exactly like those magazine articles common in the 1940s and '50s, previews of “the world of the future,” replete with flying cars.The commies also wear abbreviated costumes, as if they stepped out of Planet Comics.

Blackhawk leads his tiny gang, still a potent force for Democracy, against the  sinister plot of world Communism.

The Grand Comics Database doesn’t know who wrote the story, but guesses Bill Ward penciled and inked the artwork for all three stories of the issue.

From Blackhawk #59 (1952):

Number 2220: Daddy was a con man

As a child Frances Wells traveled around with her dad to foreign lands and also around America. Daddy was a card sharp and confidence man, and so he’d get caught, leave Frances with a relative, or even in boarding school while he does time in prison. You would think young Fran would have had daddy issues with a father like that. And apparently she does: as an adult she still loves the old crook!

Before you get to thinking, as I did, that they had some sort of unhealthy relationship, Fran becomes interested in Cary, the biggest catch in town. Of course, being a love comic, there has to be conflict, and besides Dad being in the background, the conflict is with Doris, who also has her eye on Cary. Cary’s family hire a private detective to check up on Fran’s old man. Do two negatives make a positive? Cary’s family has its own problems, which cancel out the problems with Mr Wells. It is a lot to take in, especially for a love comic with a limited number of pages to get to the nitty-gritty. It appeared in Quality’s Love Scandals #1 (1950), a provocative title for a love comic. Despite the purity of Frances, there is an undercurrent of criminality running throughout the story. Of course, it is conquered in the quest for true love. Sigh. If only true life could be so easy!

Grand Comics Database doesn’t give any credits for writing or artwork, but my eyeballs tell me Bill Ward had something to do with it. Those females are Ward’s, either in the penciling or inking stage. The image of Doris, from the teaser panel on top of this page, is pure Ward.

Number 2205: Jungle love

Love Scandals from Quality Comics is aptly named. In the lead story from issue #4 (1950), Lona, a receptionist for Tacker Rubber Company, meets and falls for Dan Best, wealthy rubber plantation owner. The relationship proceeds at near supersonic speed. One date is enough: Dan and Lona get married and she moves to his plantation with him. No love story runs smooth, and this is no exception. Lona meets and falls for Sam Wells, a local bounder, who charms Lona into nearly running off with him.

The Grand Comics Database doesn’t guess at the artwork, but I’ll throw in my 2¢ worth and say I think Bill Ward did the pencils, and another artist did the inking. Ward is my choice for pencils because we get at least one good lingerie panel. Lona’s face does not look like a typical Ward face, so my guess is that more than one artist is responsible. Besides the lingerie, Ward’s style jumps out at me with the shopgirl on page 5, who looks like a dominatrix. (To me, anyway, heh-heh.)

Number 2197: Blackhawk’s asteroid war

In a column from the April 27, 2018 issue of the news magazine, The Week, we read this chilling paragraph: “. . . an asteroid nearly four times the size of one that leveled 500,000 acres of Siberian forest in 1908 missed Earth by only 119,500 miles last weekend. Startled astronomers had detected it less than a day earlier.”

Yikes!

I looked at the cover of Blackhawk #59 (1952) and it brought to mind fears of a huge object hitting our planet and making us like dinosaurs...extinct. I was able to shake it off. After all, a miss is a miss. In this tale it isn’t the fear that an asteroid is about to hit Earth that is the problem, it is that an “aggressor nation,” (and we all know who that is, don’t we?) has set up a base on said asteroid, ready to rain down death on America. America has only one rocket ship ready to fly to Asteroid X, and it can accommodate seven, just the number of Blackhawks! What luck!

Except for the out-of-this-world environment, it is a battle story. I don’t know who wrote “Beachhead on Asteroid X.” The Grand Comics Database gives Bill Ward ? (question mark means it is a guess) credit for the artwork.

I am torn by opposite opinions: even though I am for the exploration of space, I also tend to agree with Blackhawk’s opinion in the final panel.