Number 2401: The Demon judge

Bill Draut went to work for Simon and Kirby when he was discharged from the U.S. Marine Corps. He knew Joe Simon from their service days, and Joe invited him to do some comic book work for them. Among the jobs he did were four episodes of “His Honor and the Demon” (on today’s episode it’s “His Honor and the Red Demon”). Draut worked in comic books for years. His work was very slick and illustrative, and biographical information says he worked drawing love comics and also mystery comics for DC. I have never associated him before with any costumed heroes except the one I am showing today.

The Demon, or Red Demon, is actually a judge who goes out in costume to bring bad guys to justice, so he can preside over their trials and send them to prison. At least that is how I read it. A real conflict of interest, and even in the late 1940s would have been frowned on by his professional colleagues. He is Judge Straight, and he (mostly) lives up to his name. He is a hardass jurist...on page 4 he sentences Joe Monsi “to death by electrocution at midnight two days hence!” Does not give poor Joe much wiggle room for proving his innocence, does it?

This particular episode comes from Black Cat Comics #6 (1947), and while it is the third episode to appear, it is an origin story. I believe the Red Demon stories were probably inventory at Harvey Comics, and plugged into a number of pages of the comic book no matter whether they were sequential or not. At the point of his career that this was drawn Draut’s artwork looks to have been influenced by Terry and the Pirates creator/artist Milton Caniff.

Oh yeah, let me call the first page splash to your attention...the beautiful blonde is tied with rope in a bondage pose. That doesn’t happen in the story so the writer, or even Draut, took a little artistic license for the perverts readers who like to see females trussed up.

Draut, born in 1921, died in 1993.

Number 1769: Double your pleasure; double your cross

August postings begin with a forties filler by Joe Kubert. You get to see not only the printed story, which appeared in Black Cat Comics #1 (1946), but the original art, which I took from the Heritage Auctions website. Thanks go to them for the great scans.

The story is set during the war. Notice in the lower right on page 1 of the original art that there is a "due date" stamp. It reads 3/7/45, a deadline for turning in the artwork. (It also appears that Kubert turned it in on 3/6.)  I assume it sat in inventory until popping up in Black Cat. Joe was still very young when he drew it. He wet his brush and gained valuable artistic skills on material like this for Harvey Comics.

Drawn just over 20 years later, here is another war story by Kubert:

Number 1508: Scarlet Arrow makes his “bow”

If this Scarlet Arrow origin story was a 1947 movie instead of a comic strip it would be a programmer, a B-movie. It would be a made on a low budget without “A-list” actors. I'd give it credit for good costume design for the hero, but the unimaginative script would doom it to the bottom of a double bill at a neighborhood theater. Since it’s a comic strip and not a movie, I’ll give it credit for being drawn well by artist Bob Powell and his studio assistants.

The Scarlet Arrow didn’t make the comic book world “quiver” (ho-ho); he lasted for a couple of issues of Black Cat. This story is from Black Cat Comics #5 (1947):

Number 1382: Atom bomb in a box

Although signed Simon and Kirby, the Duke of Broadway story, “My City Is No More!” is written, penciled and inked by Joe Simon. There were only about five stories about the New York-centric His Highness, the Duke of Broadway, divided into three stories for Black Cat Comics, and one each from Stuntman #2, and Boy Explorers #1, all of them published in 1946 and '47. This story is from Black Cat Comics #5 (1947), and it looks like a finale...not only for the Duke of Broadway, but for New York City! However, the Duke was back in Black Cat #'s 6 and 7 going about his business as usual.*

The most fearsome weapon ever built by humans, the atom bomb, caused a lot of postwar jitters, both in the U.S. and around the world. There was fear that someone could build a bomb, pack it in a suitcase and detonate it in a city. We still worry about that, but nowadays we have all kinds of terrors to worry about. Nuclear devices are amongst our list of fears, but not like they were in the late '40s and early '50s.

*I showed the Duke story from Black Cat #8, with a bonus story, in Pappy's #875. Click on the picture to see.