Number 1856: The Heck you say...

Craig Yoe has a volume in the IDW Chilling Archives of Horror Comics dedicated to artist Don Heck. He collects the pre-Code horror stories Heck did for Comic Media, a small-time publisher. Heck later went on to Atlas/Marvel, where he was an integral part of their line for several years. Heck was a solid professional, even if (in my opinion in the late fifties-early sixties) his more illustrative approach seemed too different sandwiched as it was between the work of comic art stylists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko.

In the early fifties Heck had a flair for horror, which may come as a surprise to some. This is one of the stories collected in the IDW volume. What you see here are my scans, not the ones in the book. It is from Weird Terror #2 (1952). The story is about what I have always suspected, that my accidents are caused by external forces (in this case, evil gnomes), not by my clumsiness and inattention to my surroundings.

Yoe’s book is available from the usual outlets.

Number 1512: “Lemme love ya, Sally!”

Danger! Rape rears its ugly head in a love comic from the '50s. Dear Lonely Hearts #5 (1954) features not one, but two stories of what today we’d call date rape (or as close as you can get without having it happen). The writer(s) must’ve had a theme going here to warn girls and women that some guys don’t need a lot of stimulation to jump from gentlemen to rapists.

While Johnsie, the yokel of “Mountain Love” misunderstands Sally’s clothes and attitude as an invitation to intimacy, on the other hand Pierre, of “A Man Worth Loving” is an opportunist, looking for the first chance at Bobbie, at which he attempts to overwhelm her.

These are cautionary tales about not getting into bad situations. It’s too bad the message might not have taken with males, because we still have guys who refuse to believe that no means no, and in most cases there are no gallant gentlemen, as there are in these stories, to step in and prevent a serious crime.

Number 1193: Danger! Men at work

Pete Morisi and Don Heck met when they were both members of the Harvey Comics production department in the late forties. Both began their art careers in the Golden Age, and continued into the Silver Age.  Heck was doing fantasy and science fiction for Stan Lee at Marvel, and Morisi, by then a member of the New York Police Department who used the acronym PAM for his comic book work, had created and was writing and drawing Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, for Charlton.

These two short stories, from 1953, are for the Comic Media title, Danger. At the time Morisi was also doing the Mike Hammer-style private eye, Johnny Dynamite, for Comic Media, while Heck was doing horror comics for the same publisher. Morisi used a clean, medium ink line, in contrast to Heck, who was then an acolyte of the Milton Caniff school of comic art illustration.

Morisi's story, “Marijuana,” shows that not much has changed in the illegal drug business in the past sixty years. “Hot Steel” is a boy meets steel mill, boy loses steel mill, boy finds steel mill kind of story.

Both are now gone. Heck died in 1995, Morisi in 2003.

From Danger #4 (1953):