Number 2518: Introducing the Target

Target Comics was around for nine issues before the costumed hero, the Target, was introduced in Target Comics Volume 1, Number 10, from 1940. Target Comics are probably mostly collected for the Spacehawk series by Basil Wolverton, although for a 1940 super hero the Target seems right in with the better costumed heroes. He lasted long past the end of the Spacehawk stories. In 1949 the Target was dropped after superheroes lost their mojo.

Target Comics was published by Novelty Press, part of the Curtis Publishing Company, which also published the popular weekly Saturday Evening Post magazine. I'm relying on memory, but I recall reading in Dr Fredric Wertham’s infamous Seduction of the Innocent that a retailer complained to him about having to carry the comic books published by a “slick” magazine publisher, or they would not get that popular magazine to sell. I assume it was, without naming, the Saturday Evening Post to which Wertham was referring.

I may have said before I think that Target is a bad name for a hero, especially with that target on his chest. Could a murderous crook with a gun pass up on the opportunity to make the Target a real target?

The Target story is credited to Dick Wood (as Dick Hamilton), writer, and artist Bob Wood. I have also read that Dick (Frankenstein) Briefer created the feature.

 

Pappy’s Sunday Supplement #9: Mandrake the Magician

Lee Falk created Mandrake the Magician in 1934, which makes Mandrake about 83 years old. He is still wearing evening clothes and a top hat. Tradition is important to Mandrake.

My introduction to the character was with this 1957 newspaper continuity, called “The Penthouse Mystery” in the index of Mandrake dailies and Sundays.* Mom and Dad began a subscription to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper, owned by Hearst, which also owned the King Features Syndicate. I was 10 years old, besotted by comics and in those days non-discriminating. I bought into the mystery of the flying carpet and flying horse.

In 1966, when King Features started their own short-lived comic book line, I bought Mandrake the Magician #1, and recognized the story as a redo of my introduction to Mandrake. They made it more comic bookish; even giving the unnamed thief of the 1957 strip a name, the Toymaker, but the story is essentially the same.

The newspaper strip is credited to Falk, and artist Phil Davis, assisted by his wife, Martha Davis. The comic book version is credited by the Grand Comics Database to Dick Wood for the script, and for the art Werner Roth, inked by André LeBlanc. Don Heck and Mike Peppe are credited for the cover.

*Deepwoods.org

Number 1920: Joyriding with Speedy

“Case 1009” is the last of a series of one-shot crime stories that appeared in Boy Comics, from the first issue (#3) to #10 (1942), which is where we take our tale of young Earl “Speedy” Feehan. Speedy loves cars. He loves them so much he steals borrows them and hot-rods around his home town. He thinks this sort of activity is okay — it’s just for kicks, y'know — but then he boosts the wrong car. He steals some classified war files left in a car by a government guy, and Speedy is confused for a Nazi spy.

The story, written by Dick Wood and drawn by Norman Maurer, is more cautionary tale than crime story. Certainly Speedy gets his punishment at the end, but his thefts are represented more as youthful folly than actual crimes. Maybe the attitude toward taking someone else’s car without permission was different in 1942 than it is in 2016. Nowadays he would probably get a lot more than six months in reform school for the same crime. I also hope George Anderson of Naval Intelligence got some form of censure or punishment from his superiors for being stupid, leaving secret defense plans in his car while spending the night in a hotel.

Number 1677: Where did you go, 2014...the Twilight Zone?

We find ourselves on the last day of 2014, and as usual the year went by too fast. Years have a tendency to do that. Someone once said the older one gets the faster time goes. Seems like it, anyway.

Or perhaps we are victims of the phenomenon of missing time, as in “The Day That Vanished,” from Twilight Zone #14 (1966). I have shown this story before, but these are new scans. The art is by Reed Crandall. The Grand Comics Database credits the script to Dick Wood.

We will all get together around the corner in 2015. Happy New Year, everyone! My advice is to not party too hearty. There are New Year’s Eves from my youth that I recall not at all. They are my personal version of missing time.