Number 2139: Professor Memory forgets

Professor Memory has a special job, but unfortunately can’t remember what it is. Also unfortunate is how much Professor Memory’s memory problems remind me of...me.

What was a I saying? I remember: Professor Memory. He is helped by Green Lantern and GL’s little buddy, Doiby Dickles. Since we have featured some superheroes with boy sidekicks recently, along with my snarky comments, it is a relief to tell you that Doiby is an adult. Or, presumably so. He is a taxi driver and a good guy, except for mangling the English language. More snarky comments on dialect-writing are in order, but offhand I can’t remember any.

The story, from Comic Cavalcade #10 (1945) is from the period when publisher Maxwell Gaines decided to pull his comic book line, All American Comics, away from DC Comics. Later, as the story goes — if I remember it correctly, and I believe I do — Gaines sold his business, and his paper ration, to DC Comics. The war ended shortly thereafter and Gaines made enough to start another company, Educational Comics (EC), which eventually became the infamous Entertaining Comics (EC), with the late Mr Gaines’s son, William (Bill) Gaines) in the publisher’s chair.

The story is drawn by Jon Chester Kozlak, whose comic book career was mainly for DC in the forties. Also according to the Grand Comics Database, the script is by Alfred Bester. He later became a top-selling science fiction author who did classic novels like The Stars My Destination and The Demolished Man.

Here is another tale of Green Lantern and Doiby, originally posted in 2012. Just click on the thumbnail.

Number 1370: Doiby’s ruint derby

Paul Reinman was an American comic book journeyman who was born in Germany and emigrated to the U.S. at a young age. He worked in comics from at least the early forties to the mid-seventies. His work is instantly recognizable, and he drew thousands of pages over a long career.

Green Lantern was one of the features he worked on during his time at DC in the 1940s. This entertaining story, which takes place in the time of King Arthur, is a pretty good example of the DC superheroes of the era whose time ended in 1949, only to be revived in different form about ten years later. By then Reinman was long gone from DC, working at Marvel, ACG and Archie. Reinman died in 1988, at age 78.

Doiby Dickles was Green Lantern’s sidekick, supposed comic relief. I find the character annoying, like I did the Three Stooges knockoffs who showed up with The Flash in his comics. I suppose they were there so the main character had someone to talk to, like Woozy Winks in the Plastic Man stories. The difference was Woozy Winks was actually funny.

From All-American Comics #72 (1946):