Number 2215: Ghost Rider whacks a dog

Aw, cool off there, dog lovers. The dog that Ghost Rider whacks is a comic book dog. (As Robert Crumb once said, "It’s just lines on paper, folks.”)

Ghost Rider fights a sinister force that has turned a Western town into Hate Town. People invaded by devils, big snakes...yikes! I’d hate to live there!

Anyway, the writer has concocted a denouement that is, well, hard to swallow. But, that was the world of the Ghost Rider, where things are usually not as they appear to be. Grand Comics Database doesn’t credit the script to anyone, but Gardner Fox was the usual writer of Ghost Rider. Dick Ayers and Ernie Bache are listed as artists.

From Ghost Rider #9 (1952).

Number 1011


Reptisaurus and the jungle love triangle


This entertaining Charlton comic is new to me, even though it was published in '63, when I was visiting the comic book spinner rack in my local drug store every week. I missed a monster book where the monster, Reptisaurus, is almost a bit player in the story, and the main plot involves a love triangle. Rich man, his blonde fiancée, and a white hunter who bags the babe! Oh yeah...they also figured in some Aztecs who worship Reptisaurus.

The artwork is by Montes and Bache. I don't know the work of Bill Montes at all, and what I know about Ernie Bache is that he worked with Dick Ayers during Ayers' original 1950's Ghost Rider days. A quick search of the internet didn't turn up any information on Bill Montes, and all I found about Bache is what I already knew. If anyone knows if these two men are still around please let me know.

A criticism I have is of the ashen gray the colorist made the Aztecs. I know this portrait I found online is heroic, glorified artwork, but it's probably closer to the real Aztecs than Charlton's colorist made them.

There were 6 issues of a Reptisaurus comic in 1962; Montes and Bache drew the last two issues, preceding this "special edition." From Reptisaurus Special Edition #1, 1963:






















Ernie Bache also inked this four-page humor strip from Charlton's Abbott and Costello #5, penciled by Grass Green. Grass was an early member of comics fandom, one of the first fans to attempt to turn pro. Most comics companies were by then closed shops, and what work he got was sporadic at best. I think the Steve Skeates script is funny, and Grass' artwork with Bache's inks serves it well.