Number 1994: Tomahawk in flight

In the early years of his comic book appearances, Tomahawk, the frontiersman, and his young pal, Dan, traveled early America, heading off trouble with Indians and scheming white men. At least two of the three stories from Tomahawk #4 (1951) fit that description. But Tomahawk is a DC comic, and DC comics had to have a gimmick on the cover to lure readers. So the cover shows Tomahawk in flight, using a pair of wings designed by none other than Leonardo Da Vinci.

In later times Tomahawk went on to wilder and wackier adventures, including one with a giant gorilla (see link below). But the strip itself started off as a kind of Lone Ranger and Tonto or Batman and Robin adventure series set in the frontier of colonial America. Any resemblance to anything truly historic is immediately quashed by “The Flying Frontiersman.” I won’t even go into why this contraption strapped to Tomahawk would not work, because it is in a comic book, and in comic books stuff like that worked.

Nothing wrong with fantasy, but they should have labeled it as such. Maybe Tomahawk could have stumbled across a patch of mushrooms he mixed into a salad, and hallucinated the whole thing. But no, not in this comic book. Even for such straightforward 1951 balderdash, editor Jack Schiff, with his assistants Murray Boltinoff and George Kashdan, got even wilder and more off the wall as the decades advanced.

There is no guesses in the Grand Comics Database as to who wrote the story, but the art is credited to Bruno Premiani.

One of my favorite over-the-top Tomahawk tales. Just click on the thumbnail.

Number 1002


When Hitler came back!


Adolf Hitler was a caricature: the Chaplin-style mustache, the distinctive hair, made him easily recognizable, perfect for editorial cartoonists, animated cartoons, comic strips and comic books. His image still has a lot of villainous appeal, even after his real-life villainy had ended with a bullet in 1945.

"When Hitler Came Back," a Boy Commandos story, is from Detective Comics #125, 1947, and features a fake Hitler. Credits from the Grand Comics Database tell us it's drawn by Curt Swan and Steve Brodie. The story is written by George Kashdan.

We've seen several Hitler in stories on this blog in the past year, including those in Pappy's #900, Pappy's #862, and Pappy's #851.

Number 935


Rubeny


When the Filipino comic artists were introduced to us American comic book readers nearly 40 years ago, I quickly came up with some favorites whose work I looked for. Ruben Yandoc, who sometimes went under the name Rubeny, is an artist I like. Yandoc had honed his skills for years in the local Philippine comics industry. The blog, PilipinoKomiks says, "Yandoc was at his best when illustrating fantasy and horror stories, the kind of which I consider Philippine gothic. It was a very popular genre in the early years of komiks in the Philippines." He includes a 4-page story by Yandoc from 1951.

These stories are some from copies of DC's mystery comics I had close at hand. "Fear Is A Nameless Voice" is written by George Kashdan and is from The Unexpected #143, 1973; "The Totem's Threat" by Carl Wessler and Yandoc, is from The Unexpected #147; "Over My Dead Body," also by Wessler, is from The Witching Hour #34. Kashdan also wrote "Blood Of Our Fathers," for The Witching Hour #42, 1974, which fits the description of gothic.