Number 2119: Imitator of the dead

Halloween is next week. I’d better stock up on candy for the trick-or-treaters, and hope this year I don’t eat it all before the kids show up at my door. At least with a Halloween tale or three before Halloween I don’t rot my teeth...just my mind, already long rotted to the consistency of melted nougat.

I have planned horror stories for posts today through Monday, beginning with “Terror of the Burning Corpse.” It is at least well drawn, if totally lacking in a plot with any credibility of all. But that is my assessment. I leave it to you to decide if you can accept a man taking on the looks and persona of a rival to the woman he loves. After killing him, of course. And we all know what happens when someone is murdered in a horror comic...they find a way back from the dead to wreak their own revenge.

Grand Comics Database doesn’t guess who wrote it, but they think Hy Fleishman (with question mark) drew it. It is from Dark Mysteries #18 (1954):

Number 2064: The charming but alarming snake charmer

Jeff is a guy who hates snakes. But this is a horror comic book. So who does he end up with? Why, a snake charmer, that’s who. We also know the lovely snake charmer’s secret because some dumbbell gave it away in the SPLASH PANEL!

The “dumbbell” was probably the writer, not the artist, Hy Fleishman, who was a regular in this kind of second and third tier publishing endeavors, but had a professional flair not matched by other artists in Dark Mysteries #9 (1952), where “Medusa” appeared. Fleishman also did work for Atlas Comics, and after the Comics Code was implemented did 13 issues of the weekly comic book, Poppo of the Popcorn Theater for the Independent Grocers Alliance (IGA).

Number 2018: No ifs and buts — this story is — NUTS!

Nuts! was published by the small publisher, Premier Magazines of Wilmington, Delaware (only 42 individual comic books published, according to the GCD). It was yet another Mad imitator. Issue #1 was published in 1954, and featured this totally whack story, “Marvin’s Monster.” Among the chopping off of body parts (without blood...must remember, good taste always!) it has a (loose) caricature of Alex Raymond’s Rip Kirby. I guess the cyclopean eyed character is because “Rip Smirby” is a private eye? Oh, the satire...oh, the guffaws...oh, the what the f----?!

Hy Fleishman did the artwork. Fleishman was an excellent comic book artist whose work seems mostly confined to those smaller publishers. I showed more by Fleishman in 2013, in a Dick Tracy satire from the last issue of Nuts! See the link below. In that posting I brought up John Benson and Jay Lynch’s book on the Mad imitators, The Sincerest Form of Parody, a book I still recommend to anyone interested in the subject. “Marvin’s Monster” is also reprinted in that book.

From Nuts! #1 (1954):

As promised, here is the link to Nuts! #4. Just click on the thumbnail.

Number 1298: Going Nuts

This is posting number two of our Funky Funnies week, highlighting some oddball humor comics.

Nuts, which came from the small publisher, Premier Magazines, is actually one of the better Mad imitations. I say that with qualifications. In my opinion no comic ever really came that close to Mad, calling Nuts a better imitation is faint praise. But John Benson, in his excellent compilation from Mad imitators, The Sincerest Form of Parody, gives some space to Nuts. (I'm showing different stories than Benson.) I recommend his book if you're into this type of comic book which, with the success of Mad, sprang up like toadstools after a rainstorm.

The penciler of “Tick Dracy” is unknown, but Hy Fleishman is credited by comic art expert Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr. with the inks, and John Belcastro, using his pseudonym Johnny Bell, did “Prince Valuable.” Fleishman and Belcastro both became known in comics during this era of the early 1950s, and did work in various genres. Fleishman is especially well known for his work, pencils and inks, in horror comics. (Check out the search engine using his name in Karwell's The Horrors Of It All blog for some great examples of his work.)