Number 2595: The great lover, Jon Juan

Jon Juan, is, as today’s title declares, a great lover. In the story we are told he is a man who gets what he wants.

Jerry Siegel and Alex Schomburg are the writer and artist who did this story of a gallant gentleman/sex addict. Jon is not only the world’s greatest lover, he can fight, too. Swordplay! Even a scene of knife fighting! To Jon Juan a kiss is worth risking a fight with armed interlopers. He is immortal. On the make and doesn't die. A longtime dream of many men...although 'tis just a fantasy. 

The story was originally published in Toby Comics’ one-shot, Jon Juan (1950). I got it from a 1958 IW reprint, Dream of Love #8. I showed the story previously in 2011.

Number 2404: Return from Mars

Such a day motorcycle cop Michael Reardon had. He chased a guy going too fast in an exotic car, and then ended up on Mars. He was also given the news that Mars was about to invade the Earth.

When this was published Mars was a place of the imagination. I am sure that science (without the fiction) knew that Mars was an uninhabited planet totally hostile to humans, but in comic books or pulp magazines it was still a fantasy planet where just about any tale could be told, even one as far out as this story. However, what I found most hard to believe about the tale is that Officer Reardon was allowed to stand in front of a bank of microphones and tell the Earth an invasion was coming from space. To me that is harder to believe than a motorcycle cop traveling to another planet in a Martian car.

For all that, it is well drawn by Russ Heath, and “Return from Mars” originally appeared in Atlas’ Journey Into Unknown Worlds #4 (1951), but is here from an IW reprint published in 1958, Space Mysteries #1 (1958).

Number 2343: Wallace Wood in the Stone Age

I believe that Wallace Wood drew better when he got a story he was interested in drawing. This story, “The Lost Kingdom of Athala” is one of those. It has a prehistoric setting, it has a beautiful girl in an abbreviated animal skin. And it even has a Wood-version of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. I read it, but I more-or-less dismissed the story to look at the artwork.

However, during a second look I did read it, and note, this is a spoiler: sexy Rhoa, the cavewoman ruler, says she wants to be like other girls of leading man Jack Rance’s world. I doubt she’ll be thinking that when she gets to that era in the time machine Jack and his young friend traveled in. She just doesn’t fit into that early '50s era, when women were expected to be in the kitchen or taking care of the kids. And speaking of time machines, that odd-looking mechanical device looks clunky to me, not as sleek as the devices we are used to seeing Wood draw.

The story was printed originally in Strange Worlds #4, an Avon comic from 1951. My scans came from a 1958 IW reprint, Strange Planets #9.

Pappy’s Tenth Anniversary Sunday Special Number 3: The crime of love!

Realistic Romances #9 is a reprint of Complete Romance #1, published by Avon in 1949.

Avon adapted one of their own paperback novels by Harry Sinclair Drago, writing as Sinclair Drago, who is better known as an author of Western novels. He seemed familiar enough with the Prohibition-era bootleggers and bad guys to have written this potboiler under its origiinal title, Women to Love. (He was born in 1887 and died circa 1980, so he lived through the era he was writing about.)

This is a hybrid story...a romance within a crime thriller. That is if your idea of romance is an adulterous affair between the wife of a gang boss and the boss's top henchman, then a double cheat as the henchman re-starts an affair with an old girlfriend and the wife goes back to her husband. Don’t worry; it’s all easy to follow. You won’t need a scorecard.

In 1953 Avon reprinted the comic book version of Women to Love. In 1958 IW Reprints (Israel Waldman, later a publisher of Skywald) did yet another reprint. So this story got around. IW used several comics from Avon in its reprint line, including literary adaptations. One wonders if Drago knew about it. Avon didn’t usually put author’s names on adaptations, but they did this time, and IW reprinted it with the original byline.

Artwork is credited to Myron Fass, a one-time comic book artist who went on to become publisher of some of the sleaziest exploitation magazines of the 1970s. In his early days I have heard that Fass was one of those guys who paid ghosts to draw what he signed.