Number 2083: Three uncanny artists

We're sliding into August with a couple of stories from Uncanny Tales #21 (1954). I don’t think there is anything new about the stories, but I like the artwork.

“When Walks the Zombie” is drawn by Bill Benulis and Jack Abel. Abel was a long-time comic book journeyman. Interesting to me from his Wikipedia entry is that he had a stroke in 1981, and rehabilitated his right hand so he could draw and ink again. That is dedication! Benulis quit drawing, according to his bio, after he left comic books in the '50s. Like artist Fred Guardineer, Benulis found the Post Office a good place for a post-comics career. That pension plan probably looked real good after years of freelancing.

“Tomb for Two” is credited to John Tartaglione, another long-time journeyman, who was an all-around guy at Marvel Comics for years. He could draw, he could ink, he could do production. As my dad, Big Pappy, once told me: “Make yourself valuable to your employer.” Tartaglione did that.

All three gentlemen are now deceased.

The visual punchline

These three 4-page shorties all appeared originally in Atlas’ Spellbound #13 (1953). I scanned them from the reprint comic, Vault of Evil #10 (1974). While published in a horror comic, these are clearly not typical horror. They are more like vignettes, story fragments, setting up punchlines. I don’t call them shock or surprise endings, because with the exception of “The Death of a Puppet,” drawn by Jim Mooney, the stories seem jokey. Stan Lee’s contribution, “The Pitchman,” about a con man selling the Brooklyn Bridge, sounds like an urban legend (and makes me wonder if I have seen it before, in another form). It is drawn by Bob Brown. “Let’s Face It” has a punchline based on the story’s title. The GCD guesses the pencils are by Joe Orlando, and the inks by Jack Abel.

Here’s another story set up to have a visual punchline, from a Harvey pre-Code horror comic. We travel back to 2007 for this one.

Number 1441: “You in a Heap of trouble, boy!”

 In 1971 I bought Skywald’s black and white Psycho #2, which had the origin of the Heap, drawn by Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, and written by Chuck McNaughton.

Surprisingly, a few months later along came a Comics Code-approved 25¢ color comic called The Heap #1,with the lead story drawn by Tom Sutton and Jack Abel, and written by former DC editor and writer Robert Kanigher! Both stories showed how the Heap was created from a plane wreck into some chemicals, but the stories surrounding the origin were different. The color Heap was the only issue, although its indicia claimed it to be a bi-monthly. Artistically, the character is drawn a bit differently: this version of the Heap, unlike the black and white version, does not have the long lolling tongue hanging out of the creature’s mouth. That might have been too gross for the Code, or maybe just the artist.

Knowledgeable fans know that the Heap was also a shambling monstrosity from the old Airboy Comics, and also a classic Mad comic book story by the one-and-only Will Elder. I'm sorry I can't show you the whole hilarious story featuring the Heap, “Outer Sanctum” from Mad #5, but here’s the Kurtzman-Elder version of...HEAP!

Number 762


The middle Atlas


Pappy reader John Kaminski gave me the germ of the idea for this post by requesting the story, "The Trap," from Atlas' Mystery Tales #42. It's only four pages and that doesn't seem like much of a post, so I looked around at some of the other Atlas post-Code comics I have. I've always seen these comics as being somewhere toward the late middle of the Timely/Atlas/Marvel progression of the 1940s to early '60s. Until the Atlas implosion of 1957 a lot of the old horror comics artists, who didn't quit comics, got work from Atlas in a severely shrunken market.

These are some examples I've chosen.

"The Trap," drawn by Bob Bean, is from Mystery Tales #42, 1956, as is "The Captive," by Jerry Robinson.

Two stories from World Of Mystery #4, from 1956: "Things In The Window" by Werner Roth, and "The Man With The Yellow Eyes" by Dick Ayers.

Rounding it out, "The Ghost Wore Armor," published in Journey Into Unknown Worlds #55, 1957, drawn by Bob Forgione and Jack Abel.