Number 1420: Jay Disbrow and the Tarzan homage

Jay Disbrow is known mostly for his Golden Age work in comics edited by L.B. Cole, the Star Comics line. Disbrow’s stories are usually the only originals in the comics, which are mainly re-titled reprints from the defunct Fox Features. Disbrow had a clean ink line, and was an artist whose work reminded me in ways of Al Feldstein, if only because his figure drawing could be a little stiff. He had begun his comics career in the Iger Shop, and it shows. When he left the shop he apparently wrote and drew his own stories, and signed his work.

In this story, originally from Terrors of the Jungle #4 (1953), and reprinted by I.W. in 1963 in Jungle Adventures #10, Disbrow did a jungle hero story. There were lots of jungle guys around in the '40s, all aping (ho-ho) the main inspiration, Tarzan. Disbrow went one better. His character, Taranga, is actually nobleman John Cutter, who has come back to the jungle after living in civilization for five years. Rather than seeing it as a swipe, I see it as homage for Edgar Rice Burroughs’ famous jungle lord.

Disbrow came back in the late seventies with a comic published by Fantagraphics, The Flames of Gyro Featuring Valgar Gunnar. I ordered it directly from Disbrow, whose return address is listed as Jovian Enterprises in Neptune City, N.J. I still have the envelope, postmarked December 13, 1979. I can’t remember, but I undoubtedly saw it advertised in Comics Buyers Guide and ordered it direct, out of curiosity as to what Jayson Disbrow’s work looked like 25 years after leaving comics. And by golly, it looked just the same!

 Even later, in 2000, Disbrow took to the Internet to produce an epic, a weekly Sunday page-styled comic strip, Aroc of Zenith, which he continued for 312 episodes until 2005. That is really an awesome achievement, and I give him a lot of credit for that. You can begin by going to this page, Aroc of Zenith and go to the sidebar on the right, where you will find “Aroc’s Complete Archives of Adventures.”

Number 1052


Subhuman giants, ghouls, Bigfoot and Sasquatch...


...are all the same, or at least according to these two stories, both of which are about Bigfoot, under different names.

"Do They Exist?" is from Adventures Into the Unknown #137, 1962 (probably a reprint from an earlier issue with a different title), and "Return Of the Ghoul" comes to us via a reprint in IW's Daring Adventures #9, 1958. It was originally from Blue Bolt Weird Tales of Terror #115, and according to the GCD, was a sequel to "The Ghoul Of the North" from Avon's Eerie #15. Got all that? There will be a quiz.

The first story is drawn by Edmond Good, an artist we have featured here before, in Pappy's #985 and Pappy's #994. Jay Disbrow does the ghoul story. I believe he wrote it (he could be wordy, perhaps graduating from the Al Feldstein School of Comic Book Writing). His Bigfoot is more of a shape shifter than the traditional hairy giant of the woods. This is the first story I've shown by Disbrow.

Which reminds me. I sent my son a scan of the cover of the above book, showing Bigfoot in Pennsylvania. I sent it as a joke, telling him to "watch for Bigfoot in the woods when you drive through them." At the time he was commuting to college in Western PA via a two-lane road through a heavily wooded area. After I sent it he told me one morning in winter, very early in the morning, he saw a large, manlike shape between two trees just off the road, as if waiting to cross. I don't believe in Bigfoot, although a lot of people do. I don't think my son believes in Bigfoot, either, but he saw something, and his story gave me a shiver.