Number 2355: Money for nothin' and the house for free

What an offer! Such a deal! A free house, free food, free giant screen television (that black and white comes in high definition, I hope). Meals are cooked for the occupants, and they even have a guaranteed income of $200 a week...in cash. Oh, and they have robots to do the work. Those occupants, the Jenkins family, have hit the jackpot, and just when they were at their lowest point, sharing a tiny apartment with another family. They are offered a dream house, making their dreams come true. Who wouldn’t take the word of a kindly old man like Mr Appleby, who is so generous?

Me, for one. I remember the old saying: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And for the Jenkins family, it is not only too good, it comes with a hidden price.

“The Dream House” was written by Gardner Fox, using the pseudonym, Robert Starr, for Strange Adventures #3 (1950). It was drawn by Jim Mooney, pencils, and Ray Burnley, inks

Number 1733: Flash Lightning goes to the gas chamber!

This past March, in Pappy’s Number 1706, I showed a story of the villain, the Mummy, from Lightning Comics #5 (1941). Flash Lightning conquered Professor Vatz, the scientist who put on mummy bandages and coated himself with “radium paint” to make himself invincible. Professor Vatz is now in prison, but is given enough freedom to make himself some gas bombs, re-outfit himself in gauze bandages and re-coat himself in radium paint. He is even in possession of a gun that shoots nitroglycerin bullets. Huh. Must be one of those cushy federal prisons, like Club Fed.

There are also other actors in this drama: the warden’s daughter, a prisoner who claims he was framed, and at least one African-American extra, a prisoner who pops out of the first panel of page 11. Just making note of it, and also that it is of its time, almost 75 years ago. And for some reason that is also the page that artist Jim Mooney signed.

From Lightning Comics #6 (1941):

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 1706: Flash Lightning: Mummy’s Day

This typical early superhero tale from Ace’s Lightning Comics #5 (1941) has a mad professor who wraps himself in mummy bandages, then covers them in radium paint to “protect myself from common weapons” without naming the weapons. Guns? Knives? A couple of sticks of dynamite? And how would radium protect him? I have commented before on at least one other Flash Lightning story that sometimes logic is lacking.

There are some howlers...removing an ancient Egyptian mummy’s bandages as easily as unwrapping an Ace bandage (an appropriate brand under the circumstances) from a sprained ankle. And Flash admitting, “Either I’ve lost my punch or the radium coating is protecting him!” The story is of its era...a bunch of wild and improbable occurrences going off in sequence until a final panel which asks, “Will the Mummy ever stalk again?” Well, of course. If they ask the question then the next one has already been written and drawn! And it was. The sequel was in the next issue.

But wait...I don’t want you to believe there isn’t something redeeming about this tale. The artwork is presumed to be by Jim Mooney, one of the better artists at that early stage of comic book history, at the beginnings of his long career.

There was a point when Flash Lightning’s name was changed to Lash Lightning without any explanation. Here are a couple of Lash Lightning stories which by coincidence are both about werewolves. Just click on the thumbnails.