Number 2269: Love is a circus

“Savage Sweetheart” is a three-ring circus of love and hate. Marcia loves Leroy and hates David; David loves Marcia and hates Leroy. Leroy loves gambling and he owes $3000 to some crooks. He pretends to love Marcia. The crooks love that they can manipulate Leroy into having Marcia, who is now owner of the circus after the death of her dad, include some crooked gambling into the circus. Despite beautiful Marcia throwing herself at him, Leroy just pretends to love her so he can carry out his felonious plan.

This torrid tale of the tanbark is drawn by Emil Gershwin, and art-spotter Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr puts a question mark beside the name Celardo as inker. According to some biographical information I read online, Gershwin, who usually didn’t sign his name, was a top illustrator, with rave reviews from Alex Toth. Further reading finds that Gershwin assisted Dan Barry on the Tarzan newspaper comic strip, and later John Celardo took over the feature. Some Tarzan-styled stuff is included in the drama, when David fights a lion. I wondered if Emil Gershwin was related to the famous Gershwin brothers, George and Ira. Emil’s daughter, Nancy, says the famous composers were Emil’s first cousins.

The story appeared in ACG’s Romantic Adventures #7 (1950).

Number 1886: Turok goes 'round 'n' 'round

The original Turok comics had a very simple premise. Turok and Andar, two pre-Columbian Native Americans, wander into a lost valley. They become lost within the lost valley and can’t find their way out. They share what seems like a huge place with a variety of prehistoric men, and creatures extinct in the outside world. This particular story, from Turok Son of Stone #4 (1956), fits that storyline. Turok and Andar, and their caveman pal, Lanok, look for Lanok’s home, and get into tussles with dinosaurs. The second story in the issue (not shown here), continues from this story, but is more of the same. That is not to say that Turok Son of Stone is not entertaining within its self-contained parameters, but a reader knows what he is going to get.

The story is credited by the Grand Comics Database to Gaylord Dubois for the script, and Bob Correa and John Celardo for the artwork.

Number 1510: Turok and Andar and lost world fantasy

Turok and Andar, our Pre-Columbian Indian heroes, are men of their time period, and have weapons and skills of their time, primitive by our standards. The cavemen of the hidden valley, who might have been living there for centuries, have to be taught that simple technology. How did they survive in a world of giant predators, and how can men share space with dinosaurs, who predated them by many millions of years?

It is fiction so we just accept it. But cavemen and dinosaurs existing in a modern world, a lost world tale, was part of a genre of fantasy fiction. It may have been inspired in part by The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle's book was very popular, but the idea wasn't new even when Doyle wrote his work. I guess the fantasy goes to a longing on the part of people who want to see the ancient Earth and its wonders.

From Turok, Son of Stone #5 (1956), story by Gaylord DuBois, art attributed to Bob Correa with inks by John Celardo.

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More Turok. Just click the thumbnail.

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TUROK AS A DINOSAUR RAMBO:

A week after this post appeared I was in a dollar store and picked up a two-pack of comics in a plastic bag labeled Super Hero Comic Book Spectacular. I was interested because I saw one of the titles was Valiant’s Turok Dinosaur Hunter #2 (1993). (Coincidences of all types happen often to me, but I don’t usually mention them because it seems self-serving, but they do happen.)

When these comics came out originally in the early '90s I ignored them. I saw they were an attempt to take a good character and turn it into a modern equivalent with hyper-violence and other mayhem. What I see here is not the lithe pre-Columbian Indian hero of the Dell Comics title, but some sort of Rambo-type with long hair and a machine gun.

I’m not dismissing the talent behind the comic, because the illustrations are well done, and the writing is along the lines of what was popular at the time. Despite that when this came out is just about the time I abandoned superheroes I had grown up with, as they became comics that looked like this.

 (This sort of cliché, the talking-through-clenched-teeth panel, makes me think of superhero as rage-filled psychotic doing damage to dentition.)

According to the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide (the latest edition I have is #39), the new version of Turok had a fairly decent run until the late '90s, at which time it was gone again. I hope if someone else picks up the character they won’t do what Valiant did to the original concept, and that is to take the Turok who was a wise and strong hero in a strange world of prehistoric monsters, and turn him into a steroidal freak, looking like another type of monster.

Number 755: Boris's horrors

John Celardo is yet another of the comic book men who came into the field early (in his case, 1937) and stayed for a long time. Celardo was born in 1918. His art is distinctive because of his facility with brush inking--even the thinnest lines are drawn with a brush--and his muscular characters. Celardo drew and inked the Tarzan newspaper strip for years.

In the '70s he was doing some stories for Gold Key. I found these two sprinkled in with the regular fare in Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery. "They Came From the Deep" is from BKTOM #32, 1970, and "Monster On My Back" is from BKTOM #39, 1972. (Note: Grand Comics Database does its qualifying thing when it can't quite decide, by giving a "?" after Celardo's name on this story. I'll go on record by saying I believe it's drawn by Celardo.)

"They Came From the Deep" was inspired by "The Monkey's Paw" by W. W. Jacobs, first published in 1903. "Monster On My Back" seems like an allegory for something. Choose your own. I think of a boss who was on my back for twenty years before my retirement.

The eerie cover for #32 is not credited in the Grand Comics Database and I don't know who painted it, but is another in a series of really strong painted covers on Gold Key comic books. Sometimes the comics themselves were disappointing, but the covers seldom were.