Number 2312: Tom Mix, “Mixacan”

“Bondage in the West” as a title sounds a lot more perverted than it really is. It has to do with a rancher ripping off (and murdering) Mexican laborers working on his ranch.

Tom Mix shows up in disguise...he puts on a sombrero and a fake mustache, and fools the crooked rancher! (The villain must have that peculiar face blindness that shows up often in comic books where characters wear a disguise.)

We hear a lot about illegal aliens nowadays, but this story is from 1949, and people coming into the U.S. from south of the border has been going on since America sliced off pieces of Mexico and made them United States territories, then states. American bad guys, yeah, we see a lot of them, also. Good thing our hero Tom is willing to get into the “Mix” to help fellow human beings!

Art by Carl Pfeufer and John Jordan. Writer unknown. From Master Comics #105 (1949):

Number 2259: Sergeant Spook was a favorite, said Mickey Spillane

In a shortened online interview from the magazine Alter Ego #11, author Mickey Spillane talked to Roy Thomas about his time at Funnies Inc writing comic books. The quote from Spillane that is relevant for today's post is, “I did a lot of Sergeant Spook; that was a favorite of mine.” Spillane used his time well in writing comic books for a living. After the war he went on to become one of the best selling authors of paperback original novels with his hard-boiled stories about detective Mike Hammer.

Not only did Spillane get a byline for this episode of Sgt Spook, but the story has a gorilla. What else do I need in making a choice to show it? (I am not happy with Sgt Spook punching the gorilla to train it...but it is a precursor to one of the milder ways Spillane’s heroes solved problems.) You can read more about Sgt Spook at Public Domain Super Heroes.

Spillane wrote constantly; there were a lot of comic books and many characters in those days. Spillane not only wrote for the comic book packager, Lloyd Jacquet, who formed Funnies Inc, but he moonlighted writing scripts for others. With such a prodigious career, most of it done anonymously, dozens and maybe hundreds of his comic book stories will probably remain anonymous.

I have no information on artist John Jordan, other than he drew for Funnies Inc.

The story is from Blue Bolt Vol. 3 No. 3 (whole number 27, 1942).