Number 2122: Putting the comic in comic book

This Midnight story, from Smash Comics #84 (1949), is a superb example of Jack Cole’s gift for comic exaggeration and slapstick. Virtually every panel, including the cover, has some funny, frenetic action going on.

Besides all the funny business, in the story Doc Wackey invents a photocopy machine. Xerox Corporation introduced its first office copier in 1949. It is a gag meant for just one plot point, but with its application by Doc (making copies of invitations to the Diamond Cutters Ball), hints at how important the technology would become in the future.

Number 2095: Midnight meets Gabby

Gabby is a talking monkey. Gabby got the ability to speak after a series of operations by a beautiful woman known only as Miss O’Day. Gabby becomes the partner of crime fighter, Midnight, but Miss O’Day...she does not fare so well.

Dave Clark, radio announcer, was Midnight. Midnight, drawn by Jack Cole, looked like another Quality Comics character wearing a blue suit and a domino mask, the Spirit.

This is the original appearance of Gabby. Another of Midnight’s cronies, Doc Wackey, came along a few issues later. Midnight gives comic art fans another reason to appreciate Jack Cole and his special art of cartooning. Herein is a crimefighter story made much more fun by Cole’s great gifts for comic exaggeration.

From Smash Comics #21 (1941):

Number 2033: Jack Cole at Midnight

Jack Cole created the Spirit lookalike, Midnight, in late 1940 for Smash Comics at the behest of publisher Everett “Busy” Arnold. According to the story told, Arnold was worried that if Spirit creator (and copyright owner) Will Eisner went to war and — I don’t even like to think about it — was killed, then Arnold would have a back-up character. (As a publisher, Arnold was as interesting as the talent he had working for him.) Midnight was not the same as the Spirit, though...he was Dave Clark, a radio guy, who put on his fedora and mask and fought crime, but at least he didn’t live in a cemetery and pretend his alter-ego was deceased. Well, I am sure we are glad all over that Dave Clark became a masked crime fighter.

Because he was created by Cole, during Cole’s time on the strip he did what he could do very well, and that was to infuse humor as well as excitement into each panel. Midnight might have been based on another character, but there was really no one who was like Jack Cole.

Midnight had a support group, which included Doc Wackey and Gabby, a talking monkey.

From Smash Comics #29 (1941):

I love Haunted Love!

I was so delighted after reading Haunted Love, I put this self-produced plug for the book on the Haunted Horrors Facebook page.

I think what Steve “Karswell” Banes has done is terrific, finding  horror stories with love subplots. Anyone who follows Karswell’s blog, The Horrors of It All will recognize the special care with which Steve has picked the stories. Every one of them is a gem, and if any gems can be found in the pestilential, putrid swamp of pre-Code horror comics, Steve will find them.

So, highly recommended. As with all of the books in Yoebooks’ series, The Chilling Archives of Horror Comics!™, the book is made for permanence in any fan’s library. Haunted Love is available through all of the regular sources.

Number 793

Un-Super Heroes Week: After Midnight comes the Marksman

This is the final posting for Pappy's Un-Super Heroes Week:

Midnight was created by Jack Cole at the behest of Quality Comics publisher, Everett "Busy" Arnold, just in case Will Eisner was killed in World War II. Because Eisner owned his own creation, The Spirit, Arnold ordered up a visual copy with Midnight. Eisner might have ground his teeth down in frustration over this blatant infringement, but those were extraordinary times. Coming out of the Depression, Eisner probably thought discretion over Arnold's actions trumped litigation. As it worked out, Midnight became a cover feature of Smash Comics, but was gone before the end of the 1940s. The Spirit earned money for Eisner over several decades. This story is well drawn by another of Eisner and Cole's contemporaries, Paul Gustavson.

Read more about Midnight here.

I've shown a Marksman story before, in Pappy's #342. The Marksman is a character who should probably have been killed on his first mission, standing out as he does in his white t-shirt and red cape. But he is of the comics, and during the war comic characters had their gimmicks that made them impervious to the enemy, because the writer wrote it that way!

I like the precise Fred Guardineer artwork, though, and especially his caricatures of the Axis gangstas. The splash panel is classic.

Both of these stories are from Smash Comics #43, 1943.

Number 276


At Midnight all cats are gray…


Midnight, a Spirit lookalike, was drawn by artist Paul Gustavson. This particular story was published in Quality's Smash Comics #46, September 1943.

As much as I admire Gustavson's style, I wonder where the editor was when he turned in his artwork. He should've handed him a book on animals and said, "This is a cat. Draw it like this." I think cats in Warner Bros cartoons look more realistic than Gustavson's.

The cover, with a cat that looks like a cat, is by Alex Kotzky, who later went on to draw the successful syndicated comic strip, Apartment 3-G.