Number 2570: Alan Ladd gets mad because he's been had!

Hollywood star Alan Ladd makes a movie, and is up against a tricky young woman with an identical twin. Unbeknownst to Alan the twin is doing the acting, and Ladd is duped. How many times have we seen similar plots in movies, television, and books? Personally I’d think it could have been pretty good for Alan...two beautiful women...but the plot is fairly standard. The artwork is good, because artist Ruben Moreira was a good artist.

From Adventures of Alan Ladd #3 (1950):

 

Number 1784: The Lone Wolf’s retirement plan

I am retired, and was able to retire because I had a plan. If you are interested in retiring someday, I urge you to find a plan that will fit your needs. There are many. However, whatever you consider, I guarantee that Amos P. Harmon’s retirement “plan” is not the right one to follow.

Amos has a real estate business. He hopes to move to California someday with his family. His plan is to get money by sticking up gas stations. He shoots people, too. It cinches his retirement from his real estate business will be spent at a new address, either the penitentiary or under a grave marker.

This is another story where the detective is more lucky than good. “The Lone Wolf of Crime” is from Gang Busters #19 (1950), and is illustrated by Ruben Moreira.

More of the talented Moreira. Just click on the thumbnail.

Number 1202: Star of radio and television

As a feature, “Roy Raymond, TV Detective,” lasted a long time in Detective Comics, 1949 to 1961. For the first few years the feature was called “Impossible -- But True!” with art chores handled originally by Ruben Moreira. The strip's name change came in 1953. Roy Raymond had a busy career, spanning radio and then television. He was a professional debunker, whose investigative powers would be used to expose fakers. In his very first tale, shown here, Raymond is challenged by stories of a valley where people instantly age fifty years (gee, the story of my life!) and the second puts Roy underwater with a group of mermen.

Moreira, who also used the name Rubimor to draw the Sunday comic strip Tarzan in the mid-'40s, both penciled and inked. Moreira was born in Puerto Rico. He moved back in 1958 and mailed in his work. In 1962 Moreira quit comics. He died in 1984.

From Detective Comics #153 (1949) and #252 (1958):

Number 1135: The Panther Woman

This story, credited by the Grand Comics Database to Ruben Moreira, and beautifully illustrated, is lacking something: a motive. It isn't told why the exotic beauty, Gora, dresses in a panther skin, and with her pet panthers, terrorizes a tea plantation. In the real world of 1948, when this was published in the giveaway comic, Buster Brown Comic Book #12, the locals in that area were having a revolution, kicking out those who had been colonizing them.

Ruben Moreira took over the Tarzan Sunday strips from Burne Hogarth in 1945, until Hogarth returned to the strip in '47. Moreira was a comic book journeyman, whose work in DC Comics was usually signed. My introduction to him was the "Roy Raymond, TV Detective" stories in Detective Comics. Moreira, who came from Puerto Rico as a child, returned in 1958, and his comic book career came to an end in 1962. He died in 1984 of cancer at age 61.