Number 1717: Ditko at ACG: the familiar style under the ink

Sal Trapani (1927-1999), an artist who worked for Charlton, Dell and ACG toward the end of that comic book line, would hire ghost artists to pencil his stories, which he would ink. Among others he used his brother-in-law, Dick Giordano, and also his Charlton comrade, Steve Ditko. Trapani’s inking is pretty heavy, and can submerge some pencillers, but not Ditko. I believe Trapani’s work appeared at ACG under his name originally, even with Ditko’s pencils, and then later Ditko got credit. That is at least the way it is credited in this tepid tale, “I Never Had So Much Fun In My Life!” Ditko’s art is what is interesting in the story, which storywise is ACG 101: A wimpish guy with a funny name goes through life as a shlub, then something comes up to make him extraordinary.

[SPOILER ALERT]Does anyone else notice that the football game in which he intercedes is won unfairly, if not illegally? I’m not sure there is an actual rule in football that precludes the supernatural help in a sporting event (otherwise, why would so many athletes be making a public show of praying before or during a game?) but it sure seems unfair to me. I am not an athlete (one of the attributes never ascribed to me would be “athletic”) but when I watch a sporting event I’d rather see a team or athlete lose honestly than win by cheating.[END SPOILER]

From Unknown Worlds #54 (1966):

Number 978


Flying Saucer Day at Pappy's


Today marks the 64th anniversary of the headline in the Roswell (New Mexico) Daily Record, which claimed the Air Force had recovered a crashed flying disk. The story was quickly retracted, but the story has blossomed into something that has a life of its own, still causing discussion over six decades later.


At some point aliens from space were said to have been recovered from the crash site, so our postings today feature little alien guys.

First up we have Swift Morgan, scanned from the 1954 Spaceways annual from the UK. The writer/artist is famed British illustrator Denis McLoughlin. Since I know little about this artist, due to the paucity of information on this side of the Atlantic about comics from the UK, I've included a link to the Wikipedia entry on McLoughlin, who died in 2002. Even though the annual with the story is dated 1954, according to sources the story itself comes from 1949, and is an early entry in the comic book flying saucer mythos.

More aliens, this time white and not gray, come from Dell's Flying Saucers #1, 1967. There were several UFO "flaps" around that time, and interest was high. These three stories appear to have been coordinated to make the aliens look like one species. The tales themselves, while part of UFO lore, are a bit suspicious as to their credibility. I'll leave that to you to determine. As for me, I'm a skeptic, but even so, I love the iconography and images of flying saucers, and have all my life.

The stories are drawn by José Delbo, Sam Glanzman and Sal Trapani.