Number 2536: Doc and Nick

 

The Street & Smith publishing company was founded in 1855 by Francis Scott Street and Francis Shubael Smith. Over the years they published low cost periodicals and pulp magazines. The company did well for itself with characters like The Shadow, Doc Savage, and Nick Carter. Both The Shadow and Doc Savage were created in the Depression years of the 1930s, but Nick Carter was created in 1886. The Street and Smith comic book line was published from 1940-1949, featuring The Shadow, and in the case of today’s postings, stories featuring other famous characters, Nick Carter and Doc Savage. Besides the Shadow, Nick Carter also had a radio program, as you can see by the ads plopped into the story.

Despite the artwork of Bob Powell and his assistants, I think Street & Smith didn’t do much with Doc Savage and Nick Carter. I wonder if the writer who wrote the scripts even read any of the dime novels or pulp magazines featuring the two characters. 

These two stories, from Shadow Comics Volume 8, Number 9 (whole number 93, 1948) seem like filler, which is how I feel they were conceived. I like the robots in the Doc Savage story, and I like the girl who knows how to throw a punch in Nick Carter. Otherwise it doesn’t appear that Street & Smith was treating such legacy characters, whose dime novel and pulp magazine appearances had helped keep Street & Smith in business for years, with the respect they deserved. Oh well, I can imagine what someone in the editorial office probably said, “it’s only comic books, so who cares?”

 

Number 2479: Give the Shadow a great big hand!

How many old comic book plots go something like this: rich person gets a letter saying if he doesn’t come up with $$$ by midnight he will be killed. I am sure the plot wasn’t new when this Shadow story was published, but had probably been carried on from dime novels and pulp magazines, radio and B-movie mysteries. In the case from this story the guy who gets the extortion note has not given the cops (or the Shadow) much time before the deadly deadline would render him dead.

You may recall from a former Shadow posting for this blog that Walter Gibson, who did the Shadow pulp novels since their beginning, also did scripts for Shadow Comics. He was paid more because of his history with the character. I cannot believe he put a whole lot of thinking into this story, though. The huge skeleton hand is great visually, just not logically.

Artwork by Jack Binder. From Shadow Comics #21 (Volume 2 Number 9), 1942.

Number 2383: The Hooded Wasp and the human zoo

The author of this story must have been familiar with H.G. Wells’ novel, The Island of Dr Moreau, where animals are turned into “men.” The 1896 novel was made into a 1933 movie with Charles Laughton, Island of Lost Souls. The Hooded Wasp has a young protégé, Wasplet, who likes to dance jitterbug style with a girlfriend he has not yet kissed. “Sissy and unhygienic” is what he says about kissing. She is trying to get him to make out with her when both are kidnapped by a wildcat dressed like a human. The wildcat is a creature created by a mad scientist who is transforming people into animals for his human zoo.

Of the animals, my favorite is Beaver-man. If you want someone to gnaw a rope holding you prisoner, then Beaver-man is the guy to do it.

The story is signed by Jack Binder, but I am sure it is a job from Binder’s comic art shop; various artists, including Binder, worked on it. It’s from Shadow Comics Volume 2, Number 11 (whole number 23), 1943.

I showed another Hooded Wasp story last January. You can find it here.

Number 2379: Doc Savage and the television peril

When they came out in the 1960s I read many of the Doc Savage series of paperback reprints from the original pulp magazine novels. Doc was strictly human, but he had superhero-style attributes: smarter, stronger, tougher than his enemies. He had a group of guys who went along on most of his adventures, but later in the series the gang shrank to its two core members, Monk and Ham. I had never read any of the comic book stories published by the original Doc publisher, Street and Smith, although I remember picking up and reading some of the comic book versions published in the '70s.

Like most of the readers who came along with the Bantam paperbacks, I was used to seeing Doc as artist James Bama pictured him, in a torn khaki shirt and hair with a widow’s peak. This 1948 comic book version goes along with the original conception of Doc as readers saw him in the 1930s.

By the time “Television Peril” was published in 1948 Doc had about reached the end of his original pulp run, which ended in 1949. The story has a science fiction premise of a wannabe dictator using television as a means of transporting an army through TV sets. Television has a lot of power, and at times can be considered to do about as much damage as having enemy soldiers trooping through the set and into your living room.

In the story Doc’s retinue has shrunk down to Monk only. A redeeming feature of the story is that Bob Powell did the artwork.

From Shadow Comics Vol. 8, No. 11 (1948):

Number 2288: The Greatest Sinners of History

I think someone had a bad experience as a youth in Sunday School. The unknown writer, and possibly also the unknown artist of this story tell of evildoers who are all from the Bible: Judas, Cain...and of course, the devil, or Satan or Lucifer or whatever name you append to him. They are part of a group called The Greatest Sinners of History, who have come back to “kill all good and its champions,” including the Hooded Wasp. But, who is the Hooded Wasp, you ask? Well, I don't know because the usual places I go for info, Public Domain Super Heroes and Don Markstein’s Toonopedia don’t have him. Just from looking at this story, done by an unknown writer and equally unknown artist, Hooded Wasp hangs out with a girl named Honey Wasp and his young friend, Wasplet.

The story also brings up the concept of sin. The story’s bad guys are sinners. Sin is a religious idea. Some religions consider all human beings sinners. The only good thing about sin is that most of the religious sins are not illegal under the law. While I am trying to make my way through life during my time on Planet Earth, I am only worrying about things that might send me to jail, and the list of sins I have accrued so far don’t include any felonies...maybe a few misdemeanors, but I think the statute of limitations has expired on most, if not all, of them.

From Shadow Comics, #30 (formally numbered Volume 3 Number 6, 1943).