Number 2472: The man with the magnetic personality

I imagine a 1940 Ace Publishing Company editorial conference on the creation of Super-Mystery Comics. Men smoking cigars, jackets off, wearing white shirts and suspenders to hold up their pants are kicking around ideas for superheroes. Someone says “a magnetic guy.” But what would be his origin? How did he get those magnetic powers? Well, who cares? It's a comic book, and they are flooding the market so let's get it out now and worry about the details later.

That is just from my imagination, but what I understand from Toonopedia is that Paul Chadwick, who created and wrote Secret Agent X pulp stories, also wrote the story of Magno, the Magnetic Man. Chadwick used as its basis a story he wrote in 1934 called “The Octopus of Crime,” starring Secret Agent X.

In future issues Magno got a boy named Davey to help him. In this first story Magno is alone, yet up to the task. The artist on the story is unidentified.

From Super-Mystery Comics Volume 1, Number 1 (1940):

Number 2465: Vulcan: Out of the fire and into more fire

The comic book character Vulcan (presumably no relation to Mr Spock from Star Trek) is found in the Public Domain Superheroes website: “A descendant of the Roman God of Fire who shares his name, Vulcan could control all forms of fire, flame, and heat. His powers also included flight, fire projection, super strength, and being virtually bulletproof (bullets always melted before they hit him).”

Vulcan was inside the volcano taking time to study and decide when to make his debut. He popped out of the volcano in costume, speaking English, ready to fight evil. He became active  in time to get to an American city and rescue a man on fire. The man turned out to work for the arson squad. Amazing coincidence, wouldn’t you say? That reminds me, I once thought Amazing Coincidence Comics would have been an apt title for an early comic book.

There are no credits in the Grand Comics Database for whomever did the writing or drawing. It is crude, especially the lettering. Vulcan lasted a little bit longer than some of the early superheroes, but not by much. His stories were in Super-Mystery Comics for 17 issues, and three issues of Four Favorites Comics, then someone put out the fire on this character.

Grand Comics Database leaves us with this tantalizing sentence: “Per information from the NY Superior Court hearing, Ace art director, Fred Gardener, stated that Patrick "Pat" Lamar's studio provided all of the artwork for this issue, as well as script, lettering, and coloring.” What Superior Court hearing, and why? And it is the first and only time I have seen any reference to Patrick Lamar’s studio, which is unknown to me, and another question mark.

Number 2053: Harvey Kurtzman "saw" R. Crumb before he was born.

A little bit of elementary math here: Harvey Kurtzman was born in October, 1924...so in late 1942 he would have been 18. He drew these two stories for Super-Mystery Comics Vol. 3 No. 4, which appeared with an April 1943 cover date. (I don’t need to explain, do I, that the cover date is the date a magazine goes off sale?) So say it appeared on the comic book racks in February, 1943. The stories were usually handed in several weeks early, before the magazine was printed, for coloring and production work.  “Hap Hazard,” has a startling caricature of what looks to be a person not yet born, cartoonist Robert Crumb. Depending on when Kurtzman drew this character, Crumb, who was born August 30, 1943, was either not yet conceived, or perhaps early in utero at the time Kurtzman was drawing pictures of him. Years later, of course,in the sixties, Kurtzman gave Crumb some of his first professional magazine work in Help! magazine.

Crumb with hat and glasses.

It is at very least an interesting coincidence.

Kurtzman’s early work lacks polish, but not earnestness. It is fun to look at the youthful drawings of someone I respect so much. He grew as an artist so that by the late forties his mature style was well on its way, and by the fifties firmly in place.

Although "Hap" isn’t signed, Jim Vadeboncoeur Jr credits it to Kurtzman.

Here is a link to some other early Kurtzman work. Just click on the thumbnail.

Number 1595: Aces up my sleeve

Today we begin a theme week, “Aces Up My Sleeve” week, featuring some very early (1940-41) stories from Ace Publications. Ace, a pulp publisher, entered the comics fray early on with the usual titles devoted to the usual superheroes. In the story today, Magno, the magnetic man.

What jumps out at me with this very early entry for Magno, from Super-Mystery #2 (1940), is not the Harry Lucey artwork, which is very good, but the eye-popping primary colors. Other publishers of the time also used bright colors (Quality and Fox come to mind), but I think this job rises above them, with its imaginative use of colors for an earth-boring machine (page 12). The colorist must have been having fun.