Number 2471: Little Men

Dick Rockwell was an artist who worked in comic books after World War II. I have seen his work in Charles Biro’s crime and Western comics. He apparently stopped at Atlas/ Marvel long enough to do some work, including this story, “The Little Men.” Biographies of Rockwell always mention that he was the nephew of Norman Rockwell, one of the best known American illustrators of the 20th century.

In “The Little Men” Dick Rockwell used his uncle’s working method, taking photographs as the basis for his drawings. The story is fantasy, not a horror story, and features a nagging wife, one of the clichés of days gone by. My sympathies are with the wife in this story. 

The last work I saw from Dick Rockwell was when he took over the Steve Canyon comic strip after Milton Caniff’s death. I found out he had been Caniff’s assistant for 35 years. Telling a story on his famous uncle, he said Norman Rockwell didn’t mind him so much working for Milton Caniff, but Uncle Norman had a problem with Caniff signing drawings that Dick Rockwell did. Alas, that is the nature of the comic strip business. Dick Rockwell also did courtroom sketches for years. I assume he got credit for them.

From Suspense #9 (1951):

Number 2249: You’d have to be crazy not to like horror comics

 I have a couple of cute horror stories from 1950s Atlas Comics. “Cute horror” may sound like an oxymoron, but these have a light tone, and are also amusing.

I love stories from comic books that are about comic books; artists, editors, anything that makes me feel I am getting a look inside the busy atmosphere of a comic book publishing company. In “Raving Maniac” from Suspense #29 (1953), drawn by Joe Maneely, an irate critic of comics invades the office to complain about showing monsters, and the editor refutes his criticism. Frankly, if this is a poke at those who were publicly criticizing comic books at the time, then it would bounce off any comic book hater. As I have found out, it is nearly impossible to get past a prejudice with examples, facts, or even humor. Whoever wrote the story was preaching to the choir about comics; no one who hated them would be dissuaded from their hatred. They might also be upset about how the title is a pun on the resolution of the story, “Raving Maniac.”

I showed Stan Lee and Joe Sinnott’s “The Witch in the Woods” in a blog post from 2007, so I made some new scans. It is a funny story about a dad angry with his son for reading comic books when he should be reading “good” books, like Grimm’s Fairy Tales. I always thought “Hansel and Gretel” was a gruesome story, not that it bothered me. My mother regretted taking me to a puppet version of it when I was six or seven. Like the story, she didn’t think fare that included parents abandoning their children in the woods and having a cannibal witch was wholesome enough for me. Ha-ha. Little did she know how bent I was toward this sort of horror, even at such an early age.

From Menace #7 (1953):

Number 2242: You dirty rats!

I have been called a rat before, mostly by girls when I was still a teenager, but I never chose to be a rat. You see, according to “Men With Fangs!” this is how rat men come to be: They have to agree to join the league of rat men. And as the rat who moans that it is hard to get new converts explains, “It is so hard to get a human’s consent!” I have no difficulty believing that, even if the rest of the tale seems beyond far-fetched.

The ratty story is from Atlas Comics’ Suspense #25, and is drawn by Joe Sinnott.

Number 2222: Bill Everett brings murder under the big top

“The Great Felix,” drawn by Bill Everett, is a superb example of how Everett could tell a story. It also shows how good his drawing was. Some other artists might have tried to cheat to save time and need for reference by not showing as much of the circus or its atmosphere, but Everett didn’t cut corners or fake it.

Felix is described as “ugly and short” and his beautiful wife is tall, blonde and beautiful. And when an ugly guy has a beautiful wife you know which way the story is going to go. Jealousy has one solution in a horror comic: murder.

Rival publisher EC Comics used this type of story more than once. Their resident circus and carnival artist was Graham “Ghastly” Ingels. Go down the page to the link with scans of the original art for such a tale.

“The Great Felix” appeared in Atlas’ Suspense #6 (1951).

A noirish circus story of sex and adultery by Ghastly Ingels. Just click on the thumbnail.

Number 2175: Commie spy and Yankee robot

Those sneaky communists! The Russians send a spy to infiltrate some top secret American military secret stuff involving robots with artificial intelligence. The spy’s name is Joe Stalinov, and that familiar sounding name doesn’t cause any concern for the Americans. As a matter of fact, they hire Joe the spy as an engineer to work on the robot project.

Americans act dumb in this story. We have been hearing for a while about Russian interference in the American elections. It isn’t so hard to do if we make it easy for them. That’s what I think of them for falling for Stalinov’s story. I give one guy, Jon, credit. He doesn’t like Stalinov because “he looks too foreign.” Normally I’d shout, “Discrimination!”  —  but Jon is intuitive, and seems to be the only smart one in the room.

Bill Everett, a smart artist, did “I Deal in Murder!” for Atlas Comics' Suspense #6 (1951).

Number 2030: Pretty ugly!

Two stories from Atlas Comics’ Suspense: “Skin Deep” followed “The Ugly Man” in issue number 23 (1952).

Both stories use ugliness as a sign of villainy. In the first it builds to a jokey punch line based on a cliché, and in the second, the ugly people are proud of their ugliness. Stan Lee is credited with “The Ugly Man,” and there are no guesses at Atlastales.com or the Grand Comics Database for the writer of “Skin Deep.” Typical of most horror comics, the stories are constructed to punish someone for their sins; in this case vanity. The artwork on both is superb. Artwise, this is a good issue of Suspense. “The Ugly Man“ is drawn by Joe Maneely, and “Skin Deep” is unsigned, but credited to Syd Shores with a guess for Mort Lawrence as the inker.