Number 1882: A well staked-out tale

“Vampire Moon,” from Suspense Comics #2 (1944), has a familiar ring. You have probably heard the story on which it is based, that of the young girl who goes to the grave of a recently deceased girl. To prove she has been there she drives a stake into the grave. (You can read it on this page of urban legend synopses as “Graveyard Wager”.)

The story in its original version may be the first so-called urban legend I remember hearing. It is fun for me to identify the basis of any fiction, urban legend or not.

Artwork is by John Giunta, a comic book journeyman from the forties who worked into the sixties.

Number 1367: Three from Suspense

I've taken three stories from Suspense Comics, a title which lasted for 12 issues in the forties, because they remind me of old radio shows or B-movies. And why not? That’s what the people reading comic books were doing for entertainment in those days. (Those poor deprived citizens, with so few distractions in their daily lives. Unlike today, of course, where our whole lives seem lived for distractions. Ah. But I digress.)

The cover of this issue is by L. B. Cole. The stories are drawn by comic book journeymen John Giunta, George Appel, and Don Rico.

From Suspense Comics #6 (1944):

Earlier this year I showed a couple of stories from this issue by the fine artist/WPA muralist turned cartoonist, Louis Ferstadt. Click on the picture to see that posting:

Number 1314: Putting the ‘artist’ in comic book artist

Louis Goodman (Lou) Ferstadt was a comic artist of the 1940s, whose style was a mixture of the cartoonish and the serious. Ferstadt was born in Ukraine in 1900, but came to the U.S. and worked as an artist his entire life. Comic books were his business after working in advertising and as a muralist for the Federal Arts Project department of the WPA (Works Progress Administration) a Federal program of the 1930s to provide work for the longterm unemployed.

This 1939 photograph shows him in front of one of his works.

 Ferstadt worked for various comic book companies and comic shops, and for a time had his own shop. One of his studio members was a young Harvey Kurtzman. Ferstadt also provided a comic strip for the Communist Party USA newspaper, The Daily Worker. He died in 1954.

Here are two examples of his work on comics from the mid-'40s. They're from Suspense Comics #6 (1944) and #8 (1945) respectively. Based on his photograph, you think Lou Ferstadt may have used himself as the model for the “Doctor of Doom”..?