Number 2439: “I can shoot faster than you can slit throats!”

I saw a picture of a crime comics cover years ago, and the title stuck in my head: Seven Dead Men. It is an intriguing title, but what got my attention was the garish cover lettering.It was another example of a comic book fighting to command attention on newsstands, and probably succeeding. It came out in 1948, which was the year that newsstands saw an onslaught of crime comics. 

I didn’t see the actual comic until much later. The title is officially Complete Mystery #1, in small print. It is a private eye story; a tale of some hidden stolen loot and some gangsters getting bumped off by a guy looking for that loot. 

Best information on the creators are from Dr Michael J Vassallo, who knows more about the magazine and comic book empire of publisher Martin Goodman than anyone. In the Grand Comics Database he says that it is Gene Colan’s pencil art with an unknown inker, and script by Stan Lee. There are no credits for either the short “Tommy Tyme” story or the U.S. Post Office's requirement for two pages of text material, “The Stuffed Rubber.”

 I showed the lead story in 2014. These are new scans of the entire book.

Number 2297: Angel flying too close to the ground

Although his status was as a filler superhero, and never a star, going back to Marvel Comics #1 (1939), the Angel was featured in several Timely Comics of the 1940s. The character was created by Paul Gustavson, who went on to Quality Comics, and is considered one of the better comic book artists of that early period. At first the Angel had no secret identity, and nothing to identify why he was in such a gaudy costume.

From Don Markstein's Toonopedia:

“[The Angel] did have a secret identity, private detective Tom Halloway. A text page written by Ray Gill (who also has credits at Lev Gleason, Novelty Press and elsewhere) in Marvel Mystery Comics (as Marvel Comics had been re-titled with its second issue) #20 (June, 1941) gave his background. Halloway's mother had died in childbirth and his father, a prison warden, had raised him in the prison, isolated from outside human contact except for the experts the warden brought in to teach the boy everything there was to know — successfully, it appears, as his range of knowledge sometimes seems to have rivaled that of The Junior Woodchucks' Guide Book.”

I chose this particular story because it is more gruesome than usual (reflecting the kind of mood I am in as I write this). A man has a rare disease, needs constant blood supplies to keep him alive, so when the hospitals can’t help him anymore he kills people and takes their blood. (I have a question about blood types, which the story does not address.) In one panel we have a scene which would have been right at home a decade later in Dr Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent. Human corpses on meat hooks in a slaughter house! Yow.

From Marvel Mystery Comics #30 (1942). No writer or artist is listed by the Grand Comics Database.

Number 2246: “Ripped from today’s headlines”

Reading this Black Rider episode, published in 1951, is like reading this morning’s newspaper: Unwanted sexual attention and assault, scapegoating an emigrant, and rich man using his power for nefarious deeds. Of course those problems have been around for the history of humankind, but it doesn’t make “The Strange Man” seem any less relevant. Being a comic book story, though, means the problems are solved in nine pages by a masked vigilante.

Black Rider stories used the comic book template, featuring a disguised hero. In this case Black Rider is the secret identity of town physician, Dr Masters.

It is well drawn, as per the Grand Comics Database, penciled by Al Hartley and inked by Jay Scott Pike. If pretty, sexy females were needed at the company that eventually became Marvel Comics, they weren’t drawn any better than by those artists, in this case working together. The story is credited to Robert Bernstein, a writer who worked in comic books for decades.

From Black Rider #13 (1951):