Number 759


"Yahooo Satan, onward!"


Recently we featured the Lone Ranger, now a Lone Ranger wannabe.

Brave Black Rider is secretly spectacle-wearing, weak, cowardly Dr. Masters, despised as a man, accepted as a doctor by the same folks who admire and appreciate his alter ego. Ah, the world of comic books, where saving lives is something a weakling would do, while a lightning draw and good aim are the signs of a real man.

Maybe they'd like Doc Masters more if they knew that as a youngster he was the Cactus Kid, a stone killer avenging the loss of his parents by bad guys. He gunned down the ones who needed killing, and was given a full pardon by a judge and sent on to medical school to do some "curin'" after all that killin'.

"Yahooo, Satan! Onward!" is Black Rider's version of "Hi yo, Silver! Away!" Satan has been trained by Doc to act like a "broken down cayuse." So he has a secret identity, also. Black Rider is Zorro and the Lone Ranger all in one. This is his origin from Black Rider #10, 1950.

The Atlas Tales website says the cover and splash panel are by Joe Maneely, and the rest of the art chores are by Maneely and Syd Shores.











In the story I saw the word "palaver," which isn't the first time I've seen it in a Western comic. I've never heard it used in normal speech by any human being, unless it was in a movie I've forgotten, so I looked it up in the dictionary. It's "idle chatter, talk intended to beguile or charm." It also means to "flatter or cajole." Huh. I've been palaverin' all my life, I just didn't know it.

Number 758


Doc Weiner and CSI 1951


According to the Grand Comics Database, "Seek the Strangler," from Crime Fighting Detective #14, March 1951, is drawn by L. B. Cole.

This is an entertaining 11-page story featuring the work of a New York serologist and bacteriolist, Dr. Alex Weiner, helping build a conviction in a strangler murder. I have no idea how much of this story is true. The science part sounds legitimate. Forensics shows are really popular on television right now. I can think of several, three of which are in the CSI franchise. Like "Seek the Strangler" they feature science, but also morbid murder.

Dr. Wertham might be thrilled to know this, but just as he claimed children were using crime comics to learn how to be criminals, so are some TV viewers using forensics shows for instruction on how to get away with crime.

Number 757


Curt Swan's horror comics!


If you don't know Curt Swan's work at DC, then you probably didn't follow the Superman line of comics for decades, where Swan was a star. His work stood out. He was an artist who came into comic books after World War II, drawing Boy Commandos stories. Later he drew Superboy and Jimmy Olsen, and then became the Superman artist. He worked mainly as a penciler, and just about every guy who wielded a brush for DC inked his pages.

In the early '50s Swan did these "horror" comics for DC's House of Mystery. DC's technique was to make it look like a horror comic, while the stories ended up with non-supernatural denouements. To be honest, the rational explanations to the mysteries in these four tales, all from 1952, are almost harder to believe than if they'd given a supernatural reason for the goings-on. "The House Where Evil Lived" is from House of Mystery #3, and was inked by Stan Kaye. "The Tell Tale Hand" appeared in HOM #6, inked by George Klein. "The Devil Was My Partner" came from the same issue, but GCD didn't identify the inker. "The Grim Jester," inked by Ray Burnley, is from HOM #8.

Swan, born in 1920, died in 1996.