Number 777

Bill Cosmo and the plutonium pile

Future World Comics lasted two issues in 1946. It was an attempt to make entertainment out of real life science, and the world of possibilities imagined during and after the war. Atomic energy had been the stuff of science fiction until the reality of it was proven in 1945. The Bill Cosmo story from Future World Comics #1, drawn by comic book veteran Ben Thompson, is followed up by a short feature with Bill Cosmo on how atomic energy works. A couple of other stories in the issue use the same technique: "How the proximity fuze works" and "How radar works."

Several publishers, including Maxwell C. Gaines of All-American Comics and then EC Comics, had the idea that comic books could be educational. There were a lot of educational comics published over the years, mostly giveaway comics. Commercial success with educational material was a little tougher to achieve. Kids could sniff them out. I believe that given the choice of buying Action Comics or any other wholly fictional title, and an educational comic book, most kids would choose the former.

Number 776

The point of the Arrowhead

Arrowhead, an Atlas comic drawn for four issues by Joe Sinnott in 1954, makes the lead character sympathetic. Native Americans just weren't treated well in popular media for a couple of hundred years, so I find this kind of refreshing. That's not to say there isn't melodrama, because there's that a'plenty. Arrowhead is on a quest to kick white men's asses, even though among with the usual bigots there are a few decent ones. He finds a family of good white folks in the second story below.

I showed the first Arrowhead story in Pappy's #573. These two stories make up the balance of Arrowhead's adventures in issue #1.

Number 775


Gothic Ghastly


Brrrrr. On a hot July day there's a chill running down my spine. It's from looking at the original "Ghastly" Graham Ingels artwork for "A Sucker For A Spider," published in Tales From the Crypt #29, 1952.

Yes, I know this is a formula EC Comics story, where the murderer is ironically dispatched the same way as his victim. But what lifts it above the ordinary plot is the art, which is deep in the gothic tradition of dark shadows, an old house, overgrown vegetation. It adds to the creepiness if you're afraid of spiders.

...and you are afraid of spiders, aren't you...?

I got these scans from Heritage Auctions, Original art shows close up how Ingels did his atmospheric work. Consider the large, scary spiders in several panels. Or page 5, panel 4, with a cinematic shadow cast through a doorway. On the last page white paint is used effectively to render the terrifying image of a man bound up by the web of a giant spider.

It's all just so...Ghastly.

Number 774


Ritzy Fritzi


August 10 is the publication date for another of Craig Yoe's great books, this time a compilation of Ernie Bushmiller's Fritzi Ritz. Fritzi is aunt to Nancy, who was introduced into the strip and eventually took it over. Not in my heart, though. For me, it's all about Fritzi.

Despite my love for the girl, I only have a couple of all-Fritzi comics in my collection, including this raggedy United Comics #13, from 1950. These are the Fritzi strips from that issue. Cartoonist Ernie Bushmiller didn't do much intellectualizing when it came to humor. It's all out there for easy reading and getting the joke. His jokes are full of pretty girls, dumb guys, cornball domestic situations, yet it all works, and he did it for decades.

I did a posting of classic Fritzi covers in Pappy's #115, April 2007.

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Consider Fritzi's niece, Nancy, who has been 8-years-old since World War II! No wonder she's frustrated. Nancy is a woman in a child's body, never allowed to come out.