Number 1198: Jet Powers and the big bad bug

We learn in the third and final Jet Powers story from Jet #1 (1950) that Jet is an environmental disaster. He not only uses the potent insecticide DDT but he carries around in his aerocar — a combination plane and space vehicle — a can of lead-based paint. Well, paint me red with lead and spray me with DDT...then call the Environmental Protection Agency.

But, of course, in 1950 both of these products were common and legal. DDT was taken off the market decades ago because it got into the food chain and killed more than the insects it was designed to kill, and we know that lead is bad stuff. But they didn't know that in 1950, and thank goodness for that, otherwise how would Jet Powers have figured to kill the big insect that is the advance bug for an alien invasion?

This is a re-scan of a story I showed years ago, drawn by Bob Powell. Other stories from Jet #1 were shown in Pappy's #1127 and Pappy's #1141.

Number 1197: Jess Jodloman — you axed for it!

I'm showing this five-pager from DC's Unexpected #176 (1976), because of the artwork of Jess Jodloman. Jodloman was one of the artists who were part of the Filipino invasion of the early '70s. Because they were already fully formed as artists when their work appeared in the States they stepped right in as total comics professionals. I visited a table at an early '80s San Diego Comicon with stacks of art by Filipino artists, all for the bargain price of $15 a page! I chose some of the best I could find, and page two of "What Haunted Herbert" was one of them.

Jodloman's busy brush inking style wasn't especially well served by DC's printing in the '70s. I saw a lower quality of printing at the time, where fine lines got broken up and details got muddy. I wish I could have afforded to buy more of the fantastic original Filipino artwork by Jodloman and the others I thought were also excellent artists. In retrospect, even at the time $15.00 wasn't much to pay for pages like this, but I was on a budget. Ah, to be rich, a one-percenter loose at a comic convention!

Number 1196: A is for Airboy, Zz is for Zzed

Zzed was a villain who fought Airboy more than once. This story is Zzed's first appearance.Zzed is an immortal who has been around a couple of thousand years. He cannot die until the world ends, an event he's trying to bring about. That's pretty heavy stuff!

Ernie Schroeder drew the stories Zzed appeared in. I've shown a two-part story featuring this character, which appeared a few months after this issue. In the bass-ackwards way things work in this blog, they are in Pappy's #1120 and Pappy's #1121.

From Airboy Comics Volume 6 Number 12, 1950:

Number 1194: The springboard from space

If you have the magazine page in front of you, as I do, it's easy to see where the idea for the cover story of Captain Marvel Jr #114 (1952) came from.

An illustration for the Association of American Railroads provided the inspiration. My copy of the ad is from the April 28, 1947 issue of Life magazine.Ideas have to come from somewhere. I think this ad, which might have come from a stack of magazines at the writer's house, was a springboard for a story.

The Grand Comics Database credits Bud Thompson with the cover, and Joe Certa with pencils and inks on “The Train That Traveled Through Space.”

Number 1193: Danger! Men at work

Pete Morisi and Don Heck met when they were both members of the Harvey Comics production department in the late forties. Both began their art careers in the Golden Age, and continued into the Silver Age.  Heck was doing fantasy and science fiction for Stan Lee at Marvel, and Morisi, by then a member of the New York Police Department who used the acronym PAM for his comic book work, had created and was writing and drawing Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt, for Charlton.

These two short stories, from 1953, are for the Comic Media title, Danger. At the time Morisi was also doing the Mike Hammer-style private eye, Johnny Dynamite, for Comic Media, while Heck was doing horror comics for the same publisher. Morisi used a clean, medium ink line, in contrast to Heck, who was then an acolyte of the Milton Caniff school of comic art illustration.

Morisi's story, “Marijuana,” shows that not much has changed in the illegal drug business in the past sixty years. “Hot Steel” is a boy meets steel mill, boy loses steel mill, boy finds steel mill kind of story.

Both are now gone. Heck died in 1995, Morisi in 2003.

From Danger #4 (1953):