Number 1460: The Phantom Ladies

A week ago I showed a story drawn by Frank Borth, and I included the splash panel for his first Phantom Lady story in Police Comics #17 (1943). I have that story today, and you can see what a superb artist Borth was, one of the top-notch talents at Quality Comics. The story, though, is filler; a bit of fluff.

The Phantom Lady, who is Sandra Knight, has a beau named Don, who doesn’t have a lot to do in that first story. He appears again in our second story from Phantom Lady #22 (1949). I don’t know why Phantom Lady, still Sandra Knight, moved from Quality to Fox Features and got a new costume. I assume the reason no one notices Phantom Lady is Sandra is because in those sexy costumes no one is looking at her face.

Sandra’s boyfriend, Don, is back in “The Case of the Robbing Robot,” with more to do in this story. He gets to dress in drag. The story has some humor to it, and is drawn by Jack Kamen in his pre-EC days.

Number 1459: Shelly’s Hawkman

Sheldon Moldoff did the Hawkman feature for Flash Comics as on-the-job training. He started at age 18, and like many of his peers in those early days of comic books he swiped Flash Gordon poses.

I think the artist who created the costume (Dennis Neville?) put all of the subsequent Hawkman artists in a bind, because drawing him with the hawk head and wings was difficult and unwieldy. Years later the golden age Hawkman was given a superhero mask, but those wings remained.* I think an interesting critique of the Hawkman costume** is from 2011, by a commenter going by the name “meltdownclown” for Booksteve Thompson’s Four Color Shadows blog:

“To me, the wings always looked like rugs.

The wings will always be Hawkman's big problem. Those don't-try-it-at-home-kids nightmares are anchored to the center of his back by a harness that, by rights, should carve him into quarters in the first hard crosswind. And they must be great fun in any narrow space.”

You can see the 1942 story meltdownclown was commenting on in Steve’s blog here.

My post today is from Flash Comics #38 (1943):

*The original costume, hawk head and all, was resurrected by Joe Kubert for the silver age revival.

**Considering we’re talking about a comic book character, and in comic books all rules of realism can be broken.

Number 1458: “It’s a G-G-G-GHOST!”

Even before I was old enough for school Mom used to buy me comic books because I always went to them when we visited the drugstore. I demanded them. Mom was aware of criticisms of comic books and steered me away from the crime and horror. She looked over the racks, carefully, before picking out comics like Donald Duck, Little Lulu, Popeye, Felix the Cat, or even, as today, Casper the Friendly Ghost. I remember it because Mom worried it might scare me. Ha! My guess is that Mom picked out comics with characters she was familiar with from the animated cartoons shown in theaters.

The early Casper comic book was more like the one-gag animated cartoons, with their “It’s a G-G-G-GHOST!” I don’t know who drew it, but the first story has the initials TAM in the splash panel.

These two stories are from Casper the Friendly Ghost #4 (1951), published by St. John.

Number 1457: The cost to be the boss: Terry and the Pirates #5

The boyhood adventures of Terry Lee in China continue with Harvey Comics’ Terry and the Pirates #5 (1947), by Milton Caniff.

Terry and Connie accompany a badly wounded Pat Ryan downriver to a hospital owned by a trading company. Intrigue and squabbles accompany Pat’s recuperation, as a new boss takes over the company. Mr. Sandhurst is not only aristocratic — better than the “English and American beachcombers on the payroll” — but also indifferent to the plight of the indigenous population. Oh, and Mr. Sandhurst is an extremely jealous husband to his young and pretty wife, who has a history with Pat.

**********

You can read the first two parts of this continuing adventure here. Just click the covers.