Number 1513: Frankenstein makes his hobby pay

Dick Briefer, writer/artist of Frankenstein, shows a series of gags when our favorite funny monster presents his line of caskets in a coffin competition at the Mortician’s Convention (“We Undertake Anything!”). The comical comic story appeared in Frankenstein #6 (1947).

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Frankenstein #6 was a good issue. Here are a couple more stories. Just click on the thumbnails.

Number 1512: “Lemme love ya, Sally!”

Danger! Rape rears its ugly head in a love comic from the '50s. Dear Lonely Hearts #5 (1954) features not one, but two stories of what today we’d call date rape (or as close as you can get without having it happen). The writer(s) must’ve had a theme going here to warn girls and women that some guys don’t need a lot of stimulation to jump from gentlemen to rapists.

While Johnsie, the yokel of “Mountain Love” misunderstands Sally’s clothes and attitude as an invitation to intimacy, on the other hand Pierre, of “A Man Worth Loving” is an opportunist, looking for the first chance at Bobbie, at which he attempts to overwhelm her.

These are cautionary tales about not getting into bad situations. It’s too bad the message might not have taken with males, because we still have guys who refuse to believe that no means no, and in most cases there are no gallant gentlemen, as there are in these stories, to step in and prevent a serious crime.

Number 1511: Drawn into a life of crime!

“Murder, Morphine and Me” is a story that other blogs have already posted, but I can’t resist showing this incredible melodrama by Jack Cole. It’s from True Crime Comics #2 (1947). There’s a lot of plot and much shoot-em-up action for the mere 14 pages it takes to tell the story.

It’s also, as knowledgeable fans know, infamous for being included in Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham, M.D. with the above “injury-to-the-eye motif” panel. I repeat my assertion that in 1954 when SOTI was published many comic panels that Wertham showed were in comics long unavailable to the average reader, but it didn’t make any difference. The shock value was what he was going for, and the panel certainly had that.

In 1954 Jack Cole was making his transition from comic book artist to gag cartoonist (and a new found fame working for Hugh Hefner at Playboy). “Murder, Morphine and Me” probably wasn’t in his portfolio to be shown to art directors for the more sophisticated cartooning Cole became known for. But it is an indelible example of Jack Cole pulling out all the stops on a masterpiece of late forties comic book storytelling and excesses.

Number 1510: Turok and Andar and lost world fantasy

Turok and Andar, our Pre-Columbian Indian heroes, are men of their time period, and have weapons and skills of their time, primitive by our standards. The cavemen of the hidden valley, who might have been living there for centuries, have to be taught that simple technology. How did they survive in a world of giant predators, and how can men share space with dinosaurs, who predated them by many millions of years?

It is fiction so we just accept it. But cavemen and dinosaurs existing in a modern world, a lost world tale, was part of a genre of fantasy fiction. It may have been inspired in part by The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle's book was very popular, but the idea wasn't new even when Doyle wrote his work. I guess the fantasy goes to a longing on the part of people who want to see the ancient Earth and its wonders.

From Turok, Son of Stone #5 (1956), story by Gaylord DuBois, art attributed to Bob Correa with inks by John Celardo.

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More Turok. Just click the thumbnail.

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TUROK AS A DINOSAUR RAMBO:

A week after this post appeared I was in a dollar store and picked up a two-pack of comics in a plastic bag labeled Super Hero Comic Book Spectacular. I was interested because I saw one of the titles was Valiant’s Turok Dinosaur Hunter #2 (1993). (Coincidences of all types happen often to me, but I don’t usually mention them because it seems self-serving, but they do happen.)

When these comics came out originally in the early '90s I ignored them. I saw they were an attempt to take a good character and turn it into a modern equivalent with hyper-violence and other mayhem. What I see here is not the lithe pre-Columbian Indian hero of the Dell Comics title, but some sort of Rambo-type with long hair and a machine gun.

I’m not dismissing the talent behind the comic, because the illustrations are well done, and the writing is along the lines of what was popular at the time. Despite that when this came out is just about the time I abandoned superheroes I had grown up with, as they became comics that looked like this.

 (This sort of cliché, the talking-through-clenched-teeth panel, makes me think of superhero as rage-filled psychotic doing damage to dentition.)

According to the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide (the latest edition I have is #39), the new version of Turok had a fairly decent run until the late '90s, at which time it was gone again. I hope if someone else picks up the character they won’t do what Valiant did to the original concept, and that is to take the Turok who was a wise and strong hero in a strange world of prehistoric monsters, and turn him into a steroidal freak, looking like another type of monster.