Number 1724: Star Spangled robots

Today we begin a theme week I’m calling Deceased Comics Week. Postings will come from DC titles no longer being published. Like the other comic book publishers, DC (aka National Comics or Superman DC), published what sold, and if it didn’t they axed it and published something else. The public is fickle, fads come and go, including what comic books sold the most.

First up are two stories, both featuring robots, from Star Spangled Comics #36 (1944, published in an anthology format for 130 issues, from 1941 to 1952 ). The character, Robotman, masqueraded as a human. The feature was drawn by veteran cartoonist Jimmy Thompson. Thompson was a good artist, but in this case it appears he didn’t read the script. Creatures are thawed out of the ice, and the script says they are “mammoths” and ancestors of elephants, but Thompson drew dinosaurs.

The second story features one of the female patriotic heroes of the World War II era, Liberty Belle, created, written and drawn by Chuck Winter and Don Cameron. In the story an inventor creates robot soldiers. Liberty Belle makes a rah-rah speech about Nazi soldiers acting like robots, and that American men, superior because they fight for democracy, should fight. Not robots. Say what...? Modern robots, as we know, are useful in many industries as utility devices, designed to do critical but repetitive work. I would say that if robots could stand in for humans when bullets and bombs are flying, then we need robots, not humans, to take the brunt of the attack.

Number 1723: Frankenstein, “Oh, Lordy!! What a man!”

For a monster, finding girlfriends is always a problem. Not so with our familiar and funny Frankenstein, especially when the “girlfriends” are escaped prisoners, mutated by radiation.

Hey, he’s had worse.

I have been posting stories from Frankenstein #3 (1946) for a while. “Frankenstein and the Monsters” is another from that issue, drawn by Dick Briefer.

Number 1722: Dan Brand origin by Fox and Frazetta

Monday we had a Sandman story written by Gardner Fox, published in 1939. Now we have jumped into the Pappy Time Machine® and traveled 10 years into the future, to 1949. That was the year Gardner Fox wrote the origin of the frontier characters, Dan Brand and Tipi, for issue #1 of The Durango Kid.

In the origin Dan Brand was done wrong by Bradford, the jealous former swain of Brand’s bride-to-be, Lucy. Oops! Lucy is killed by Bradford! His bullet, meant for Dan Brand, shot her down. Brand chases Bradford but ends up but under the slashing claws of a bear. The story proceeds from there.

The Dan Brand stories, which were later reprinted by ME as White Indian, are collectible because of Frank Frazetta’s art, but also because the America of the pre-Revolutionary War days is an interesting time and place. It is for me, anyway.

From Durango Kid #2, also from 1949, the storyline continues, with Dan Brand consorting with Lieutenant George Washington. Yep, the father of our country, as he is often known, before he went up the ranks to General.

Special message from Pappy!

Readers, a few weeks ago a blogger contacted me about a web site selling t-shirts and coffee cups, using my blog name. For the record, and as I told him, I do not sell anything. I don’t lend the name of my blog to any profit making enterprise. In checking around by running my blog’s name through various search engines I came up with this unusual page:

I took this snapshot for my own use.

Clicking on the individual figures for sale leads me to different companies selling through eBay. I am assuming they are the same people using different names. It makes it hard to contact them to tell them not to use the name of my blog. I don’t know whether they also use other blog names to lure people in who may be looking for something on a search engine. It is a pretty cheesy ploy. The clumsy-sounding title, “Coverless Pappys Golden Age Blogzine” (“Coverless”!?) makes me think it might be some Asian company.

Whatever it is, I advise you readers not to patronize this or any seller who uses the name of this blog, confusing it for me.

Number 1721: “His guns bring sleep” — the original Sandman

There have been several incarnations of the Sandman in the past 75 years, all for DC Comics. This is the first, written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Bert Christman. It appeared in the giant  New York Worlds Fair Comics, in 1939.

According to information I have collected online about this story, it was the first Sandman to appear, although not the first drawn. That was published in Adventure Comics #40, which appeared a mere couple of weeks after the World’s Fair tie-in. The Sandman, Wesley Dodds, was yet another rich guy who went out and dispensed justice. The character, as with many early comic book characters of the era, was directly inspired by pulp magazines.

Christman was an obvious professional whose slick drawings were in the style of Milton Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates. He had drawn the Scorchy Smith newspaper strip for a time. His life and career were cut short by World War II. A volunteer member of the famous Flying Tigers, Christman was shot down over Burma and killed in January, 1942. A short biography of Christman is available at the online Warbird Forum.