Number 2564: The Yellowjacket, bees, and a short history of Charlton comics

The blog TV Tropes, in an undated entry, gives a short history of Charlton, a low budget printer/publisher. Charlton’s printing presses had been used originally to print cereal boxes. Charlton cut corners by using plastic printing plates rather than standard metal plates. It operated on the cheap for its whole existence from 1935 to 1986, when it finally shut its doors (and retired its overworked printing presses.) Wikipedia describes the origin of the business by telling that John Santangelo Jr and Ed Levy met while in prison. Santangelo had been publishing song-lyric magazines, violating copyrights, and was sentenced to a year in prison. Levy was a lawyer, whose crime is not listed. They both had sons named Charles, which created their first company name, T.W.O. Charles Company, later changed to Charlton.

Charlton went into comic books in the '40s, and published Yellowjacket Comics, which featured an unusual hero, Yellowjacket, who could get bees to help him. Note: Yellowjacket was beaten to comic books by Red Bee, from Quality Comics. Also, as has been pointed out, a yellowjacket is not a bee, but a yellowjacket costume was bright yellow, and looked better in comic books printed using plastic printing plates.

From Yellowjacket Comics #5 (1945). Artwork, pencils only, attributed by the Grand Comics Database to Ken Battefield.

Number 2563: Pappy pimps “The Bottle Imp”

“The Bottle Imp” is a short story written in 1889 by Robert Louis Stevenson. I read the original story in high school and was impressed. The imp in a bottle can grant wishes, but if the owner of the bottle dies with it in his possession he will end up in hell for eternity. Or so it is said. From Stevenson’s original story, the man selling the Bottle Imp to the main character tells him, “. . . the glass of it was tempered in the flames of hell. The imp lives in it, and that is his shadow we behold there moving . . .” The way the buyer goes for it reminds me of stories of naïve country bumpkins, in the big city for the first time, buying the Golden Gate Bridge or lead bars painted gold. The difference is in this case the Bottle Imp is real.

The adaptation is from Classics Illustrated #116, published in 1954. Artwork is done by Lou Cameron, whose distinctive artwork is seen a lot in comics of the era.

 

Number 2562: Cat-Man needs 9 pages, not 9 lives

                                                                             

I have shown artwork before by comic book artist, Charles A. Quinlan. Then, as now, there isn’t much of a biography available except that Quinlan was born in 1901, so he was a bit older than many of his fellow artists. He worked in comic books from the early '40s until the '50s, and died a young man in 1953. (A young man by my measure, if not yours.)

I don’t know who wrote this Cat-Man story, but it has what I consider a major “this should never be done” flaw in the story. Cat-Man is featured on the cover, on the splash page, and then is dressed in his Army attire until the last page before being shown in action in his cat suit. So that leaves several pages for the readers who bought the comic book because of Cat-Man to look at the hero, not disguised as Cat-Man, but in an Army uniform.

Since everyone responsible is, to the best of my knowledge, now deceased, my criticism will never be seen by the long-ago editor or publisher, or the artist, but at least I got it off my chest.

From Cat-Man Comics #13 (1942):

 

Number 2561: When Cracked went MAD!

 

This is not a usual Pappy posting. It's about Cracked #11 (1959), which your old Pappy once owned, and then found again on the internet. I had a subscription to Cracked, and remember that whomever mailed it to subscribers rolled it up and wrapped paper around it, then hand wrote the name and address. Ugh! I hated it!

But despite that I was smitten with the issues that featured Jack Davis. Davis is amply represented in this issue. He did work for more than one issue of Cracked, but I don't believe he had more of his artwork than is found here.

Looking at the contents page and the artist listing, it is like a listing of EC artists: Will Elder, John Severin, and Jack Davis. There may be another non-EC artist somewhere among those guys, but for all intents and purposes it's an all-MAD issue.

Davis and Elder had both done work for the upscale magazine MAD, after the comic book MAD fell prey to EC going out of the color comic book business. Davis, in an interview I read years ago but remember, said after Harvey Kurtzman's Humbug flopped he recalled going back to MAD publisher William Gaines and asking for work, but Gaines said his artist roster was full. What? You mean he gave Davis the bum's rush? What nerve! Eventually whatever was keeping Davis from MAD softened and he became a MADman again.

I mention again that I found this issue online. It is not what survived for a short time of my copy of Cracked #11 after being rolled and sent through the U.S. Mail. That disappeared decades ago.