Number 105

Goofing On Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon was such a well-known comic strip and movie serial that it was a good target for parody.

Mad did the best parody of all with Wally Wood's excellent "Flesh Garden!"

In Humbug #10, 1958, the next-to-last issue, fellow Mad artist, Jack Davis, took on the job of rendering a parody of Flash as a Russian commissar. In this case Flash is used as a satire on the Soviet Union during the Sputnik era.

Click on images for full-size pages.

Mel Keefer is an artist who has worked in many fields, comic strips, animation, and on this strip from Drag Cartoons #2, December 1963, where he does a goof on not only Flash Gordon, but Buck Rogers and drag racing.

The Keefer strip is scanned from the magazine. I love the color overlays. The Davis artwork is from a photocopy, tweaked with my CompuPic software. I'm sorry it isn't as good as it would be if I'd scanned from the original magazine. The use of a lookalike Cyrillic alphabet for the lettering is a stroke of genius on somebody's part, most likely writer/editor Harvey Kurtzman.

Number 104


Frankenstein Friday: Frankenstein Covers

Frankenstein's monster has appeared in so many places it's hard to just pick a representative sample. With this Frankenstein Friday I've gotten away from my original intent of showing you a Frankenstein monster solely from Golden Age comics, but I like these particular covers, either for their historical, artistic or novelty interest.

Classics Comics #26 was definitely a classic. One of my favorite of the early Classics Comics issues, this Frankenstein was drawn by R.H. Webb and Ann Brewster, who also did the interiors. The issue was commissioned from the S.M. "Jerry" Iger comic book shop.
The painted cover version, which came along some years later when Classics Comics became Classics Illustrated, is by illustrator Norman Saunders. Does anyone else share my opinion that Saunders may have used an African-American as a model for this cover?

In the early 1970s Marvel Comics came out with their own version of the Frankenstein legend, this time drawn by Mike Ploog, one of the best of Marvel's 1970's monster comics' artists. I'm showing the first three issues so you can see the change in the image of the character. The monster on issue #1 is very different from the visualization on the cover of issue #3. I like Basil Rathbone doing the "It's alive!" shout, done by Colin Clive in the 1932 movie.


This issue of Famous Monsters Of Filmland from 1963 has a particularly nice colorized cover, using a still from The Bride Of Frankenstein.
 
 Illustrator Sam Viviano does this funny take on Grant Wood's American Gothic from Thrills & Chills #2 in 1994. Thrills & Chills was a fun magazine published by Scholastic for a dozen-and-a-half issues or so.

It isn't a comic book, although they published a couple of pages of comics in later issues. It was published during the time that R. L. Stine's Goosebumps series was very popular. There were a couple of issues with the Monster on the cover, but this is my favorite.

Number 103


The True Story Of John Dillinger


The word "true" in the title of this story is a relative term. There was a man named John Dillinger; he robbed banks with a gang; he escaped from prison; he died in a shootout on a Chicago street. Everything else in this story, from Crime Does Not Pay #45, May 1946, is a comic book fantasy.

In this story most of Dillinger's career is glossed over in favor of a couple of anecdotes. One is an often debated version of how Dillinger escaped from prison with a wooden gun. Some think it was a real gun, smuggled in by a bribed guard, and some think it was a fake gun, also smuggled in. The panels showing Dillinger carving the gun with a big knife are laughable. If he had a knife that big he wouldn't have needed a gun. And if a fake gun had been smuggled in, why not just smuggle in a real gun? The whole story sounds good, but starts to fall apart under examination.

The FBI is only mentioned once, and that's at the point of Dillinger's death near Chicago's Biograph Theater in 1934. It was actually an FBI stake-out. What Dillinger unwittingly did was help to create the modern FBI. The whole story is told well in the book, Public Enemies by Bryan Burrough. Through a lot of bumbling and missteps the FBI learned from its mistakes in tracking the criminal gangs that were roaming free in the Midwest. Those gangs, of whom Dillinger's was the most famous, brought about sweeping changes in law enforcement on a national basis. Up to that point most crimes, no matter how big, were handled by the states and local authorities, even when they were out of their league.

The art in "The True Story Of John Dillinger" is by Bob Q. Siege. The story follows the usual crime comics formula, which shows the criminal in action up until almost the last panel when he dies. It also has the requisite cops-getting-shot panels. In the case of the real Dillinger gang, cops did get killed, as did innocent citizens. The story also features the annoying character, Mr. Crime, who reminds us of the old-time advertising character from the Sunday funnies, Mr. Coffee Nerves.

The crime wave of the early 1930s, which included criminals and gangs like the Barrow Gang (Bonnie and Clyde), the Barker Gang (the Barker brothers and Alvin Karpis), Baby Face Nelson, who was also a member of the Dillinger crowd at times, Pretty Boy Floyd, et al., were holdovers from the Wild West. The crooks didn't ride horses, they rode in cars with horsepower. Besides old-fashioned six-shooters they used modern weaponry, with the Thompson submachine gun being a favorite. They often outran, outgunned and outwitted the rural police forces they encountered. Dillinger and his cohorts escaped capture more than once in bloody shootouts with the police and FBI. All of this captured the public imagination and was big news in the press. But they were really just murdering thugs with no respect for anyone else. They were a continuation of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, the James Gang, Billy The Kid and the rest of the criminal cretins who were given stature by the media of the time; stature that in real life they didn't deserve.

Number 102

EC: Adultery That's Out Of This World!


"The Space Suitors," appeared in EC Comics' Shock Suspenstories #11, October-November 1953. My first take on this issue was in Pappy's #99.

This story, in its short six pages, embodies everything that EC's science fiction and horror comics are remembered for: great art, sex, and gruesome dead bodies. The art is by longtime fan favorite Reed Crandall. He started his career early in the history of comics, doing Blackhawk for many years before moving to EC. In my opinion his artwork took on an air of sophistication as well as inspiration when he was given his editorial freedom to draw it how he saw fit. Crandall could draw anything, and draw it well. If he had a weakness it was that his characters often looked posed, almost like statues. He didn't have the fluidity of movement in his artwork that Jack Davis did, but he more than made up for it in the mood his drawings could bring to a story.

The story plot is EC 101: Guy falls in love with other man's wife, wife and lover plot to kill husband (didn't anyone in EC Comics ever hear of a divorce?), they kill the spouse, and the adulterous couple get the tables turned on them, usually in a most horrible fashion.

In this case we have a futuristic science fiction setting. Lots of things in the future look more modern, but the old standbys of human nature, sex and jealousy, haven't changed. Milt is the cuckolded husband, being two-timed by his partner Don and his cheating wife, Wanda. The story begins in the present, right after Milt finds out that Don's claims of a uranium-rich strike on an asteroid have been a lie, that he's been lured there to be killed.

Click on pictures for full-size images.

Wanda is not only an adulterous wife, she's vindictive, too. Before he dies she wants Milt to know what's going to happen after he's dead. She and Don are going back to the spaceship to do the interstellar-bop! Milt, who's not as dumb as Wanda and Don think he is, tells them he has known for some time about them. Well, let's hope a guy who is able to get rich has some smarts about him.

The story moves into flashback, as we find out when Don and Wanda meet they are instantly attracted. Since this is only a six-pager they have to get it on quick, which is represented by a panel of Wanda telling Don how she's hot for his body, and him indicating he has "a plan."

Back in the present on the asteroid, when Milt realizes he's going to be killed, he tells them what will happen if they kill him.

Milt and Wanda have a quick discussion and decide he's bluffing. So Don shoots Milt with his deluxe-looking Rocket Ranger gun, or whatever that contraption is that's in his hand. It actually looks more like a paint sprayer. But this is where comic book coloring comes in handy. Colorist Marie Severin colored the whole hand and gun scarlet red: red for blood, red for danger, red for sex. Even without seeing any projectile or ray from the barrel of the gun, we see Milt has been hit. This is a particularly effective panel.

But Milt wasn't bluffing! He hit the toggle as he died and the rocket ship took off, leaving Don and Wanda staring at each other in shock and horror. Oops! Honey, we screwed up! The next panel is a classic: Milt's "bloated, ruptured face," looking like a tomato dropped on the floor. I'm showing you this in color from the printed comic and in black and white from the Russ Cochran deluxe set of Shock Suspenstories. Once again the coloring by Marie Severin has heightened the shock value of this panel, although even without the color Reed Crandall's inspired drawing has created a terrifying and gruesome portrait of a dead man.

The last panel repeats the "bloated, ruptured" theme, as the lovers die with their hands outside the protection of their space suits. Space suitors, get it? A great play on words.


In the Grant Geissman book, Tales Of Terror, the story is credited to the publisher/editor team of Bill Gaines and Al Feldstein. It isn't a complicated story at all. As a matter of fact, it seems almost cookie-cutter in its set-up. It's the visuals that make it stand out. In lesser artistic hands it wouldn't have the ability to shock like it does.

The panel of poor Milt's crushed-tomato face might have been the catalyst to make my younger brother, with rare exception,* never again look at EC Comics. He was about 10-years-old when he saw it. I remember when I first saw it getting that feeling of seeing a dead animal on the road with its entrails splattered over the pavement. But it didn't keep me from looking at EC Comics.

"The Space Suitors" wasn't the first or best horror/science fiction story EC published. But since it was in the first non-Mad EC Comic I ever read, has stayed in my mind for over 45 years. I can still get a jolt when I look at Crandall's superb and ghoulish drawings. It was the sort of thing that made EC great, but it was also the sort of thing that ultimately brought them down.

*This was the other panel my brother was upset by, from Tales From The Crypt #32. This story, drawn by the great Jack Davis, had a lot of humor, and the whole thing was a joke. A really sick joke.

Number 101


Frankenstein Friday: Steve Ditko's Mountain Monster


This is a Frankenstein story that at first glance looks traditional. It has the traditional look, the European setting, and it has the big monster. But without giving away the plot, I can say this story has two surprises: what the monster is, and what he becomes. Other than that, you're just going to have to read it.

The story came as one of two new stories in a book with two reprints, Fantastic Giants #1, September, 1966, published by Charlton Comics. It was an all-Ditko issue, reprinting two of his early '60s books, Konga #1, and Gorgo #1. I bought the original issues of those titles off the stands when they came out. At the time I was familiar with Ditko from the Charlton science fiction and mystery comics, and also from his short stories, back-ups for Jack Kirby's lead stories in the Atlas monster comics. I had even figured out that the name "Kodti," with which some Charlton stories and covers were signed, was an anagram of his name. Duh. That didn't take much brainpower, because Steve Ditko's work looks like no one else's. He never tried to draw in any other style but his.

The cover of this comic is especially enjoyable because of the unique caricature Ditko did of himself, plopped into the middle of the picture.


Even if this seems like heresy to some, I liked Ditko's work much better in the mystery and science fiction comics than I did as a super-hero artist. There wasn't anything wrong with his super-heroes, but it was in the anthology comics, the endless number of five-to-eight pagers he drew that I grew to appreciate him. Nowadays that's where my main interest is in Ditko's work.