Number 376


Rocky X is stranger than strange!


Norm Maurer, who was a prolific comic book artist, was also a movie producer. In 1947 he married Moe Howard's daughter, Joan. Moe was one of the Three Stooges, and in the early '60s, after the Stooges shorts got popular on TV, Maurer put them back before the cameras for a popular series of feature films.

But before that Maurer had a comic book career for Charles Biro, and also with Joe Kubert at St. John's line of comics. He had a clean and appealiing style. I like this episode of Rocky X from Boy Comics #86 because of the (to me) nostalgic 1950's science fiction, space cadet-style of story, flying saucers and a great-looking tentacled monster. Too bad the story is continued and I don't have the follow-up episode, but you can guess it probably turns out OK for Rocky.

Maurer died in 1986.

Number 375


Nancy and Sluggo's weird world


Frank Young at the Stanley Stories Blog has some great analysis of individual stories by John Stanley. He hasn't gotten around yet to the Oona Goosepimple stories from Nancy comics of the late '50s. I believe they were inspired by Charles Addams' cartoons in the New Yorker magazine, but after using that inspiration, Stanley went strictly on his own. This is the last example of an Oona story I have, from Nancy #178, September-October 1960. It follows the formula set by earlier stories.

I'm also including a couple more stories from the same issue that I found funny and strange in their own ways. "The Sponsor's Message" at only four pages is a sharp satire on television advertising to children.

"A Trip To the Moon," starring Nancy's pal, Sluggo, is strange when viewed in a certain light. I'm sure Stanley meant it to be his take on the then-infant space program, and Sluggo, in his own way, outsmarting the egghead rocket scientists. I think you can also take it that this parentless child, who lives on his own and by his own wits, is being manipulated by a group of men. It's kind of creepy, really, if you think about it. It's probably better just to think about it from Stanley's comic 1960 perspective, which is the way I read it when I bought it new.

Number 373

Ghost Rider and the murder in wax!


In the comments section of last Sunday's Johnny Thunder post, I said there were only so many things you could do with a Western story. This Ghost Rider story gives the lie to what I said. This is what happens during the aging process, gang: those screws that hold memory together become stripped. Well, it's not the first time I've done something like that and it won't be the last. It can only get — choke!— worse.

Anyway, I remember enough to know this is the last story from Ghost Rider #7, from 1952, drawn by favorite Dick Ayers and his cuz Ernie Bache, and written by Gardner Fox.

Click on the label for Ghost Rider below and read the rest of the stories I've posted from issues of ME Comics' 1950s Ghost Rider.

As a bonus, you too can be the Ghost Rider...only a buck!

Number 372

Lance O'Casey's magic lamp


According to the Grand Comics Database, this Lance O'Casey story from Whiz Comics #103, November 1948, reintroduced the character after being missing in action for 50 issues. Maybe the public hue and cry: "Bring back Lance! We want Lance!" was so loud that the publishers and editors at Fawcett Comics put out an edict to reinsert Lance into Whiz Comics. Probably not. More likely it had to do with paper shortages during the war, or maybe in 1948 they needed some filler...who knows? Whatever happened, this story doesn't present any backstory for the character, it just charges headlong into an adventure regarding a magic lamp.

This is also one of those screwball stories that makes paleontologists go wild. The time dating...dinosaurs 10,000 years ago? makes it appear the writer didn't do much research. Or any research. Of course, the professor, the character who guesses they are 10,000 years in the past also says he can understand the "pre-men" spoken language because it's "similar to the language on the lamp." Somebody check that "professor's" credentials. What university did he graduate from?

Carbon dating aside it's an entertaining story, well drawn by an anonymous artist.

*******

Here's some other fun stuff from this issue of Whiz. The Captain Tootsie is a crossover advertisement, the only time I've seen that in this series by C. C. Beck.

Number 371


Carried down to the fiery depths of hades


Horror comics got away with a lot visually, but not so much verbally. Here a guy is carried down to comic book hell, called hades. In comics you could also go to blazes, not hell, be blasted, not damned. I think it's quaint that language was cleaned up when horror comics could be full of ultra-gruesome drawings, murder themes, and plots based on sex. All adult stuff, but the language had to be clean. Amazing.

Where was I? Oh yeah. There is actually a story here. "Mastodon Menace" is from Ace Comics' Web Of Mystery #13 (1952). Art is credited to Bill Molno.

This completes my postings from this issue. If you go down to the labels at the bottom of this posting and click on Web Of Mystery you'll call up the other three stories from the issue.