Number 536


Comet, cop killer!


Stan Nichols, who goes by Nix, provided these scans for Jack Cole's Comet from Pep Comics #3 and #4, 1940. Nix's synopsis: "Comet is hypnotized by a bad guy named Satan, and kills some cops. He kills Satan, then rather than turn himself in, he takes off to prove his innocence!"

As it turned out for the Comet, he in turn was killed in Pep #17, and his brother sought revenge as the Hangman. Jack Cole drew the Comet stories a couple more times, ending his participation with Pep #8. These episodes, like a lot of Cole's earliest work, appear to be rushed, but the energy Cole put into his drawings still comes through.

Thanks, Nix.

There's a great new blog devoted to Jack Cole. Check out Cole's Comics. I was guided to it through Frank Young's Stanley Stories.

Number 535


Bob Powell's Good Bad Girls


Regular Pappy's readers know I can't go long without showing something by Bob Powell; in this case original art for two love stories.

Love comics were once the best selling comic books. Unlike today's testosterone-driven comic book market, girls and young women were buying a lot of comics. What the female readers got with these two stories are cautionary tales of girls with bad reputations. Everybody knows about the girl in school who goes "all the way," or at least has that reputation.

I found scans for the original art to these two 1950's Harvey Comics stories on the Internet, and you may have seen them here and there. They're worth looking at again, though.

"I Joined a Teen-age Sex Club," besides having the wildest title ever to appear in a comic book, is about a girl trying to fit in with the crowd. In this case she ends up with a group of teen swingers who hold regular make-out parties. Propriety and good breeding, also the idea of losing a straight-laced boyfriend, straighten Geri out.

"Anybody's Girl" is about a girl who does succumb to temptation. She's lucky to get out of one bad situation only to have created another when her bad rep costs her a boyfriend. Tsk tsk. You know about those nights in a ski lodge. I had a few fantasies like that myself. I love the line in panel two of page one: "You're even more fun than your sister!" I think I'll put that on a t-shirt or bumper sticker.

The artwork is Bob Powell at his big-lipped best. The kissing scenes are great. With those lips a guy could kiss two girls at once.

Number 534


Journeymanny


Manny Stallman was yet another of the journeyman comic book artists whose name usually provokes a "...Manny Who-man?" from comic book fans. Stallman was born in 1927, and was working in comics as a teen.

This "Young Robinhood" splash page from Boy Comics #13 (I showed you the Crimebuster story from the same issue last Sunday) is very crude. It was published in 1943. I estimate it was done when Stallman was 15 or 16 and it looks it.*

But Stallman went on to a career in comics and did a lot of them. He often worked as a team with John Giunta, who inked the really creepy "The King is Dead" in Witches Tales #50. This black and white version came from the 1991 reprint in Silver Scream #2. I'm not sure if Giunta helped Stallman on these other two stories. "Monkey Face" is from Astonishing #26. It's signed "S.L.", which probably doesn't mean Stan Lee, who would never miss a chance to put his full name on anything, but Stallman and an as yet unidentified inker whose name starts with "L." "Swap Shop" is from Marvel Tales #141. Stallman spent his last years in the field doing things like the giveaway Big Boy Comics, the circulation of which put his artwork in front of many more readers than the average comic book.

Stallman died in 1997.

*I can't show you the "Young Robinhood" story because I'm missing the last two pages.

Number 533


Monsteroids of the underworld!


Captain Rocket returns in the second story from his one and only appearance, Captain Rocket #1, from 1951.

In this story we have a villain named Gorgo, a gas that turns humans into monsters (or monsteroids, as they're known here), a primitive version of the Internet where Captain Rocket references the story on Gorgo, an earth-boring machine, art swipes from Flash Gordon...this is fast-paced and goofy, just how I like my comic book science fiction.