Number 837

Straight Arrow

Straight Arrow was a radio program which lasted a short time, shorter than the comic book which licensed the character. I explained some of it in Pappy's #437, where I posted another Straight Arrow story. Fred Meagher was the artist, a solid pro with a flair for Western material. A few years earlier he had done Ralston Purina Company giveaway comics starring Tom Mix. When I read about them in an article years ago (by Ron Goulart?) I also found out that Meagher's name was pronounced Mar.

This is the first story from Straight Arrow #1, published by ME, written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Meagher.

This is dedicated to Mike Britt, Straight Arrow fan. Fifty years ago Mike's fanzine, Squatront #2*, was the first fanzine I ever saw, and is the direct ancestor of this blog. Thanks, Mike.

*(Mike's Squatront was not the Jerry Weist Squa Tront, which came later.)

Number 836

The Time Travelers

"The Time Travelers" was a feature of ACG's Operation: Peril, appearing in issues #1-12. Like most of ACG's supernatural/science fiction the Time Travelers stories are equal parts extraordinary events, outrageous hokum and cornball dialogue. In this introduction story, from Operation: Peril #1, 1950, Peggy and Tom, the main characters, outbid some foreign agents for some papers of Nostradamus, which eventually lead to a working time machine.

I did a little reading on Nostradamus, and know he made his "prophecies" in quatrains, and did not deal in explicit events and dates as the Nostradamus of this story does. But this is a comic book, and they get away with the most outrageous plot devices.

The story is drawn by Ken Bald, who went on to a career as a syndicated cartoonist, doing comic strips like Dr. Kildare. He drew the syndicated Dark Shadows, using the pseudonym K. Bruce.

Part two of this story will be available here next Wednesday in Pappy's #840. You'll want to see Tom and Peggy go to Venus in their time machine and Tom get hustled by a beautiful Venusian princess! What did I say about outrageous plot devices?

Number 835

Man Hunter of the North

Dell Comics licensed many popular animation characters, but when kids went to the movies and saw cartoons featuring their favorite characters in the movies and then read a Dell Comic they were often reading about a different character with the same name.

The publisher found out early they couldn't just reproduce animated cartoons. The characters got into adventures and stories unlike the movie cartoons. Even with that editorial policy the first issue of Woody Woodpecker, in Dell Four Color #169 from 1947, while entertaining enough, seems jarring. John Stanley, of Little Lulu fame, is credited with this issue. "Man Hunter," which is 29 pages long, seems like a stretched out 10-pager. There are jokes, even Stanley's "Yow!" to assure us he wrote it, but my feeling about this story is that it seems generic, that you could take Woody out, insert Bugs Bunny, Andy Panda or Porky Pig and they'd fit just fine.

I posted the second story from this issue--even more startling in its representation of Woody--in Pappy's #350, and a non-Stanley New Funnies story featuring Woody acting more like the zany character of the screen in Pappy's #577.

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The new Pappy's logo comes from one of my favorite covers, Man O' Mars #1, published by Israel Waldman's IW Comics in the late '50s. Flying saucers, aliens, half-dressed babe. Yep, that'll do it for me every time! It's a reprint of a Fiction House comic of the same name. I posted the story that goes with the cover in Pappy's #343.

As I said in my original posting, I believe the cover is drawn by Gray Morrow, an homage to Frank Frazetta's cover of Famous Funnies #212, from 1954, used as inspiration rather than a swipe.