Number 1415: Frankenstein the sorcerer’s apprentice

This is the third post of our “Comical Comics” theme week.

This witty tale from our old Frankenfavorite, Dick Briefer, is from Frankenstein #6 (1947). Frankenstein has a magic word, a la the story of the sorcerer’s apprentice, and uses it not for brooms, but for cars. New cars were still in short supply that year. Auto production had been suspended during the war years, and manufacturing converted to war materiel. It was the dream of everyone, even my father, Big Pappy, to have a new car.  He owned a 1939 Ford when he married my mother in 1946. He finally got his new car, a 1948 Plymouth, in the fall of 1947. This story would have meant something to him.

Number 1414: McSnurtle the Turtle, aka the Terrific Whatzit

 This is day two of our Comical Comics Week, today featuring a superhero turtle.

Merton McSnurtle, despite being slow moving and slow thinking was at least honest. As a reward he was given superhero powers by beings from another planet. The story is told in this origin from DC’s Funny Stuff #1 (1944). In my opinion Funny Stuff #1 was one of the key DC Comics of the forties. Funny animals were an important part of the DC lineup for decades.

Sheldon Mayer was the editor and contributed “J. Rufus Lion” to this issue. “McSnurtle the Turtle, the Terrific Whatzit” was written and drawn by Martin Naydel, who was the brother of Larry Nadle (they spelled their names differently), who became editor of the DC funny animal comics.

Here's another Terrific Whatzit story I posted over four years ago. Just click the picture:

Number 1413: Three Wheelan with Comics McCormick

We’re having another theme week this week, kicking off “Comical Comics Week” with Ed Wheelan’s funny Comics McCormick strips.

Writer-artist Ed Wheelan has been featured a few times in this blog. As a cartoonist he is a sentimental favorite of mine, even though I didn’t hear of him until his career was long over. It was in an early-sixties issue of Don and Maggie Thompson’s Comic Art fanzine that I read an article by Burroughs Bibliophile Vern Coriell about Wheelan’s magnum opus, Minute Movies. Just from the samples shown I became a fan of his old-fashioned style. Minute Movies was a popular strip in the 1920s, featuring a regular cast starring in comic strip versions of silent movies. It was inventive and entertaining. Wheelan joined the comic book ranks early on, although he never really changed his style to adapt to the different medium. He was still the bigfoot cartoonist he had been 20 years earlier. As far as I can tell he worked for these publishers during the forties: All American (Max Gaines, partnered with DC Comics), Harvey Comics, Et-Es-Go (publishers of today's postings), and EC Comics (Max Gaines after he sold All American to DC Comics).

Wheelan, who was born in 1888, was in his mid-fifties when he did these charming strips.

Comics McCormick (or “Comics” — Wheelan loved the old fashioned way of putting quotes around nicknames and slang) was a boy who collected and read comics. Unlike Supersnipe (another popular comic of the forties, done by George Marcoux, also a cartoonist from an earlier era), Comics McCormick’s excursions into the world of superheroes were fantasies, while Supersnipe took his Grandpa’s old red underwear and a mask and became a “superhero.” (Damn, now Wheelan has me using quotes.)

These three stories are from consecutive issues of Terrific Comics, numbers 2, 3 and 4 (1944).

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More Comics McCormick posted a few years ago by Pappy. Click on the pictures.

Number 1412: Airboy’s pyramid déjà vu

This story from Airboy Comics Vol. 9 No. 7 (1952) reminds me of another story. It’s from the previous issue of Airboy, and I showed it in January.*

Both stories have pyramid-shaped UFOs, both have tentacled creatures (one green, one pink), and yet the stories don’t appear to connect. If you are a fan of comic book continuity you may wish to skip this sort of thing. I have no idea why the stories were presented one after the other, why the similarities, and why Airboy seems to have forgotten what happened just a month before in his previous adventure. Alien memory wipe, perhaps?

Art by Ernie Schroeder.

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*Click on the thumbnail to read it.