Number 1536: Talon of Terror

This won’t be the last story I’ll be mining from a fine issue of Ibis the Invincible, #5, published in 1946. The stories, written by Bill Woolfolk, are entertaining and the artwork, done by a diverse crew of comic book journeymen, is uniformly good.

The Grand Comics Database credits the artwork on “Talon of Terror” to Kurt Schaffenberger, inked by Pete Costanza.

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More Ibis. Just click the thumbnails.

Number 1535: Clutching hands and faces of fear

I think the American Comics Group did a fine job of using a small number of titles to keep the company afloat during both boom and bust years of comic books. It started as Better or Nedor, and its early history is documented elsewhere. You can read about it in this preview PDF of Alter Ego #61, with a fascinating article by Michael Vance. When ACG came up with its supernatural titles, Adventures Into the Unknown and Forbidden Worlds, they became the two books that were their mainstays, and would take them to the end of their history in 1967.

The supernaturals, as assistant editor Norman Fruman called them, sold quite well, and ACG added Skeleton Hand, which didn’t make the crossover to a Comics Code-approved book (probably because of its title), Out of the Night, and a one-shot issue of The Clutching Hand, which isn’t identified as ACG on its cover. That’s likely because ACG was trying out stories that didn’t have the boy-girl happy endings that a lot of their “horror” stories did. Fruman is listed as editor of The Clutching Hand. According to one bio I read of Fruman, he wrote about 700 scripts for Better/Nedor/ACG.

Here are examples of the two styles, one with the happy ending, and one more typical of the horror comics from other publishers.

From Forbidden Worlds #17 (1953), drawn by Al Camy:

From The Clutching Hand (1954), drawn by Kenneth Landau:

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More Ken Landau, including a pre-Code story from Out of the Night, and a story for the very last issue of Forbidden Worlds in 1967. Just click the thumbnail.

Number 1534: The monster sets her Capp for Li'l Abner

It’s been a generation since Li’l Abner disappeared from newspapers. It was 1977 when creator/writer/artist Al Capp, sick with emphysema from a lifetime of smoking, shut down the strip. It, like Capp, had been in decline for some time. Capp died two years later, in 1979.

The strip was one of the most popular comic strips during the period of the thirties through at least the mid-sixties. It even influenced popular culture. Sadie Hawkins' Day, which is the subject of today’s post, became an annual event at some colleges and high schools. Up until 1952 Li’l Abner avoided being caught by Daisy Mae.

As biographical information about Capp shows, he had a troubled life and probably had personality disorders which caused him to be a total jerk at times,and then a generous, funny and friendly person at others. Maybe sitting at a drawing board for over 40 years, putting out sharp and oftentimes savage satire — Capp was a conservative when he died, but as a former liberal he still had a stinging view of the rich — will do that to a guy. Speaking of savage, the little character in this story who straps dynamite to his chest is a lot closer to today’s world than that of Li’l Abner.

I have shown this before, several years ago. These are new scans. From Al Capp’s Li'l Abner #74 (1950):

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Cartoonist Mel Lazarus (Miss Peach, Momma was an editor at Toby Press, which published this comic. The company was founded in 1949 by Capp’s brother, Elliott Caplin. This page of gag cartoons by Lazarus is from the inside front cover of the issue.

More Li’l Abner is available at the Hairy Green Eyeball blog, including Li’l Abner Sundays from 1960 and reprint strips of Li’l Abner that appeared in newspaper in 1988 and 1989: Part 1 and Part 2.