Number 1943: The Marvel Family’s adolescent brains

We now know what we did not in 1950, that teenagers have brains that are still developing, still growing.* Sometimes teens do dumb things, even though their larger bodies may fool us into thinking they should be smarter than they are. (I am not disparaging you, teenage readers...as a teen my brain was once undeveloped, and now with age is becoming undeveloped again.) Anyway, developing brains explains why the Marvel Family should be duped by a scientist, leading to Captain Marvel (a youth in a man’s body) hitting Dr. Dunkel first, then demanding an explanation for his actions. Teens can be impetuous.

“The Menace of the Rings Around Earth” is the kind of screwball plot Fawcett got away with for several years in stories with Captain Marvel and his family, Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel, Jr. The best thing about it for me is the artwork of Kurt Schaffenberger.

Written by Otto Binder, and published in The Marvel Family #54 (1950).

*See this article from NPR.

A Marvel Family story where the silliness is deliberate. Just click on the thumbnail.

Number 1942: Monster in Clay

In the past when I have shown stories from early DC mystery comics (I hesitate to call them horror) I have gotten a note or two about the faux supernatural elements. It’s true that most of what seems out-of-this-world in the stories turns out to be fake, and unlike horror comics of the era, there are no real vampires, werewolves or ghosts. In the case of this story from House of Mystery #6 (1952), there is an apparent curse on a sculptor...or is it? DC even ran a house ad touting this type of story (“We all know there’s no such thing as the supernatural...”) from the same issue:

In “The Monster in Clay” though, there is a bit of a wobble at the very end. So the main supernatural element may not have been what it seemed, but what about the ending? I’ll just leave it at that.

Bob Brown, longtime journeyman artist at DC Comics, did the artwork, both cover and story. No credits for the writing.

Four vintage stories from House of Mystery by Curt Swan I showed in 2010. Just click on the thumbnail.

Number 1941: Ditko’s first superhero

In his blog, Toonopedia.com, the late Don Markstein asserted that Captain Atom was Steve Ditko’s first superhero, so Space Adventures #33 (1960) has some historical significance. I didn’t know that when I picked it from the comic book spinner at my local drug store in ’60. The historic significance might not have been evident to a friend of mine either a few years later. He was very enamored of Ditko’s Spider-Man, and was looking for other Ditko work. I am sure he is the one who got my copy of this comic, so the scans I am using for this presentation are those I found on the Internet. All I can say about that is, “Hey, Jimmy! I want my comic back!”

I know...not likely.

Also not likely is Captain Atom’s origin, which is just as silly as all of the other superhero origins, but involves nuclear bombs and radiation. In one panel Captain Atom explains he gets out of his civilian clothes and down to his Captain Atom uniform by burning off his top clothes with radiation. A nice touch is showing then-President Eisenhower as a character. Also unlikely would be putting a radioactive man in the same room as the President of the United States, and that falls on the scripter, Joe Gill.

Ditko left the strip, did Spider-Man for Marvel, then went back to Charlton where he revived the character. But despite Ditko’s involvement, Captain Atom was short-lived, and this version of the character was gone by 1967.

Come back on Sunday, September 11, for the first issue of Charlton’s Captain Atom.

Number 1940: Dick Briefer's Frankenstein and the zombie laborers

Biographical information on comic artist Dick Briefer tells us that he did a comic strip for The Daily Worker, a Communist Party newspaper. Briefer was a prolific artist who also wrote, and I think I see an occasional comment in his stories on the state of workers in America, including today’s offering, “Frankenstein and the Zombies.” The boss of the “zombies” is a whip-carrying Simon Legree-type. It would not have been a good idea for Briefer to be too obvious, especially when this story from Frankenstein #8 (1947) was published. At that time Congressional committees were looking for communists in the entertainment industry. I assume that would include comic books, already under a lot of criticism.

I might be looking too close, even though the boss does look like how capitalist bosses were depicted. Regardless, it is a funny story