Number 470


Who's afraid of the big bad werewolves


Karswell started this, posting horror stories from the '70s DC's, so I'm just following along behind him. It was his idea, really. I'm using him for inspiration.

Here are two werewolf stories, picked out because (1) they both have great Bernie Wrightson werewolf covers; (2) I like werewolves, and (3) because I own a page of the original artwork from "Way Of the Werewolf" from House of Mystery #231. It's by Gerry Talaoc, and demonstrates how the muddy coloring and printing of the 1970s obscured some really fine artwork. I've shown this page before, but it's worth looking at again.


"Deadly Stalkers Of the North" is drawn by Ricardo Villamonte and gives Wrightson an opportunity to draw three wolves on the cover. Weird Mystery Tales #21 has a cover date of August 1975, while House of Mystery #231 is dated May 1975. So 1975 was a good year for werewolves.

Number 469


Girl Of the Moonpool


If I were a headshrinker — instead of someone who needs his own head shrunk — I'd have some things to say about "Girl Of the Moonpool," from Harvey Comics' Chamber of Chills #11, August 1952. I'd say something about sex, obsession, and diving in, literally, to a relationship. But, I'm not a shrink so forget I said anything.

This is a gorgeous piece of work by Bob Powell, probably inked by Howard Nostrand. This is the original art, which I culled from an Internet site a few years ago. Powell added the blue wash to indicate to the colorist where he wanted emphasis in the colors. I love the artwork in this story so much I printed it off, and bring it out to look at once in a while, just to see how good Powell could be.

Number 468


Touched and retouched


I knew when I bought Tower of Shadows #1 off the stands in the summer of 1969 that something was wrong. The lead story by Steranko was great, but the story credited to Johnny Craig — THE Johnny Craig of EC fame, Vault Of Horror, Crime SuspenStories, Extra! — just didn't look like Johnny Craig. As I found out from reading this, it was and it wasn't:

The following year [1969], when Marvel launched two "ghost" comics, some there felt they'd found a place to better utilize the skills of Johnny Craig. He wrote and drew a story for Tower of Shadows #1 but, again, Stan did not feel the result looked like a Marvel comic. As with Craig's one DC job, the work was retouched so thoroughly — in this case, by John Romita — that no trace of the original artist's style remained. --Mark Evanier, POVonline, September 20, 2001.

It was obvious looking at the artwork that it'd been retouched by Romita, but there are traces of Craig in the writing, which was probably also heavily edited by Stan Lee. On page two, a couple of panels show the main character upset because "Janie" is expecting a baby, now of all times, when a dozen creditors are hounding him. An unwanted pregnancy and need for money, that's a story in and of itself, but after those panels it drops into nothingness. It has nothing to do with the story itself, about a man exposing phony mediums. Craig was too careful a plotter and writer to create a situation and then let it languish, so I suspect there might have been something edited out. I'm not even sure why what was left in remained, since it added nothing to the plot.

What is Craig are the panels in the rain. I go back to the EC Comics. A man in an overcoat with his collar up, wearing a fedora, leather gloves folded down at the wrist, a gun in his hand, waiting in the rain. Craig could really draw noir scenes like that, and that's the closest part of "From Beyond the Brink" to the Johnny Craig I knew from EC Comics. Some artists flourished under the Marvel style, others didn't. Sadly, Johnny Craig was one of those whose artwork probably belonged more to a time and a place that, in the Marvel era, had past.

Number 467


Black Hood is back in the 'hood


Thanks to correspondent 1506NixNix for scans from the old MLJ Comics. Nix provided the origin of Cliff Campbell and Al Camy's Black Hood in Pappy's #382 last September. I'm finally getting around to showing the second of the series, from Top-Notch Comics #10, December 1940.

I've mentioned before that in their early days the MLJ Comics line was pretty wild. The cover is the kind that would make parents cringe. Anyone randomly flipping through the book might spot the gruesome hanged man on page 3. MLJ morphed into Archie Comics, and replaced their devil horns with a halo.

There is another kind of sin here; a storytelling sin. The hero, after the first page, doesn't show up again in costume until page 10.

Number 466


The Terrific Whatzit


McSnurtle the Turtle, also known as The Terrific Whatzit, was a feature in DC/AA's Funny Stuff title for the first 17 issues. Drawn by Martin Nadle (who sometimes signed his name as Naydel to distinguish himself from his brother, DC editor Larry Nadle) the Whatzit was sort of a...sort of...well, I don't know exactly what he was. I guess that's why he was the Whatzit. If you follow the link above you can read about him in Don Markstein's Toonopedia.

In this particular story, from Funny Stuff #6, Fall 1945, McSnurtle is duped by a cross-dressing guy posing as a woman. In a funny animal comic book! Maybe that's the part that's "funny."

The reason the colophons at the top of the pages say AA All-American Comics is because DC and All-American were conjoined companies, owned by different people. All-American was owned by Max Gaines, publishing under the DC imprint. Max Gaines split off from DC at one point, then sold out to them, coming back into the field with EC Comics. And the rest, they say, is history. The Terrific Whatzit made up a very small piece of that history.

I'm including a couple of ads from that issue of Funny Stuff, which was published just as World War II ended. The ads have a war theme. The Thom McAn ad especially so, with wartime racist caricatures of Japanese. The Captain Tootsie ad is not only a candy ad, but a public service announcement. Don't play with hand grenades. Gee, I think that'd be self-evident, and I don't know how many hand grenades were lying around for kids to pick up, but knowing kids, I'm sure if a kid found one he'd pick it up. Maybe the ad saved some lives.