Number 523


Rudy Palais pops a sweat!


Golden Age comic art by Rudy Palais can be spotted easily by looking for flying sweat drops. This past Monday I showed you a couple of stories by Johnny Craig, who also used perspiring faces to indicate stress or fear. But Palais used the type of sweat drops usually associated with funny animal comics. I'm thinking of Chad Grothkopf (Captain Marvel Bunny) or Floyd Gottfredson (Mickey Mouse). Both of those cartoonists drew characters with bullets of sweat flying from their heads. Sweat as Palais portrayed it wasn't usually used in more illustrative comic art, and I can think of no other artist who used sweat or tears in the bulbous and exaggerated way Palais did.

Here are originals for four stories by Rudy Palais I culled from the Internet, all of which show his signature flying sweat. "The Scarecrow's Revenge" is from Witches Tales #14. "The Clock Struck Doom" is from Black Cat Mystery #37, "Army of Scorpions" from Black Cat Mystery #33, and "The Man With the Iron Face" is from Witches Tales #12.

I also showed two crime comics stories by Palais here and here.

Number 522


Luluhaha


It's been too long since I showed a John Stanley story. Luckily we have the Stanley Stories Blog, with Frank Young showing us classic Stanley, but I still have stories to share, also.


A Dell Giant favorite of mine is 1959's Marge's Little Lulu and Alvin Storytelling Time. It reprints 100 pages of Lulu's stories told to her little neighbor, Alvin. It excludes the Witch Hazel/Little Itch stories. I love those stories, but before Stanley wrote them his inventive mind was coming up with all kinds of wild, funny yarns.


The first reprint in the Giant came from Marge's Little Lulu #2, March-April 1948. "Luluhaha" has a moral about kindness to animals done in John Stanley's comically perverse way.

Number 521


Go Johnny Go!


I'm partial to the writer-artists in the EC crew: Feldstein, Craig and Kurtzman. There was a real harmonic convergence of talent at EC.

Johnny Craig was one of the slowest EC artists; like Kurtzman a perfectionist, he reworked his drawings until he got them right. It meant he didn't get as much work in, so he increased his income by writing his own material. A few issues before the horror comics were killed by EC he was given the job as editor of Vault of Horror, writing all the stories and drawing the lead.

Here are a couple of my favorite Craig stories. I read them first at age 12, and while I 'got' "Star Light Star Bright" from Vault of Horror #34, "The Tryst" in Shock Suspenstories #11 partially zipped over my head. I went to the dictionary to look up the word "tryst." Sex is the basis for the story. I knew because the young girl — "fresh out of high school," as we read on page one — is sitting on the older guy's lap in her nightgown, asking for a baby. That looked pretty hot to me at such a tender age, even if I was just a bit vague on the whole process. (I grew up sheltered, which is probably why I am the dirty old man I am today.) I understood the jealousy angle, but I didn't have the life experience to put everything, the husband's obsessive possessiveness and controlling behavior, into context.


"Star Light" is like "Reflection of Death," my favorite Feldstein story from Tales From the Crypt #23. It's told in a straightforward narrative style, then switches to the main character's point of view, then back to the reader's POV, then finishes with the main character's. There's no sex at all in this story. (Unless you count Hartley Quimb's name, "Quim" being one of those old-time euphemisms for female genitalia.) At one time I read that the casket scene in "Star Light" was inspired by a similar movie scene, but can't find anything about it in my EC reference material. If you know what movie it was please let me know.

Number 520


America's Joan of Arc


Years ago Mrs. Pappy had a paper due for a class and came to me for help. At the time I was working for a bookstore, cataloging a major Golden Age comics collection. I've mentioned before that she doesn't like comics, but I told her I could give her some information on comics and she could write the paper. She was OK with it, as only someone with a paper due in 24 hours can be.

I told her to write about patriotic heroes of World War II, which were the comics I was then cataloging. I listed patriotic heroes for her: The Shield, Captain America, Captain Freedom, Minute Man...on and on until the last name, Pat Patriot. When she got up in front of the class and read the paper she got to the name Pat Patriot and the place dissolved into laughter. She got an A on the paper, maybe because she was so entertaining.

OK, so here's Pat Patriot, "America's Joan of Arc." This appearance is from Charles Biro and Bob Wood's Daredevil #11, June 1942. Pat has a villain worthy of his name, The Mallet. He's a torturer, and we get some juicy panels with some bondage and torture. The Grand Comics Database claims Lin Streeter is the artist, and for scripter they give Bob Wood the question mark treatment, as Bob Wood? which means they're guessing.

Number 519


Pussycat is booby-trapped!


Ah, Pussycat...how I wish I could stroke you, see your back arch, feel you purr.

Excuse me, guys. I get carried away. Here is yet another sexy Bill Ward masterpiece from the one-shot 1968 Pussycat magazine, reprinting stories from men's magazines published by Marvel Comics publisher Martin Goodman. Pussycat was probably inspired by Playboy's Little Annie Fanny, the Kurtzman/Elder masterpiece. Pussycat is kind of innocent like Annie until she turns on her feminine charms. Elder could draw Annie nude and still make her look innocent, but Bill Ward specialized in glamour pin-ups, and Pussycat looked anything but innocent in her ensembles from Frederick's of Hollywood.

I'm also showing you an earlier Ward, a Torchy story from the 1940s. I scanned it from Torchy Summer Special #1, published and copyright 1992 by Innovation. The sharp black and white stats were provided by Greg Theakston and/or Bill Black of AC Comics, who know how to reconstruct the black line from color comics.