Number 670

2 x 4T


I've mentioned before that John Forte is one of the comic book men who helped carry the industry through it's most productive era of the 1940s and '50s, and then on into the '60s.

In the mid-to-late 1950s Forte drew supernatural stories for ACG (Adventures Into the Unknown, Forbidden Worlds, et al). He went from there to DC, where he did the series, "Tales Of the Bizarro World" for Adventure Comics, with scripts by Jerry Siegel. That series was replaced by "The Legion Of Super Heroes," also drawn by Forte. Sadly, John Forte died at a young age in 1965.

These are two pre-Comics Code stories: "Never Call a Ghost" is from Trojan's Beware #2, and "Hire a Hoodlum" is from Atlas Comics' Justice #40. Just a few years before his stint with Bizarro, Forte was covering the horror and crime genres like the comics journeyman he was. Prior postings featuring Forte's work are in Pappy's #256, Pappy's #268, and Pappy's #510.

Number 669


The fat kids


In old comics the fat jokes flew fast and furious. There were fat characters: Tubby, Porky Pig, Fatman the Human Flying Saucer, Herbie, and of course Little Lotta. Lotta was a glutton, and shows it in this story from Little Dot #9. Someone came up with a character who had one characteristic, eating, and based solely on that made a string of stories and comic books that lasted for years.

The Lotta story is from Little Dot #9, from original art found on Heritage Auctions. The other story, which I've thrown in to give this posting some weight (yuk yuk) is "Chub" from Dennis the Menace #6. It's written and drawn by the team of Fred Toole and Al Wiseman, and is pretty much in the Lotta mode. I don't remember seeing Chub much. They probably couldn't milk (lowfat, I hope) the subject much more.

Nowadays with childhood obesity a sensitive health issue I can't imagine anyone doing stories like these, so enjoy the non-PC forbidden thrills of past fatty humor. While you're reading I'll do some sit-ups so my stomach doesn't enter the room a couple of minutes before the rest of me.

Number 668


Fortean Comics


When I saw scans from the sole issue of Captain Wizard my jaw dropped, twice. First, it's a superhero story drawn by Jack Alderman, whose heavily inked, lead-footed and stiff style I've usually seen only in crime comics, although last year I showed a goofy magician story by him.

The second reason for my amazement is that the writer of this Captain Wizard story uses the books of Charles Fort as the basis for the story. If you haven't heard of Charles Fort go here for a fairly good biographical piece on this fascinating and eccentric author.

From Captain Wizard #1, 1946:

Number 667


I wanna be a cowboy...and you can be muh cowgirl...


On a summer day in 1950 my friend David Ross and I were coming home from the next block in our suburban neighborhood where we'd been shooting it out with the Dalton Gang. We were climbing under a neighbor's rail fence. "Hey, boys," said a blonde girl dressed as a cowgirl, sitting on the fence.

David and I were both wearing our cowboy hats and Hopalong Cassidy six-shooter cap pistols at our sides.

I remember that moment as having a transcendent quality. On a hot summer day, shimmering heat around her, a vision of a girl in a red cowboy hat and matching boots, with a brown, fringed skirt and matching vest over a white blouse. She was an older woman, at least 7 or 8.

"How old are you two cowboys?" she asked. David and I held up three fingers each. My capacity for speech had been blocked by the vision on the fence. I remember nothing else about the incident, but to this day cowgirls loom large to me.

That's probably why I enjoy this story from Suzie #60, 1947.

Number 666


The Phantom Brander


I wonder how the folks at Magazine Enterprises felt in 1952 if or when they noticed the cover of DC's Jimmy Wakely #18, and saw what looked like their character, the Ghost Rider, under another name. Vincent Sullivan was the publisher at ME; in the earliest days of comic books he had worked for DC Comics. I can imagine a phone call to Jack Leibowitz, DC publisher: "Uh, Jack, Vin here...yeah, Vinnie Sullivan. Say, Jack...I wonder if you know you folks have stolen my character?"

The Phantom Brander was a one-out villain, one story and he was gone, but very close to artist Dick Ayers' depiction of the Ghost Rider.

In 1952 there were hundreds of comic book titles. Maybe folks at DC who worked on Jimmy Wakely comics hadn't heard of the Ghost Rider, or had even seen it. But Gardner Fox would know. Fox worked for both DC and ME, where he wrote most of the Ghost Rider stories.

Jimmy Wakely was a singing cowboy who was in movies toward the end of the singing cowboy era in the late 1940s. This story is from the last issue of his comic, artwork attributed by the Grand Comics Database to Gil Kane and Bob Lander.