Arrrrrrggghhhhh. It's Talk Like A Pirate Day...again
Here we are again, and yet another tip of the Pappy cappy to those days of yore, sailin' o'er the bounding main, pirate lads...and pirate lassies.
Black Bess be one of those lassies. She showed up in Fight Comics #53, 1947, in the Captain Fight story. Personally, I wish she'd stuck around a little longer, because I like the short-shorts and long legs. I also love the pirate hat. Red with a jolly roger! I guess there's no mistaking who she is, is there?
The story is drawn by Jack Kamen.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Number 809
Felix the Cat
Felix the Cat comic books helped me learn to read decades ago, and I have a nostalgic love of the surreal, fanciful stories by Otto Messmer. Craig Yoe's Felix the Cat, The Great Comic Book Tails, is another in his series of beautiful books of comic art. This time he's featured Felix stories from the late 1940s and early 1950s, that period in Felix's comic book career I especially love.
Felix's stories usually start with something ordinary, then veer off into fantasy. In the first story in this volume, for instance, "Felix the Cat in Starburst", from Dell's 1946 Four Color #135, Felix is having a normal day (for Felix), which turns into taking a rocket ship to the moon, then visiting the signs of the zodiac.
You have to be willing to accept that these stories were written for young readers, probably in the six to ten-year-old bracket, but the artwork is always wonderful. I had always believed that Otto Messmer was the sole artist of Felix, but according to Yoe, Joe Oriolo and Jim Tyer assisted him.
Yoe's taste is impeccable, and as with the other books he's produced, the book itself is beautiful, from the cover to the interiors, meticulously scanned and restored from the original comic books, with top-notch printing on heavy paper, designed for permanence. The books in this series are so well made I believe they will be pleasing readers well into the 22nd century!
"Vengeance Of the Invisible Men" from Sensation Mystery #110, 1952, reminds me of They Live, the 1988 movie by John Carpenter. Roddy Piper puts on a pair of glasses and sees aliens masquerading as humans. In this story a guy puts on a pair of glasses and sees invisible troglodytes causing accidents. It's kind of how I see the world. I believe many people are aliens disguised as human, and since I can't believe I can be such a klutz, there must be an invisible Trog tripping me. Would that I had some glasses I could wear to prove it.
The Grand Comics Database lists Murphy Anderson as artist.
Oh yeah, mon, the main character's name is Robert Marley.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Number 807
"That ain't no way to have fun, son..."
Everybody loves Hilda's parties. This New York gal knows how to swing this small Wisconsin town "by the tail." The kids who come to Hilda's swingin' soirees soon find themselves behind in their school work...they are dancing to hot music...drinking hard liquor...smoking funny-tasting cigarettes...and worst of all, the guys expect something--heh-heh--from the girls.
Before I was a pappy, when I was just a puppy, my pappy took me aside and gave me a little pappy-son chat. "Son, stay away from wild women and wild parties. They'll just lead to trouble."
I spent the rest of my teen years looking for wild women and wild parties.
But, what the hell...here I am now and the wild parties are only memories. It's nice to read this cautionary tale from St. John's Teen-Age Romances #34, 1953, drawn by Matt Baker, if only to remind me of days gone by.
