Number 2415: A riveting Captain Science story

Captain Science and his young pal chase down a flying saucer sighting, and find not only a crashed saucer, but an almost-dead alien, who tells them why he is on Earth. For me the story is interesting because not only does it sound like the Roswell crash story (supposedly taking place in 1947, three years before Captain Science #1, from 1950), but it shows an early conception of what a flying saucer might look like. Like commercial and military aircraft the public were used to in those days, it has rivets.

The Grand Comics Database lists no writer, but credits Gustav Schrotter for pencils and inks..

Captain Science is more famous for featuring early artwork by Wallace Wood, also published in the first issue. Just click on the thumbnail.

Number 2414: The ghost spotter

“Grimm, Ghost Spotter” is a character from the Iger studio, published in Bomber Comics #1 (1944), from Elliott Publishing Co. This first episode also appeared the year before in Harvey Comics’ War Adventures Comics. I don’t know why the same Grimm story showed up the next year in a wholly different publication, but a guess is that Harvey had hired Iger to do some features, and then there was some problem, so Iger took Grimm the Ghost Spotter back and put him in another comic book.

The ghostly manifestation in the story reminds me of the later ghost tales from ACG’s line of supernatural comics (Adventures Into the Unknown, Forbidden Worlds, etc.) where ghosts are more of a physical presence than something diaphanous hovering between the afterlife and our world. Back here in the land of the living, I’d be grim, too, if I were facing apparitions like this.

Number 2413: Hawkman and Hawkgirl: the elixir of youth

In the second panel of this story, Hawkman grabs a crook in a car speeding down a mountain and says, “Stop or I’ll pull you out one by one and drop you over the precipice.” I guess being a flying hero doesn’t make Hawkman, secret identity of Carter Hall, less threatening than the crooks he is after.

Hawkman has a hawk friend, Big Red, and a girlfriend, Shiera, who is also Hawkgirl, but sometimes he is on his own. That can result in what happens to him when the gang members in the car get the better of him. Then the story has a flashback to the reason for Hawkman’s plight. It has something to do with Shiera’s uncle and a “glandular elixir” he has invented, trying to make Shiera’s aunt into a young woman. Brainy, a gangster, wants to steal the elixir so he can turn his enemies into babies. That seems less effective than the old-fashioned way of killing enemies.

The elixir still needs work, but I am also thinking of it being used commercially. Can you imagine one of those late night infomercials selling this elixir? I could use about a gallon of it right now.

Drawn by Sheldon Moldoff and written by Gardner Fox. From Flash Comics #25 (1942).

Pappy’s Favorites Number 11: AMERICA UNDER COMMUNISM!

One of my favorite Pappy’s Golden Age postings goes back to April 1, 2012 (not an April Fool joke), with the propaganda comic book, Is This Tomorrow, from the Catechetical Guild Educational Society of Minnesota. It warns of the takeover of the United States by the communists. It was published the year I was born, but the paranoia of a Soviet takeover among many citizens was just as prevalent the whole time I was in school, in the Army, and beyond.

Since I posted it originally we have had some underhanded dealings with the post-Soviet successors in Russia, a whole other subject (not yet in comic book form...at least I don’t think so).

I am not sure how many copies of Is This Tomorrow were printed, but presumably a lot. It is not only a document of its time, but probably reading material in the bomb shelters some people were building in the 1960s.

To see it, just click on the thumbnail.

Number 2412: Big Bird goes bad!

My jaw damn near hit the floor when I saw the panel of a talking bird with what looks like a machine gun. It reminds me of a current trend by American psychopaths, taking weapons of war and shooting up schools, churches and businesses. I am not making light of those terrible recurring atrocities, but they are the first things I thought of.

The story is drawn by Mr Precision, Fred Guardineer, with his fine examples of careful drawing and inking comic book pages. It is written by Gardner Fox. “The Harp of Death” is from the ME one-shot, Space Ace #5 (1952), a collection of reprinted Space Ace stories from the 1948 Manhunt comic books.

Number 2411: Black gold, broken hearts

The course of true love never did run smooth, as the Bard said. It is not only true in plays, but in every love story I have ever read, seen in a movie, or personally lived through in my life. Love comics are easy to understand because they are almost always about a young woman being loved by a fellow she rejects for another fellow, who turns out to be no good for her. She goes back to the first fellow. The stories always end with an embrace and kiss. Ah, love.

So “Black Gold, Broken Hearts” is a typical story, but has our girl Millie’s struggling ma and pa suddenly rich from the discovery of oil on their property! Millie can get rid of Tom Barrow, who loves her, and go to college. It seems her main interest in college is not a degree, but to learn to act snooty and put on airs to match the other rich gals. Doing that attracts Stanton Forsyte who appears to be as ritzy as his name implies. It all gets sorted out, of course, but in these love stories I notice the nice guy usually wins and doesn’t hold it against the girl, so he is a noble swain, after all.

Before reading the story, though, Romantic Adventures, which is the source, used to also include a page or two on how girls can avoid losing their love once they find each other. The pages I have included aren’t credited for writers, so I don’t know if they were written by a woman or a man. I opt for a man because of the whiffs of male dominance, but on the other hand, such things were taught to girls in days gone by.

From Romantic Adventures #58.

Two pages from Romantic Adventures #14.
“Black Gold and Broken Hearts” is from Romantic Adventures #58 (1958). No writer is listed by Grand Comics Database, but Kenneth Landau did the artwork, as well as the page, “100 Ways to Lose a Man,” above. No writers or artists are listed for the one-page advice fillers from Romantic Comics #14 (1951), “Pal or Sweetheart?” or “Dating Do’s and Don’ts.”

Number 2410: Facing the Face

Years ago in this blog I criticized the Face’s mask. Why? I thought it was silly. I just didn’t think any criminals or enemy combatants in a war zone would fall over in a dead faint or be terrorized by a rubber mask. Some people disagreed with me, and now, after many years of looking at super heroes from the early years of comic books (1939-42) there were a lot of super heroes who wore sillier costumes, had sillier origins, or even worse, just copied other super powered or non-super costumed heroes. The Face’s mask, for a gimmick, was at least the only one that I have found so far, so I’ll give it credit for that.

The artwork was done by one of the top professional artists from that era, Mart Bailey. He was drawing comic books very early in a style more like a newspaper comic strip artist. When I look at this Face episode from Big Shot Comics # 3 (1940) I see a guy who was far ahead of many of his contemporaries in the field. He shared Big Shot with Ogden Whitney, who drew Skyman in a style that is also more professional than much of the early comic book artwork. (And Whitney kept that style for the rest of his career, until the late sixties at least.) I will also bless Big Shot Comics editor Vincent Sullivan for bringing us Sparky Watts by the off-the-wall Boody Rogers, who made a good counterpoint to Bailey and Whitney.

The Face story is credited to Gardner Fox.