Number 423


The Photo Phantom


The Human Torch and Toro flame on, from Marvel Mystery Comics #83, July 1947.


The postwar period was a tough one for those two hot-heads. They no longer had America's war enemies to give the hotfoot. How do you follow that act? By solving mysteries, apparently. This particular story involves some blackmail and a masked photographer who pulls a few camera tricks. In these days of Photoshop, where no one can trust a photograph, it's hard to remember when a picture was worth a thousand words, or in this case ten thousand dollars.

The Grand Comics Database gives us a couple of names with question marks for credits. They throw out Al Fagaly? and Carl Pfeufer? for artwork chores, so take it for what it's worth. The cover they credit to Al Avison and Syd Shores. It's a pin-up style, not unlike the kind Alex Schomburg was doing in that era when like Torch and Toro, he had to give up wreaking havoc on the Axis powers.













Number 422



Two by Stanley


We've got a double dose of John Stanley today. I woke up Monday morning and said, "I've got to see some Walt Kelly and some Stanley this week," so here we are. Check back to Monday's posting for the Kelly.

Sluggo is a character just made for Stanley. He's the kid who makes it by himself, an orphan in a big world. He's also hated by his neighbor, Mr. McOnion. The story is from Tip Top Comics #220, 1959.

I got the Heckle and Jeckle story from Gold Key's Mighty Mouse #172, dated 1980, but it's reprinted from a 1960 comic. I think Stanley got the essence of the characters very well. The panel of the guy in bed with a bugle caught me by surprise. How did Stanley come up with this stuff? Not only in this strip, but over and over again, story by story, comic book by comic book, year after year. What an amazing writer John Stanley was.















Loyal readers know I'm a Checkmate fan. And Checkmate fans, run, don't walk, to pick up Suicide Squad: From the Ashes.

John Ostrander, 1980s Suicide Squad-writer and general comics writer extraordinaire, returns to the title in this volume that generally reads like Checkmate volume three-and-a-half. Amanda Waller, ejected from Checkmate after the events of Fall of the Wall and now fully in control of Task Force X, mounts a Suicide Squad mission with personal repercussions for Squad member Colonel Rick Flag.

Of everything new coming from DC Comics in the Infinite Crisis/One Year Later era, I've found myself most enjoying DC's new "intrigue" set: Checkmate, Outsiders, and now Suicide Squad. While Suicide Squad contains less real-world politicking than Checkmate, there's plenty of betrayal, backstabbing, and divided loyalties here. Amanda Waller is played as the "bad guy" in Checkmate, but in Suicide Squad it's good to be bad, and this volume delivers plenty of fiendish fun.

From the Ashes does double-duty as a tale for both old and new Suicide Squad fans. The first few chapters are set firmly in the past, relating the end of the previous Suicide Squad series and catching up with the main characters from there. Then, the series jumps past a couple of DC Universe events, including Infinite Crisis and 52, to pick up with the modern-day Squad. I especially liked how Ostrander reconciled two incarnations of General Wade Eiling--former Captain Atom-series nemesis and current Justice League bad guy "The Shaggy Man"--in a way that worked with the themes of the series as a whole.

It's Rick Flag's journey that ties together these two eras of the Suicide Squad. As someone who did not read the series previously, I was unsure how much of what we learn here is new information and what had been established earlier. Despite my confusion, I still found Flag an interesting protagonist, seemingly a lone good man able to work with a team of villains and still keep his conscience clear. Ostrander suggests toward the end that Flag may not be who we think he is, but--despite the ties to the book's theme of family--I'm not quite sure what this adds to the character; Flag is far more interesting as Flag than as someone else (just as Captain Atom became far less interesting in Extreme Justice when it seemed he was not Nathanial Adam). I'd be curious to see Ostrander follow up on this revelation elsewhere, to see what else can be made of it.

I've never been much for military comics, but Suicide Squad: From the Ashes deftly mixes the military, politics, and evil super-villain in a way that's very, very engaging. Checkmate fans, this is a must-have for your collection.

[Contains full covers.]

We'll stay on the darker side of super-heroics next with Batman and the Outsiders: The Chrysalis and then maybe some more Countdown tie-ins from there. Don't miss it!

 Number 421


Thanksgiving Turkey Awards 2008


Welcome to a special Pappy's for Thanksgiving Day. This is the third annual Pappy's Thanksgiving Turkey Awards presentation. Our first was in 2006, with the classic but stupid "The Flat Man." We followed up the next year with "The Day The World Died", an unusual science fiction story. Unusually dumb, that is.

I make the rules for the Thanksgiving Turkey Awards. That means that my judgment is final, my choice of a winner can be whatever I think fills the bill. This year it means a bizarre Jimmy Olsen story, "The Bride of Jungle Jimmy," from Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen #98, December 1966.

What's supposed to be a comedy comes out as is a weird tale of near bestiality, condescending, racist attitudes ("We pay our native extras off with trinkets!" Those ignorant villagers worship a gorilla! Ha ha!"), and even showing "scenes" from King Kong with a brunette Fay Wray. Talk about sacrilege.

The only comedy in the story is the unintentional kind. The panel of Bruna, the love-struck gorilla gal, eating the banana is so obvious you just know what kind of wedding night our furry bride has in mind for her groom.

Artwork on this story is by Pete Costanza, who worked with Captain Marvel artist C. C. Beck on many of the Captain Marvel stories. It's written by Leo Dorfman.

"The Bride of Jungle Jimmy," our 2008 Pappy's Thanksgiving Turkey Awards winner, gets three-and-a-half gobblers.












NOTE: I re-scanned the pages for this story in August, 2012.







Number 420


Spacy Pussycat


Pussycat, Bill Ward's voluptuous agent of S.C.O.R.E., takes us around the world while she gets off...the planet, that is.

This is yet another classic from the 1968 one-shot, Pussycat, published by Marvel Comics. The stories are reprinted from men's magazines published by Martin Goodman, then Marvel Comics publisher.

Other episodes from this excellent book have been posted here, here, and here.

After you screw your eyeballs back into your heads, travel on over for more feline excitement with Killer Kittens From Beyond the Grave, an excellent blog presided over by Kitty LeClaw. You get to see Karswell, of The Horrors Of It All, starring in a splatter comic book, circa 1991. "Purrrrrr-fect," as Batman's sexy nemesis, Catwoman, used to say.