Number 292

Doll Man meets the Mother Goose Gang

Al Bryant drew this entertaining tale from Doll Man Quarterly #7, Fall 1943. The Mother Goose gang lives up to its name with members like Simple Simon, Humpty Dumpty, and Jack and Jill. Jill is a bad girl, and you can tell because of the comic book law: girls dressed in red are bad girls. Jack's sin seems also to be sartorial. A green suit with a red striped tie. Those wartime shortages were tough if that's all he could find on the ready to wear rack at his local J. C. Penney's store.

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Number 291

Nothing He Couldn't Do!

I have two gruesome postings for you today. What the hell, it's Monday, I've got to go to the dentist. I'm sympathetic with Jonesy above and the spike through his face.

Recently Karswell of The Horrors Of It All had a request for a wild story from Charlton's The Thing, but said he didn't own any. I have a copy of The Thing #16 from 1954, and one of the wildest stories ever, Dick Ayers' "Nothing He Couldn't Do." The panel above was reprinted in Time Magazine during the uproar over comics that resulted in the Comics Code.

Number 290

Hangman and the Executioner

Correspondent 1506NixNix sent me these scans from Hangman Comics #3 and commented, "Hard to believe this bloody stuff is from the same guys who came up with Archie and Betty and Veronica." For the few of you out there who might be unaware, MLJ, publisher of Hangman Comics, became the Archie Comics publishing company.

The racism is that of its era, typical of American attitudes toward Asians in 1942, and especially our then-enemies the Japanese. The graphic gore is the sort of thing that got noticed by the bluenoses in the early days of comics. MLJ, showing its pulp origins, didn't have a monopoly on violence, but in this example they did it with flair, that's for sure. Grand Comics Database says the art is by Mort Leav ? and John Cassone ? which I guess means they think it might be, maybe, kinda, probably those artists. Whatever. The art is done skillfully, and is all the more effective for it.

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Number 289

Dan D.'s dumb blonde

"Stan and Dan," Stan Lee and Dan De Carlo, do some funny stuff with the radio/TV dumb blonde, Irma Peterson, in this issue of Atlas' My Friend Irma. It's a coverless copy, so I don't know the number, but it's from the early 1950s. The vaudeville-style jokes come fast, and De Carlo's artwork is always excellent.

The My Friend Irma radio and television series lasted several years, and featured Marie Wilson as Irma. There were even a couple of movie versions. You can read more about the series here.

I posted another story from this issue in Pappy's #138.

Number 288

Supermouse Underwater!

Here's a Supermouse story from Standard Comics' Supermouse #12, April 1951, drawn by Milton Stein.

For you Supermouse fans--and I know you're out there because you write me and tell me you want more Soupie--this is the second-to-last story I have drawn by Stein; sometime in the future I will be posting from Supermouse #22, and unless I get more Supermouse comics, that will be it. If you're new to Pappy's Supermouse stories by Stein have been posted in Pappy's #126, Pappy's #202, and a story drawn by an unknown artist in Pappy's #246.

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Number 287

The Face On Mars

When this picture was released by NASA in 1976, showing the famous face on Mars, I knew I'd seen it before. Sure enough, Jack Kirby had covered it back in 1958 in Race For The Moon #2.

"The Face On Mars," which concludes this issue, is among my personal favorites of great Kirby short stories. Al Williamson did the dynamic inking.

In 2001 NASA debunked its own picture. They spoiled the fun by showing us the face is a natural formation, and our imaginations were filling in the details. With all due respect to the joykillers at NASA, I'll always prefer the Jack Kirby version.

Number 286

Ghost Patrol

Another from the Pappy archive, a story in the form of tear sheets given to me over 25 years ago by a man who bought the comics off the stands, then clipped out stories by artists he liked. To a comics fan this should be considered a crime, but I couldn't be showing you this stuff at all if he'd kept his comics intact and they'd had any monetary value.

"Ghost Patrol" was one of those secondary features produced for DC Comics' titles. I appreciate these back-of-the-book strips, which made do with characters not strong enough to star in their own titles. Many of them were illustrated and written by the same top talent that was producing the star features. In this case, "Marked For Danger" comes from Flash Comics #98, August, 1948. Talk about top talent: it's drawn by Carmine Infantino and inked by Bob Oksner.

I like the ghost character playing baseball out in the universe, whacking meteorites!

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