The bloody eyeball
The Thing #16, a Charlton horror comic from late '54, is notorious for having some sort of gory violence in every story: a spear through a guy's throat, a guy stabbed in the chest, a spike through a guy's cheeks. Kind of a one-note comic book! This story, "The Mentalist," has a spear thrown into a guy's eyeball. It's what Doc Wertham called "the injury to the eye motif." Whatever, this is one gruesome comic book.
The Day That Vanished
The Hairy Green Eyeball is having a "Flying Saucer Week," and I'm joining in the celebration. I scanned this great story by Reed Crandall from Twilight Zone #14 several months ago, then forgot it until I saw the Eyeball's blog on Sunday. I posted a flying saucer story that day, too.
This Twilight Zone story has the aura of alien abduction mystery, missing time. That could creep me out because I've experienced missing time. But mine is more along the lines of, "Where did all the damn time go?" as I get older and my life hits warp speed.
Good story, and of course the Crandall art is great.
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No high-hattin' for Hatlo!
While I was growing up Jimmy Hatlo was one of my cartooning heroes. I turned to his single-panel feature first thing every morning, and read his Sunday panels religiously . (The Sunday funnies were the only religion I got or wanted on Sunday.)
I loved the ironic humor, the foibles of people pointed out by Hatlo through his contributors: his readers. Hatlo, who had been a sports cartoonist, had a wonderful ability to connect to his fans, who read his panels and said, "Yeah! I recognize that situation!" Saying that, it must've been havoc around the Hatlo studio, opening thousands of envelopes and reading submissions by the train car load. I wonder if they ever did a cartoon about that?
These panels are from a David McKay Co. 1943 hardcover collection of They'll Do It Every Time panels. Like the greatest cartoonists, Hatlo could draw not only funny faces, but perspective and architecture. His panels are rich with detail, eye candy everywhere. And everything looks right. The office settings he drew aren't Dilbert's, that's for sure.
Saucer Man!
Since the first reports started coming in of flying saucers in 1947, they were big news and moved into popular culture fast. Movies, comics, magazines were full of flying saucers. Jack Kirby did several flying saucer stories, including "Saucer Man" for Race For The Moon #3, 1958. In my opinion, the 5-pagers Kirby did with inker Al Williamson in Race For The Moon are some of the best he drew during that period. A couple of years later when Kirby was doing science fiction and fantasy for Stan Lee, a similar story would have probably involved an invasion. For the feverishly paranoid 1950s, "Saucer Man" seems pretty sensitive.
Fremont Frog's devilishly heavenly music
As you might have guessed by now from past Pappy's postings, I really like Jack Bradbury. Fremont Frog was a character he drew (maybe wrote, also?) for Giggle Comics. This is from #52, April 1948. Funny story with top notch Bradbury art.
John Stanley's Mudman
In "The Mudman" from Tales From The Tomb, the Dell Giant Comic from 1962, John Stanley again shows us his storytelling skills. I don’t know who the artist is. A boy and his dog go into a swamp, encounter a monster, the dog saves the boy. It's a compact and intense story. There are some Stanley-isms. With some changes this could be a humor story. There are panels where you can visualize Tubby or Melvin Monster running while yelling, "Ma-a-a-a!" or at the kitchen table hollering, "No Ma! No, no, no!"
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Space Garbage!
What's fun about Kirby's short run of Race For the Moon stories is how much story he packed into five pages. In "Space Garbage" he has a space criminal, an exploration team, and a medical discovery. Any one of those ideas could carry a whole story.
This story starts out with a startling scene: Wiley Breck, the criminal, is shackled to an asteroid "until his air runs out." Apparently his "friends" did it to him, and Wiley is the guy who originated the idea. But with friends like that...
