Number 1031


The cowboy soldier


Syd Shores did the artwork on these three stories, written by Hank Chapman, from Atlas Comics' Battle Brady #10, 1953 (actually #1, continued from Men in Action).

Battle Brady is a Texas cowboy in an infantry unit in Korea. Brady uses a couple of six shooters instead of the standard issue rifle, and he's so darn good he can shoot a message into a mesa. Allowing six bullets for each gun, as many times as it took him to shoot and reload he would have had time to walk back to his unit and just tell them to attack, saving a lot of bullets.

Battle is a buddy with his sergeant, Socko Swenski. I was never as close with any of the NCOs I worked with during my time in the army as Battle is to Socko. Swenski does a course on using a flamethrower. That five-page feature reminds me of PS Magazine, the U.S. Army magazine of preventive maintenance, produced by Will Eisner's shop, and later by Joe Kubert's shop. It has some mighty handy advice if you happen to come into possession of a flamethrower.

Shores had a nice tribute by the late Gene Colan, who described Shores and his abilities. You can read it in Blake Bell News. You can see a Two-Gun Kid story by Shores in Pappy's #924.

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Trivia Quiz #44: Answers

There were clues in each quote as to the speaker.


1. "I've found it!  The legendary city of Caramanga!"

Adam Strange was an archaeologist.

2. "Well, here goes experiment #145!"

Ray Palmer, aka the Atom, was having problems with his experiments in shrinking things; every time he did it the object would explode.

3. "Lead never hurt a wooden leg!"

Captain Storm had a wooden leg.

4. "It is the first time I have found it necessary to give the signal!"

Reed Richards, aka Mr Fantastic, used a signal to summon the rest of the Fantastic Four:

5. "Huh?  What?  Go 'way! I wanna sleep!  Lemme be!"

The Sub-Mariner (Silver Age version)  was a bum living in a shelter when the Human Torch discovered him.

Scipio got 1 and 3 correct.  Jim got 1, 2 and 3.  Joplin John correctly identified the source of the quote for #4.  Lou Mougin ran the table, getting all five speakers.  Boosterrific got #5.  Ed picked up #3.  Mr Miller got 1, 3, 4 and 5, while Michael Rebain correctly answered #1 and #3.

Boosterrific makes a good point about the continuity between the Golden Age Sub-Mariner and the Silver Age version:

But that's not really the first published words of the character, is it? I mean, Johnny Storm was reading a comic book about the Sub-Mariner on the preceding page where it is implied that the Sub-Mariner character is the same as existed in the Golden Age. So wouldn't his "first words" be in 1939's MOTION PICTURES FUNNIES? (Granted, this is a blog about the Silver Age, and those are inarguably Namor's first Silver Age words, but still, you did say "the first words of the character." I'm not intentionally trolling, honest.)

 Mort Weisinger would respond with some pun.  I'll just acknowledge the "boo-boo".

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Number 1030


"Ah swoons to think of how Albert will be outdid."


Time for our Glee and Perloo Society meeting. Welcome to those of you who showed up.

Albert and Pogo give another lesson, drawn by Walt Kelly, in how to make us laugh. This strip appeared in Dell Four Color #105, Albert the Alligator and Pogo Possum. It's an unwieldy title, which Kelly mercifully shortened to just Pogo, when Pogo became star of the strip.

The story is set in Swampy Lagoon, rather than Okefenokee. Pogo and Albert, and the only human character, Bumbazine, here playing the part of "Mister Engineer," are the only characters in this strip we recognize. The others are just character actors and extras, none of them part of the regular strip a few years later. Like Michael Jackson, Pogo had his nose bobbed a few times, and his appearance changed much before his final version. This ratty-looking creature is a real possum (actually an opossum), the only North American marsupial:

Kelly had to do some work to cute up a critter like that. Albert stayed pretty much the same from the beginning, with some modifications over the years. If an alligator could be made cute, then Kelly did it.

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The Vampire's Coffin! / Johnny's Last Jump!

And finally the two remaining tales from the Sept. '53 issue of Mystery Tales #15 ...one a goofy vampire story from DiPreta (um, how do you close the coffin lid with a 4 foot stake stickin' outta the chest, anyway?!), --and secondly, a harrowing tale of two chums on the run, highlighted by some super fine dialogue, ie: "Head North, Egghead, and don't take your foot off the floorboard!"

Click HERE for some
SPOOKY MAGIC!

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Trivia Quiz #44: Famous First Words

Pretty obvious format here: I give you the first words of the character, you have to name him or her.  Note: I am excluding cover and splash page statements here:

1. "I've found it!  The legendary city of Caramanga!"

2. "Well, here goes experiment #145!"

3. "Lead never hurt a wooden leg!"

4. "It is the first time I have found it necessary to give the signal!"

5. "Huh?  What?  Go 'way!  I wanna sleep! Lemme be!"

(Update: Corrected the quote on #5 per commenter Boosterrific)

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Number 1029


Leiber and Fox


Someone did me a big favor by posting online the backup stories from Marvel's Journey Into Mystery #83 to 104. I bought that comic regularly. Among the stories I remember were the five-pagers by Larry Leiber and Matt Fox.

I thought Leiber's art in those days was kind of rough, and combined with Fox's busy pen inking gave the stories their own oddball look. Like a lot of other fanboys in those days I dismissed it as not being up to the standards of Marvel artists like Kirby and Ditko. I didn't know that Leiber would find a career at Marvel, but at the time I also didn't know he was Stan Lee's brother. To his credit Leiber built a career in comics. He worked at it and got better. I also didn't know that Matt Fox's art was what we'd now call outsider art. He had a particular and peculiar vision. His Weird Tales artwork is considered classic, and here are three of my favorite covers by him:



Fox had also done interior drawings for Weird Tales, and comic book work in the early '50s for Stan Lee and a couple of other publishers.

Nowadays I find the Leiber/Fox team's artwork charming, if I may use that word. I like it and appreciate it more now than when I first saw it.

Here are four of the stories from that online source. "The Purple Planet" is from Journey Into Mystery #98, "The Unreal" from JIM #100, "The Enemies" from JIM #101, and "The Menace" from JIM #102.

The panel reproduced on the top of this page gave my high school buddy Ron and I a big laugh in 1963. We thought it looked like some kind of weird alien urination. It was the interpretation of immature minds, but hey, I still think that's what it looks like.

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