Number 1430: Sally and Dan

Henry Kujawa of the Professor H’s Wayback Machine blog did me a big favor by coloring a black line strip scheduled for today. “Sally the Sleuth ‘Winning Her Stripes’” was scanned from a reprint in Malibu Comics’ Spicy Tales, but was originally published in the pulp magazine, Spicy Detective, in 1942. Henry did a great job enhancing the strip. He didn’t have the greatest copy to work with...the blobby black line is because the strip came from a pulp magazine, where drawings were reproduced on paper a step below what most of us find in our bathrooms. During printing the ink hit the porous pulp paper and spread into the fibers, making fine lines next to impossible.

Thanks to Henry. You can see more of Henry’s handiwork in his blog, where he does restorations of comic book covers, and even the “Tales of the Great Book” feature from Boy’s Life.

The artwork is credited to Adolphe Barreaux, art editor of the Spicy titles. Those titles were published by some of the same folks who gave us DC Comics, and were more than a shade on the seedy side. They upset postal inspectors and bluenoses of that era. The titles were soon changed from Spicy to Speed, and in my opinion lost about 90% of their desirability. But, that was then. Cheesecake, even slightly kinky cheesecake involving spies with whips and sexy girls who are out of their clothes more than they are in, seems a lot tamer now than it did 70 years ago.

To go along with Sally, we have Dan Turner, the Hollywood detective. It’s also signed by Barreaux and by writer Robert Leslie Bellem, who had a gift for slang-filled dialogue like, “Butched! He’s defunct!” which will probably make more sense when you see it in context.

Sally is from Spicy Tales #2, and Dan Turner is from Spicy Tales #4, both from 1988:

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More Sally and Dan! Click the picture:

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Number 1178: A roscoe sneezed

Adolphe Barreaux is a pioneer in the history of comic books. He started out drawing comic book-like stories for Harry Donenfield (who later went on to take over DC Comics from its founder, Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson). Barreaux drew the sexy Sally the Sleuth stories for Spicy Mystery Stories, an under-the-counter pulp Donenfield published before he took over DC Comics. Donenfield set Barreaux up with an art shop, with himself as co-owner, to provide artwork for his line of pulps. Here's an example of Sally the Sleuth, from its days as a two-page strip (and I mean that literally...Sally could not keep her clothes on), from Spicy Detective (March, 1935). The scans are from the 1988 Malibu Comics reprint.

Later Barreaux became editor of Trojan Magazines, Crime Smashers, and other titles, a small publisher also bankrolled from the DC empire. The story of DC's secondary business interests is a complicated one of silent partners, publishing names and different addresses, but it all goes back to Harry Donenfield. He was a sharp businessman who had his hand in the comics business, publishing and distributing, in a big way.

Barreaux is credited with drawing these Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective stories. The color story is from Crime Smashers #7 (1951), and the second is originally from the pulp Spicy Detective (January, 1943), by way of the Malibu Comics reprint, Spicy Tales #1 (1988). Robert Leslie Bellem is credited as the writer. He created Dan Turner for the pulps, and was known for his overcooked dialogue like "a roscoe sneezed," and "Jeepers! Baldy's been skewered through the ticker! He's defunct!" Bellem went into writing for television after the pulps were skewered through the ticker. He did scripts for The Lone Ranger, Adventures of Superman, 77 Sunset Strip, and many more. He died in 1968.

In looking at the artwork for these Dan Turner stories I'm venturing the opinion that despite Barreaux's credit they are shop jobs. Maybe he had something to do with them, and maybe not. In "Off-stage Kill" Dan Turner is shown mostly from the back in a very static layout. The only time the story comes alive is when the girls are fighting. "The Murdered Mummy" has some of the same faults, but is much livelier in its layouts.

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Number 727


"Jeepers! A dame--!"


This story had a panel reproduced in Fredric Wertham's Seduction Of the Innocent, from 1954. The panel lacked attribution in SOTI, but had appeared in Crime Smashers #1, 1950, from Trojan Magazines.

Dr. Fredric Wertham's infamous screed is a good example of the Law of Unintended Consequences: although it succeeded in its original intention, focusing public attention on the contents of comic books, it's now a cult classic. Comics containing panels referenced or shown in Seduction Of the Innocent are collectors' items for comic book fans.

The girl in the panel also owes something to 1948's Pay-Off #1.

In Straight Arrow #13, 1951, she showed up here:

For being dead, this gal gets around!

"Sally the Sleuth" is a character brought forward from the 1930s, where she appeared in two-page snippets in the pulp, Spicy Detective, drawn by Adolphe Barreaux, later the editor of Crime Smashers. Sadly, in this story she doesn't find her way out of her clothes (her main talent in the pulps), otherwise Dr. W. would have really had something to squawk about.

The fascinating story of how DC Comics plays into Trojan Magazines is told here. DC Comics came out of the comic book controversy fairly well, but not completely untouched (Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman and Robin came in for criticism), some comics with financial ties to DC helped bring about censorship. There were wheels within wheels in the comic book industry of that era.

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Number 693


"Private eyes, they're watching you...they see your every move..."


Considering how popular private eyes were in books, magazines and television, they didn't seem to have the same kind of following in the comics. I can't think of any traditional private eye characters that had much of a shelf life in the panel format. Ken Shannon, the big Irishman with the lantern jaw and bowtie, had a fairly good run for Quality Comics in the early '50s, appearing in Police Comics and in his own series for 10 issues. This story, from Ken Shannon #1, 1951, features distinctive Reed Crandall pencils and someone else's heavy hand for the inking.

Dan Turner, Hollywood Detective, came from the pulp magazines, and had his own magazine for a time. It was part of the Spicy group, with a past conjoined with the DC Comics empire (although kept well below the radar). Spicy pulps ran a comic book story in each of their pulps, so this story, scanned from the Eternity Comics reprint of the '80s, is originally from an issue of Spicy Detective published in 1943.

Robert Leslie Bellem, who wrote the story, also wrote all of the Dan Turner text tales. His snappy writing included such deathless prose as "A roscoe sneezed. Ka-chow!" Adolphe Barreaux, who had drawn the Sally the Sleuth series, drew this tale of Dan and some zoot suiters, in a nod to the riots which had occurred between U.S. servicemen and Mexicans in the Los Angeles area. The song, "Zoot Suit Riot" by Cherry Poppin' Daddies, is about this incident. In the Dan Turner story the dastardly Japanese spies are trying to make our good neighbor allies, the Mexicans, look bad by impersonating them!

Turner also gets the empathy-of-the-month award for his handling of bad news, telling a man his sister is dead: "You must be Sammy Kee. It was your sister who got bumped."

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