Number 1583: You never can tell!

Al Williamson is credited with just a handful of stories at ACG in the late fifties. I haven’t done the research to tell you how many (lazy me). After early 1960, though, I believe the only stories credited to Williamson are reprints.

’You Never Can Tell!” is a story about a little man with a big case of obsessive-compulsive disorder involving auctions and treasure. It’s from Adventures Into the Unknown #107 (1959).* “In the Beginning,” with its shopworn science fiction/early man plot is from Forbidden Worlds #76 (1959).

Williamson often worked with other artists, but I don’t see the most obvious, Roy Krenkel or Frank Frazetta, in either of these stories. There are some Frazetta-style touches in some of the Neanderthal men panels, but I don’t see his dynamic pencils or inks. Al also worked with George Woodbridge and Angelo Torres on some, and they could have helped him here. The Grand Comics Database doesn’t say, crediting Williamson with pencils and Inks on “In the Beginning,” and Jack Davis with the inks on “You Never Can Tell!” That is a collaboration I don’t see by looking at the story. Someone will have to explain to me how they came to that conclusion.

I have shown these stories before many years ago. I have re-scanned them for this posting.

*“You Never Can Tell!” likely got its inspiration from “Rock Diver” by Harry Harrison, which was first published in the science fiction digest, Worlds Beyond #3, in 1951. In that story prospectors use similar suits to explore underground.

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Number 1497: It’s up to yew! Ghost-hunter and the Roman curse.

This is one of those supernatural stories that resolves itself at the end by dragging in some power over ghosts of which we readers have not been apprised. In this case it’s the ghost-hunter, Christopher Fenn, who “just remembered” what will defeat the ghosts before they are about to kill him. Note to writers of supernatural stories: Introduce said spell or power early in the story, then use it later. It's storytelling 101.

Despite that glaring flaw in “The Case of the Roman Curse” I like the art. It's drawn by Jon L. Blummer and comes from Adventures Into the Unknown #7 (1949).

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Number 1279: Back to yesterday

Leonard Starr had a great career, beginning in comic books, going into comic strips (“Mary Perkins On Stage;” after that strip's run he did a revival of “Annie”), wrote the Dargaud Editeur graphic novel series Kelly Green (drawn by Stan Drake), did advertising work, and even worked in animation (“Thundercats”). He retired in 2000 and to the best of my knowledge is still alive at age 86.

In the forties and fifties Starr did some memorable work for the American Comics Group, including the reincarnation-themed “Back to Yesterday” for Adventures Into the Unknown #4 (1949).

As a true illustrator, Starr moved between styles and techniques. For this story he used a Milton Caniff-style of inking, popular at the time, and still popular with me.

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Number 1223: The reincarnated man

The Search For Bridey Murphy by Morey Bernstein was a popular best seller in the mid-1950s. A woman was put under hypnosis and told a tale of a past life. Her story turned out after investigation to be a fantasy and not reality. But it caught the public's imagination. As my father, Big Pappy, put it, after one lifetime why the hell would you want to do it all over again?

 My copy of the original printing of the book.

This story from Adventures Into the Unknown is a past-life fantasy taken to extremes for the purposes of storytelling. It's wacky in that special ACG way of wackiness, but it's also fun because of Ogden Whitney's artwork. It was written by ACG editor Richard E. Hughes.

Wouldn't it be great to have all of life's mysteries wrapped up in the end with irrefutable proof that they occurred? That's how “The Many Lives of Mark Martin” ends. Even as fiction it stretched its finish to absurd lengths. But it's a comic book, and unlike real life (or even a fantasy life), mysteries of the paranormal in comic books are easily resolved.

From Adventures Into the Unknown #67 (1955):

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I found this editorial page from the same issue interesting. Are the letters real? If they are then I suspect Herman Kornbluth, asking for ghost, vampire and werewolf stories, must've been living in some sort of bubble, having not heard about controversies over horror comics or the Comics Code. To answer my own question, neither of the letters by “Kornbluth” or “Conrad Haas,” sound real. They read more like editor Hughes composed them to make a point about the superiority of the new stories over the old. We found out years ago that Hughes used a variety of pen-names to fool readers into thinking there was more than one writer on staff. It's not impossible to believe he'd do the same thing with letters to the editor.

I don't know about Kornbluth or Haas, but I know I'm real. A few years later some letters I sent to ACG comics were published in various issues. So those letter pages were legitimate, at least.

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Number 1209: Jeepers! A zombie!

This is a good opportunity to remind you of Zombies, the book edited by Craig Yoe and Steve "Karswell" Banes. It's number three in their series, “The Chilling Archives of Horror Comics.” It's available from Amazon.com, Yoebooks.com, or your other favorite online book dealers. And I'm sure if you promise not to eat his brain, your local comic book dealer could order it for you.

“The Lair of Lost Souls” from Adventures Into the Unknown #33 (1952) is a zombie story, art attributed to Al Camy, not included in the Zombies book. I'm showing it today because the splash panel is part of an ongoing search I have for what I call the Jeepers girl, a girl in a pose that looks like this panel from the anti-comics book, Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham, M.D. When I started seeing similar girls in similar poses I began to collect them under the overall title Jeepers girl, based on this.

I have found this supine girl in other comics, not only Golden Age but Silver Age, as well as a couple of magazine covers, Mad, and even an issue of Life magazine.

After the story I'll show you what I've collected so far in my quest for the Jeepers girl.

 “Jeepers! A dame!”

So far the earliest example of the Jeepers girl I've found has been in an article on the radio program, The Fat Man, from a 1946 issue of Life. Lots of artists used Life as a source of reference material, and this may be one of those instances.

The next is from artist Lily Renée, from Fight Comics #47, also 1946.

After that the Jeepers girl pops up in several places. I'm aware that the poses aren't exactly alike, but I believe that the Jeepers girl is a pretty good example of how you can't keep a dead girl down when you've got artists looking to other artists for inspiration.

 

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