Number 1135: The Panther Woman

This story, credited by the Grand Comics Database to Ruben Moreira, and beautifully illustrated, is lacking something: a motive. It isn't told why the exotic beauty, Gora, dresses in a panther skin, and with her pet panthers, terrorizes a tea plantation. In the real world of 1948, when this was published in the giveaway comic, Buster Brown Comic Book #12, the locals in that area were having a revolution, kicking out those who had been colonizing them.

Ruben Moreira took over the Tarzan Sunday strips from Burne Hogarth in 1945, until Hogarth returned to the strip in '47. Moreira was a comic book journeyman, whose work in DC Comics was usually signed. My introduction to him was the "Roy Raymond, TV Detective" stories in Detective Comics. Moreira, who came from Puerto Rico as a child, returned in 1958, and his comic book career came to an end in 1962. He died in 1984 of cancer at age 61.

More about →

Number 934


Buster Brown and the Gods of Egypt


Buster Brown Comic Book was published by Brown Shoe Company for several years in the 1940s and '50s. They used some top comic artists, and they had interesting stories set in interesting locales. These two stories are set in Egypt, one in ancient times, one modern. They are written by Hobart Donovan, who was apparently the only scripter for Buster Brown Comic Book, or at least the only one given credit.

The Grand Comics Database does a guess on the artwork for "The Power Of The Great Cat" from BBCB #9, dated Fall, 1947. They credit Alex Kotzky?, so if you're a Kotzky art-spotter you tell us if it is by him. "Seb-Ek Crocodile God Of The Nile," signed by Dan Barry, is from BBCB #12, and is dated Summer 1948. I'm not sure how Grand Comics Database knows the dates, unless someone checked them with the Brown Shoe Company records. You won't find any dates in the comics because they don't include an indicia, or any kind of copyright notice, for that matter. Maybe the Brown Shoe Company didn't care. Maybe for them it was enough to publish these comic books to be given away to young customers in their shoe stores, and to make the kids holler, "I want Buster Brown!" when Mom and Dad said it was time for shoes. What I remember about the Buster Brown shoe store where my mom bought my shoes, besides making sure I got a copy of the free comic book, was sticking my foot in the fluoroscope and seeing the bones of my foot. That sort of thing is banned nowadays, but six decades on I haven't detected any problems with my feet caused by Buster Brown's fluoroscope. Any damage from the Buster Brown Comic Book is co-mingled in my brain with the thousands of comics I read in my life.

Note the variant spelling of pharaoh as "pharo" in the first story. Was this ever an accepted spelling?

More about →

Number 771

"B" is for...Buster Brown Comic Book featuring Space Siren!

The second of Pappy's Plan B week (see yesterday's post for lame explanation of this theme) is for Buster Brown.

"Space Magnet" is another in the short series (five issues) of the sexy Space Siren from Buster Brown Comic Book, a shoe store giveaway comic. It's from #31, Summer 1953.

I showed you another Space Siren story in Pappy's #214.

Reed Crandall did the fantastic artwork, the rocket ships reminding me of Mac Raboy's beautiful Sunday Flash Gordon strips. Ray Willner, who usually drew more down-to-earth subjects, like the tales of Gunga the Indian elephant boy, did the inking.

Not only were issues of Buster Brown Comic Book undated, they weren't copyrighted. Someone could use these characters. C'mon, you artists...let's see your versions of Space Siren and the Interstellar Police.

More about →

Number 394


Ray Willner's Gunga


This is another story from Buster Brown Comic Book #33, illustrated by Ray Willner. I showed you Reed Crandall and Ray Willner's "Zakka's Debt" just a couple of weeks ago. What prompted showing this Gunga story so soon after was an e-mail I got from artist Willner's son, Dave, asking for information on finding a bibliography of his father's work. Here's a note from Dave Willner in response to my request to give his e-mail address to Pappy readers:

Absolutely, please do....After comic books he spent almost 20 years doing fantastic text book illustrations for history, science and math books, he also did some great greeting cards for awhile as well...All the kids in town used to pose for him for in the basement studio, where my mother, Dorothy, would teach art classes after school for the kids in town.

Animals were his passion, yet we never had any pets, nor did he as a child? His jungle animals and especially horses in motion were truly amazing. Gunga was the guy who lived near by who ran the Chevron station.....and BTW, you had a note in one of your blurbs about the editor not ensuring the "likeness" of the large guy on the cover hoisting a mast on his shoulders and the face on page one, forget his name....but we still have a ton of old B&W 5"x7"s of him posing for just about all his characters, I do seem to remember that one with a broom stick on his shoulders. My mother would photograph him in costume in the basement with an old 4x5 Graflex, I can remember seeing him with towels wrapped around his head...my crib was in his studio. I'm going to try and get a handle on all the photographs and see if we can match them up to the inkings in the comics.

After he retired he spent a good deal of time doing pencil drawings of historic barns and old Pennsylvania stone homes in and around Bucks County, PA, near where my mother still lives. He had won many awards for these, his technique and style were second to none, he used to say he could draw easier than he could write.

What makes this all even more facinating to me is that when he was a boy, born in 1911 growing up just outside of NYC in Union City, NJ, he was stricken with Scarlett fever which in his later years caused his hands to shake to the point he couldn't drink a cup of coffee, although he never missed a beat with his pencil work.One other fact, he won a scholarship to The Art Students League in NYC when he was 14 and later attended the Newark School of Fine and Industrial Arts. Prior to Buster Brown he also served in the Secret Service in WWII and spent a good deal of time doing cartography in the air on his stomach, something he refused to discuss with us kids ever.

He passed away in Feb of 2002 at 94. Appreciate your help, hope this helps a bit, be glad to provide any additional info I can. Thanks

Dave Willner

If you can help Mr. Willner please do. I gave him the Grand Comics Database page which lists 57 stories by his dad. If you know of any other work Ray Willner did please contact Dave Willner at:

dwillner@ptd.net

More about →