Number 1564: Two Alarming Tales by Kirby

Two stories from Alarming Tales #2 (1958) make up my 40th posting for Jack Kirby. I could do a lot more, too...that guy made up the history of comic art for decades and examples are all over the place. I chose these today for sentimental reasons. I liked them when I bought this issue off the spinner rack in 1958, and was taken — as always — by the power of Kirby’s art. “The Fireballs” is credited to Kirby and George Roussos, and “I Want To Be a Man” has a tentative credit for Kirby inking his own pencils.

Both stories are credited to scripts by Kirby, but it seems to me someone else edited them or rewrote them to remove the exclamation points Kirby liked. He usually used two (!!) and if he had something special to emphasize, he used three (!!!) As an aside, I believe sentences are just fine ending in a period, and exclamation points should be used sparingly! Never use two!! or three!!!

“I Want To Be a Man” I took from the Heritage Auctions website, and once again, thanks to those fine folks for doing these great scans. In 2004 the story sold for a bargain price, $1,897.50, but was resold the next year for $4,600.00. I would guess it’s worth much more now. It’s not only very well drawn, but it has a poignant ending, which I sniffled over as an 11-year-old, and I find it still affecting all these years later.

(Note the name of the character, Ed Snowden. I kid you not.)

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Kirby stories from Alarming Tales #1 here. Just click on the thumbnail:

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Number 1524: Written in hot lead

When DC Comics picked up the license in 1947 for the radio program, Gang Busters, it entered the crime comics fray, presided over by Crime Does Not Pay and its myriad of imitators. DC had a ready-made audience for Gang Busters, which was a perennial popular show and identifiable by comic book readers. This story from issue #1 (1948) is more of the format of a traditional crime comic. Gang Busters later moved into the DC-style of the fifties, especially after the Comics Code was instituted. The title lasted at DC until late 1958.

The story, “Murder Was My Business,” with a traditional career-ending arrival by the killer at the electric chair, is signed by George Roussos.

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Number 508


Blackout


I usually don't get into origins of superheroes because they can be so silly. Consider some of the chemical accidents that happen to turn those guys into superheroes...or nuclear explosions...or gifts from alien beings. Might as well say a magic word like "Shazam," because it makes as much sense.

Dr. Basil Brusiloff of Belgrade, Yugoslavia, is in on one of those big explosions, in this case working in his lab when the Nazis bomb the place. It turns him into a hairy ebony black guy who can fly. We can even see his hairy bum in the last panel, so is he wearing pants? It's probably no wonder that he only showed up in Captain Battle #1 in 1941, #3, and #5, and #5 was a reprint of #1. The scans for this story come from that reprint issue, dated Summer 1943. Artist Don Rico signed the strip in the last panel.

Blackout was created for Charles Biro and Bob Wood by George Roussos, because Roussos was an assistant to Bob Kane on Batman, and Biro wanted a bit of the Bat magic to rub off. At the same time, Jerry Robinson, another Kane assistant, created London for them. Blackout never hit the big time. Maybe it was the hairy bum. Even in the superhero world where logic does not rule Blackout seems more odd than most.

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