Number 772


"B" is for...Bill Ely's House of Secrets


The next to last in Pappy's lame-o Plan B theme this week. Check out Sunday's blog.

Longtime comic artist Bill Ely did these well-drawn stories for DC's House of Secrets in the late 1950s. I've shown art by Ely before, a cartoonist from the earliest days of the comics, who did a lot of work for DC in the days when artists were more anonymous. After looking at his work for a while I've noticed the way he drew eyes, and mentioned before they remind me of eyes drawn by the better known George Evans.

Ely was a true professional. I first noticed his work in the 1960s. Unlike most of DC's artists of the '60s, before credits in comics became common, Ely signed a lot of his stories.

"The 20th Century Nero" is from HOS #5, July-August, 1957; "The Diamond Hands Of the Sun God" is from HOS #8, January-February, 1958; "The Face In the Mist" is from HOS #13, October, 1958.

Here's more Ely, from Pappy's #695.

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Number 728


The apes of Ape-ril


As you read in Pappy's #705, I've got some weird thing for simians in comic books. I'm apparently one of many ape fans, because as I've said more than once, DC Comics found out years ago that putting gorillas on the covers of comic books sold more comic books.

I have three stories for you today: From DC's Strange Adventures #8, 1951, a tale of evolution* by Gardner Fox, illustrated by Bob Oksner and Bernard Sachs. Moving forward along the evolutionary scale we have Nick Cardy's drawing on "Experiment 1000" from House of Secrets #6, 1957. We swing from the branches, away from the DC experimental lab to the Gold Key jungle and a 1964 Boris Karloff tale, starring the Great Man himself, Karloff! chasing after the great white ape in "The Mystagogue." The art is by Frank Thorne.

Chuck Wells' is joining in with his Comic Book Catacombs Going Apeshit jungle story here.




























*Yet another take on Edmond Hamilton's "The Man Who Evolved," here.

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Say...what?

And here's an extra, from Smash Comics #11, 1940:




By Jove, Captain Cook...a rare chimpanzee with transplanted owl eyes trained to steal green so he could eventually steal the royal emeralds would have been my choice for the culprit, too!

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