Ghost pirates sound like Pirates Of the Caribbean, but this tall tale of a ship full of specters comes from Fiction House's Ranger Comics #54, published in 1950.
The moody, dramatic and cinematic adventures of Dr. Drew, the ghost hunter, were done in the style of the Eisner studio, drawn by Will Eisner assistant Jerry Grandenetti.
Jerry Grandenetti did the "Secret Files of Dr. Drew" strip for Fiction House's Rangers Comics, different enough in style and subject matter from the rest of the book that it makes us wonder why it's there in the first place. Fiction House had only a few years to live when the feature was produced, and maybe it was a way to jog interest in a fading comic book line.
"Dr. Drew," a psychic investigator, didn't last long. Only 14 episodes were created, but they are visually stunning, done closely in the Will Eisner studio style, where Grandenetti was an Eisner assistant. Apparently they were produced in studio, even using Abe Kanegson's lettering.
Jerry Grandenetti shed his Eisner-clone style and did some excellent work over the years. He had a distinctive and eccentric style which fit in perfectly with Warren's Creepy and Eerie, and I really enjoyed his stories for the DC mystery comics of the 1970s, presided over by editor Joe Orlando.
Grandenetti may have gotten a little too tricky with the top tier of panels on the last page of this Dr. Drew entry, making the action hard to decipher. Despite that, the best lesson Jerry learned from Eisner was that everything on a comic book page should be integrated into the visual storytelling, including the lettering.
I posted another Dr. Drew story, a reprint from The Monster #1 in Pappy's #571. This particular entry in the series is from Rangers Comics #52, 1950:
This is such a pretty comic strip! Jerry Grandenetti, who was an assistant to Will Eisner, did an excellent art job on this episode of Señorita Rio. The sexy spy had a distinguished career as a lead in Fight Comics for a few years until displaced by Tiger Girl. Her adventures were drawn by top artists like Nick Viscardi (later known as Nick Cardy), Lily Renée, and Jack Kamen (if my art-spotting skills are correct with what copies of Fight Comics I've seen).
There's a recap of Rio's origin in the splash panel. This is from Fight Comics #65, 1949.
Sometime in the mid-1970s my friend, Del, drove over 40 miles from his home to show me something he had bought. "I've found an undiscovered Will Eisner story! He was drawing another character under a pen-name, Jerry Grandenetti!" he announced, showing me a copy of Fiction House's The Monster #1.
Poor Del. He wouldn't have bought the comic had he known the story was not by Eisner. Del was a bit of an art snob, only collecting artists he thought were the very top of the comics A-list: Raymond, Foster, Eisner, the EC comics artists, etc. I had to tell him it wasn't Eisner, and that Jerry Grandenetti was indeed a real person using his real name. It was worth it to break his heart, because he sold me that copy of The Monster for what he paid, $2.50.
Jerry Grandenetti had quite a comic book career, including a stint as one of Will Eisner's assistants on The Spirit. As far as I'm concerned he's on the comics A-list I keep in my head.
The story, reprinted in The Monster #1, 1953, originally appeared in Rangers Comics #48, 1949.
