Number 1450: Waterfront girl

When I was in junior high school Big Pappy took me aside to give me the talk. You know, the one where he warned me about what girls and women to avoid. After hearing about how those girls and women would lead me down the road to sex, sin and ruin, I spent the rest of my teenage years looking for them.

He never warned me about is the subject of today’s post, the waterfront girl (probably because we lived 700 miles inland). Our story is about Sal Benson, singer in a waterfront dive. Our gal Sal has had a rough life, and is now trapped on an island entertaining a bunch of coarse roughnecks. She sees a chance to get out by stealing another woman’s fiancé.

“I Was a Waterfront Girl” is drawn by Paul Gustavson and Bill Ward, and is from Quality Comics’ Love Letters #3 (1950).

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Number 1355: “Spending the days with Bill, and the nights with horror!”

Forbidden Worlds, ACG's companion to Adventures Into the Unknown, ended its run at #34 (1954), the last issue before the Comics Code kicked in. It was replaced for three issues with Young Heroes, a more Code-friendly book, numbers 35-37. But Young Heroes didn't last, and Forbidden Worlds came back with an issue dated about a year after #34, continuing the numbering from #35. Confused? Comic books used to change their names but not their numbering (trying to get around a postal regulation for second-class mailing permits), but sometimes they were caught and had to re-number. That may be what happened with Forbidden Worlds

Okay, that's our comic book history lesson for today. Within the pages of FW #34 are a couple of stories that show a change in direction for ACG’s supernatural titles to fit into the new Code, and a last blast from their pre-Code past. The newer-styled story is “Day of Reckoning!” which is science fiction with art attributed by the Grand Comics Database to Paul Gustavson, and the catchy-titled “My Fanged and Fiendish Darling” is a werewolf story, common in ACG’s titles until the Code. It's drawn by Emil Gershwin.

“Fanged and Fiendish” is very odd. A married woman and single man share a secret; they are both able to sit at home and send their “wolf-beings” into the night to rip and tear innocent passers-by. No credible reason is given for Karen taking up such a lycanthropic lifestyle except that she is “...so lonely that maybe even terror is welcome!” It’s a crazy plot, but that wasn’t uncommon for ACG.

The Grand Comics Database gives Ken Bald credit for the cover.

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Number 793

Un-Super Heroes Week: After Midnight comes the Marksman

This is the final posting for Pappy's Un-Super Heroes Week:

Midnight was created by Jack Cole at the behest of Quality Comics publisher, Everett "Busy" Arnold, just in case Will Eisner was killed in World War II. Because Eisner owned his own creation, The Spirit, Arnold ordered up a visual copy with Midnight. Eisner might have ground his teeth down in frustration over this blatant infringement, but those were extraordinary times. Coming out of the Depression, Eisner probably thought discretion over Arnold's actions trumped litigation. As it worked out, Midnight became a cover feature of Smash Comics, but was gone before the end of the 1940s. The Spirit earned money for Eisner over several decades. This story is well drawn by another of Eisner and Cole's contemporaries, Paul Gustavson.

Read more about Midnight here.

I've shown a Marksman story before, in Pappy's #342. The Marksman is a character who should probably have been killed on his first mission, standing out as he does in his white t-shirt and red cape. But he is of the comics, and during the war comic characters had their gimmicks that made them impervious to the enemy, because the writer wrote it that way!

I like the precise Fred Guardineer artwork, though, and especially his caricatures of the Axis gangstas. The splash panel is classic.

Both of these stories are from Smash Comics #43, 1943.

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Number 276

At Midnight all cats are gray…

Midnight, a Spirit lookalike, was drawn by artist Paul Gustavson. This particular story was published in Quality's Smash Comics #46, September 1943.

As much as I admire Gustavson's style, I wonder where the editor was when he turned in his artwork. He should've handed him a book on animals and said, "This is a cat. Draw it like this." I think cats in Warner Bros cartoons look more realistic than Gustavson's.

The cover, with a cat that looks like a cat, is by Alex Kotzky, who later went on to draw the successful syndicated comic strip, Apartment 3-G.

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