Number 1370: Doiby’s ruint derby

Paul Reinman was an American comic book journeyman who was born in Germany and emigrated to the U.S. at a young age. He worked in comics from at least the early forties to the mid-seventies. His work is instantly recognizable, and he drew thousands of pages over a long career.

Green Lantern was one of the features he worked on during his time at DC in the 1940s. This entertaining story, which takes place in the time of King Arthur, is a pretty good example of the DC superheroes of the era whose time ended in 1949, only to be revived in different form about ten years later. By then Reinman was long gone from DC, working at Marvel, ACG and Archie. Reinman died in 1988, at age 78.

Doiby Dickles was Green Lantern’s sidekick, supposed comic relief. I find the character annoying, like I did the Three Stooges knockoffs who showed up with The Flash in his comics. I suppose they were there so the main character had someone to talk to, like Woozy Winks in the Plastic Man stories. The difference was Woozy Winks was actually funny.

From All-American Comics #72 (1946):

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Number 1085


Police Action!


Atlas Comics' Police Action #1 is another of those comics I think is interesting enough to show all the stories. I'm guessing here, but I imagine it was published with "police" in the title, cops as heroes, to deflect criticism from the crime comics that had been getting the comics in trouble. Of course, even with the emphasis being on police, this is still a crime comic.

Atlas fave Joe Maneely did the outstanding cover. Robert Q. Sale, who was a studio mate for a time with Severin, Elder and Kurtzman, did the lead story. Sale was a good artist, but his faces can be grotesque, homely with popping eyes. His action-packed splash panel of "Riot Squad" is great.

John Forte, a favorite of mine, did the story, "Homicide." Forte was another journeyman comic book artist, coming into the field in 1940. He went from drawing fantasy at ACG to DC in 1961 to do "Tales of the Bizarro World" in Adventure Comics. When that was canceled he went on to draw "The Legion of Superheroes" until his death in 1965.

Paul Reinman, whose work on Green Lantern I showed last week, did the third story, set in Paris. Gene Colan did the last story; it suffers from poor reproduction, turning Colan's finer lines into inky blobs, but the elements of action art that are central to Colan's work are here.

Police Action lasted for seven issues, all dated 1954.

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Number 1081


"Youse don't haveta encourich me, Lantrin!"


Journeyman artist Paul Reinman's work is all over the history of comics, from 1940 until the mid-1970s. His work shows up at many comic book companies, including Atlas/Marvel, ACG, and Archie Comics. It was at Archie that he and writer Jerry Siegel created the "Mighty Heroes" superhero comics, featuring characters from that company's 1940's past as MLJ Comics, including Black Hood, the Web, Steel Sterling and others.

Reinman was doing superhero comics in the 1940s at DC, where he had a longtime association with Green Lantern. This story, from All-American Comics #69, was published in 1945 under the All-American logo, when founder M. C. Gaines broke off his association with DC Comics. DC bought him out and continued his popular features.

Comedy sidekicks were popular in that era, and for Green Lantern it was the English language-mangling New York cabbie, Doiby Dickles.

Reinman died in 1988, a few weeks after his 78th birthday.

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