Number 1545: “Invitation to Surrender!”

Surrender. A word in the language of love that means giving up and giving in to intimacy and passion. No woman I’ve ever known would use the word in such a context, but Alice Hughes, dewy-eyed and romantic, insists that the man she will eventually surrender herself to sweep her off her feet, and bring her “to surrender by the slow fire of mounting passion.” That sounds like a lot of work. When I was a young guy and in active pursuit of what young guys are usually in active pursuit of I would have thought that lighting a “slow fire” was too slow a way to get to the passion part. But then, I might have had more luck if I’d considered Alice’s point of view. At this age I have to learn what I should’ve known then by reading a 64-year-old love comic.

From Love Letters #3 (1950), artist(s) not known:

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Number 1541: Plastic Men

This is the final entry for our Week of Quality, showcasing characters from Quality Comics.

I showed you this cover a few weeks ago as part of my ongoing search for “injury-to-the-eye”* motifs in Jack Cole’s work:

It’s the cover for this entertaining story of Plastic Man robots being made out of recycled tires. (It was published during World War II; tires were rationed and at a premium.) The sequence of Woozy as a Plastic Man is inspired. The Grand Comics Database credits Jack Cole for writing, pencils and inks. From Police Comics #24 (1943):

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Number 1540: Headless but well-dressed

This is day three of our Week of Quality, featuring popular characters from Quality Comics of the forties.

“The Dress Suit Murders” from Doll Man Quarterly #9 (1946) is intriguing to me because we have what looks like a headless man committing murders, and because he is in evening wear, he is called not “the headless killer” (which would be my choice if I were writing the newspaper headlines that would accompany the lurid stories of his murder spree), but “Dress Suit.” That’s about as unlikely a name for a killer as any I can think of, but the name also provides a clue to the murderer.

The story is well-drawn, according to the GCD,  by Dan Zolnerowich, who also did superior work for Fiction House. The cover illustrating the story is by Al Bryant.

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The origin of Doll Girl, from Doll Man #37 (1951):

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Number 1539: Blackhawk and the hatchets of Hongo

This is day two of our Week of Quality, today featuring Quality’s long-running and successful leatherboys, Blackhawk and his gang.

Sinister “orientals” who use hatchets for murder (shades of the lurid tales of Tong wars and hatchet killers from tabloids and pulps of the first half of the twentieth century!), and who extort honest silk dealers are the villains. But unlike the grotesque stereotype of Chop-Chop, the comedy relief of the Blackhawk team, these Asians are at least presented as looking human. Or at least more human than Chop-Chop (or the stereotyped Connie or Big Stoop from Terry and the Pirates.) The Chop-Chop caricature was later toned down, but when this story was published in Blackhawk #15 (1946), he was a clownish and freakish little fat man speaking pidgin English. My apologies to those among you who may be offended.

The Grand Comics Database credits Harry Harrison for the pencils, but doesn’t make a guess as to an inker.

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