Number 162


The First Man In History Who Could Not Die!


Oboy, here's another story from Jet #4. Except that Jet only appears as a vignette in the splash panel. He doesn't star in this story, but says if we write in he'll show us more of this type of story. He calls us "boys and girls," too. Apparently no boys and girls wrote him back then in 1951, because there were no more issues of Jet. I'm not sure why a comic with the potential Jet had in issues #1 and 2 would flame out so quickly, but sadly, it did.

It could have been editorial problems, maybe not knowing exactly what direction to send the book. I thought it had a strong premise at its beginning: a two-fisted scientific genius with a bunch of futuristic gadgets and a beautiful Asian girlfriend fighting off evil using his own wits and gizmos. Mix together some concepts cobbled from newspaper comic strip stars Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, then a dash of real-life Einstein and Thomas Edison. For some reason Jet never got back to its initial level. It's a pity, really, but there's no accounting for the marketplace. In 1951 science fiction was popular, but not as popular as other genres. Horror was raising its ugly head, thanks to EC and its line-up of titles, and science fiction was represented amongst the titles on the market, even from EC, but they didn't sell well compared to other genres. Even romance comics outsold science fiction. Believe it or not, romance outsold almost everything! That seems almost science fiction-y to me, but it's true.

This story is a standalone, and is similar to what writer Gardner Fox would do for editor Julius Schwartz in titles like Mystery In Space and Strange Adventures.*

The story of Gar San, Myrza, and the surprise ending using a heretofore unseen character, Tanda Set, is lightweight. There's really no explanation for why the female character is in disguise as a newspaper writer, or why she's in the same place pilot "Johnny Wilson" is brought to hospital. The whole story is contrived, for lack of a better word. Still, with artwork by Bob Powell it can't be all bad. Myrza is a hottie, 1951-style. The story might be lacking in the logic department, but it's fast moving and maybe some boys and girls of that era liked it, even if they didn't write in asking for more.

*Unlike most other science fiction comic books, science fiction sold well enough for DC to publish for many years. It likely had something to do with Schwartz's genius for gimmicky covers and plot hooks.

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Detective #249

I've always liked this particular issue, for several reasons. First, it features Batwoman and Robin working together. Why? Well, because Bruce Wayne is in prison!



It's something of a stock DC plot, with Bruce agreeing to be found guilty of being the fantastic new criminal, The Collector, in an attempt to befriend a prisoner who has somehow found blueprints to the jail. As in all such stories, though, only one person (Commissioner Gordon) knows that Bruce is not really guilty.



So when one of the convicts attempting a breakout with the plans accidentally kills himself, Bruce is accused of murder and sentenced to die. And of course, the Gotham legal system makes Texas look deliberate, so that Bruce is convicted and receives the last meal rapidly. Can Batwoman and Robin save him?

Well, Robin can, anyway. This was only Batwoman's third appearance and although she insists that the Boy Wonder work under her as he would under Batman, it is clear that Robin is the real detective on this case:



This is contrary to the usual Silver Age stories in which Robin is almost always second banana to the World's Greatest Detective.

Eventually Batwoman and Robin capture the Collector and the warden gets the governor to call off the execution. We never do hear that Commissioner Gordon has recovered from that nasty coma.

The story is unique in that Batman only appears in one panel; it's almost all Bruce Wayne.

The second story is The Ghost that Haunted Roy Raymond. The Roy Raymond stories were amusing little tales of a TV debunker of the supernatural. In this one, Roy proves that the ghost haunting him is actually a fake arranged by a couple of men trying to settle a bet.

The text story is actually pretty interesting, concerning the C.I.B., the Compliance and Investigative Branch of the Department of Agriculture. Yes, Agriculture had their own special cops, who bust people for some, shall we say, unusual crimes:



Yes, thank goodness those wily promoters are not allowed to make a profit on that wheat!

In the Martian Manhunter story, the governor is being threatened by gangsters trying to get a pardon for one of their members who is scheduled for execution. Two death penalty stories in one issue! Detective Jones impersonates the governor using his special power of being able to mimic any form (pretending he used makeup for the trick). The execution apparently goes forward, and the next day the crooks try to get revenge on the governor, but Jones manages to defeat them without revealing he's a Martian.

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Number 161


Gran'pa Feeb


Reading the Dark Horse reprints of the classic John Stanley Little Lulu stories makes me appreciate how much Stanley was able to do with his material. He worked with only a few characters who acted in a more-or-less closed universe (the "Luluverse"). Yet Stanley was able to be creative with variations of his theme month after month, year after year.

Lulu's friend and personal foil, Tubby, was someone I identified with. I was a chubby kid and even emulated Tubby when trying to solve some "crimes" in my neighborhood. (I nearly got punched in the nose when I accused a kid of being the one who broke into Bobby S.'s chicken coop in the caper I called The Case Of The Clucking Chicken. But I digress.) In the Dell Giant, Tubby And His Clubhouse Pals #1, which I bought off the stands in 1956, Stanley gave us some fantasy stories with Tubby, his friend Sammi and the little men from Mars, and then switched gears and introduced us to Iggy's Gran'pa Feeble.



Iggy brings Feeb to the boys' club because Feeb wants to join. But he's not a kid. He's an old man! That's OK, explains Iggy, "Feeb feels like a boy. Right up until noon, anyway." He goes on: "After that he gets younger and younger, until finally, along about eight o'clock, Ma has to catch him and carry him up to bed…boy! You ought to see him holler!"

Feeb is going through a second childhood. There is an initiation. Feeb has to put his hand into the knothole of a tree. No one has ever passed this part of the test but Feeb. In the knothole is a furry beast. It's actually a Davy Crockett hat. Feeb puts it on. "Oboy!" he says, "I bet I look more like Davy Crocker [sic] than Davy Crocker himself."

The last question in the initiation is posed by Tubby, "Feeb, do you like girls?" Feeb replies, "Why, of course I like girls!" The other boys scream, "No, Feeb! No!" To a gang with a motto, "No Girls Allowed," liking girls is heresy.



Feeb can't pass the initiation, so the boys rig it. Tubby, who as a junior detective often wears disguises, this time poses as a girl. It's cross-dressing done in a more innocent time. Tubby tricks him into hating girls, and Feeb is in the club.



When I originally read these Gran'pa Feeb stories I thought they were funny, but on rereading them I found them to be a lot like what I went through with my mother, now in an Alzheimer's nursing home. In the second Feeb story, "Injun Fighters," Feeb has to be introduced to Iggy. Gran'pa Feeble has Alzheimer's!



In the third story, "Gran'pa Feeb's Treasure Chest," Feeb goes through a siege of paranoia by calling Iggy to his room, asking if he's been followed.



Whew. The best writers show us some truth, and 50 years ago Stanley was showing me a comic book version of my future!

The Feeb stories are hilarious, because humor grows out of situations like this. We find eccentricities and old age rich fodder for comical situations. Unfortunately, if we live long enough, old age visits us and then it doesn't seem so funny. What scares me about Tubby And His Clubhouse Pals is that 50 years ago I was Tubby, but now I'm becoming much more like Gran'pa Feeb.

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Number 160


Nature Of The Beast


"Look Homeward, Werewolf," is a good example of a comic book twisting a title from a popular source (in this case, Thomas Wolfe's classic 1929 novel, Look Homeward Angel). It also uses a famous fable for its basis, the often-told story of the frog and the scorpion. It's been adapted to horror comics, though, so even though the fable has a moral, the moral to any horror comics story is there is no moral to a horror comics story.

The story was originally published in 1954 in Atlas Comics' Uncanny Tales #23, but I scanned it from a Marvel Comics reprint in 1974's Crypt Of Shadows #8. I don't have the original to compare it to, and there might be slight differences mandated by the Comics Code. The writer is unknown, but the artist is Mort Lawrence.

This story messes with the werewolf legend. According to it, the werewolves live "in the hills" and hide from humanity. They also can't stand any water at all, or they turn mad. This silliness stretches the reader's credulity, but it's an entertaining story anyway.

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Number 159


Jet Powers Puts Them To Sleep


Anarchy! Murder! Looting! Chaos! "The Rain Of Terror," is from Jet #4, ME Comics, 1951, written by Gardner Fox and drawn by Bob Powell. It's a follow-up to "The Dust Doom" in issue #3. I explained in my last entry for Jet Powers about the unique way they had with continuity and continued stories in Jet Comics. You can check out my last couple of postings by clicking on "Jet Powers" in the links at the bottom of this page.

The title refers to an attack by the villains of this post-apocalyptic story, a "former torch-singer," now called The Red Queen, and a general who has been dishonorably discharged from the Army. They crush a rebellion against their subjugation of the population with a rain of napalm--jellied gasoline--one of the worst anti-personnel weapons ever invented. Jet Powers rallies support and attacks the Red Queen and her general buddy with a rain of his own. Jet's rain being more humane, of course.

Su Shan, the sexy Chinese woman Jet met back in #1 (when she was an accomplice to the diabolical Mr. Sinn), is here in a couple of panels, along with Jet's new friend, Jimmy, who survived the dust doom. Su Shan tells Jimmy, "What a man!" referring to Jet, which leads me even further to believe that when he isn't saving the world, he and Su Shan are entertaining each other on that lonely mesa in the desert Southwest where they're shacked up. What can I say? Jet's a virile scientific hunk, and she's a sexy Asian woman in the Dragon Lady class.

Jet #4 is the last issue of the series. In that strange way of Golden Age comics and their re-naming of titles to fool the Post Office, it turned into American Air Forces with #5. Jet Powers had a role as an air ace, minus the science fiction elements. I have one of those stories, from a 1960s reprint book, and I'll present that after I post the whole of Jet #4. Be patient, Jet-fans. In a few weeks you'll have all of the Jet catalogue I own at your fingertips.

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Number 158


Tara Is A Wonder


A reader has reminded me that in Pappy's #144 I promised to show stories from Wonder Comics #16, dated February, 1948. This is the lead story, "Tara," an outer space strip in the Fiction House-Planet Comics mold. The art is attributed to Gene Fawcette.

There's an old story about writers in the pulp era of the 1930s, who with a change of setting from Tortuga to Venus, cutlasses to rayguns and pirate ships to rocket ships, could turn a standard pirate tale into science fiction. That's pretty much the case with this Tara story. You don't have to use a lot of imagination to put it back on earth sailing along the bounding main in the 18th Century, especially with the stilted dialogue. Anytime a villain spouts lines like, "Swine! Ye comb the universe and bring back none but these cabbage faces…?" or a hero shouts out, "A quick death with the taste of steel in thy throat for this sacrilege, pirate cur!" you've got something entertaining on a whole other level.

I've included the two-page text story from this issue, because even though it's Tara and her pals, the dialogue is definitely more modern.

Finally, the splash panel is a classic of the type with the huge looming villainous figure, and be sure to check out the cover of Wonder Comics #16, which can found by using the link in the first paragraph.

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Number 157


Herbie Hallucinates In Hell


Herbie Popnecker might've been the most unlikely character ever to star in his own comic book, but in the 1960s he was not only a hit in several issues of Forbidden Worlds, he was spun off into his own series. His title ran for 23 issues until the issue dated February, 1967. By that time the American Comics Group was running on fumes and soon after shut down operations. I read Herbie and thought the stories were completely bizarre. In retrospect, perfect for the 1960s and the dawning of the psychedelic era.

This particular story was the last story to feature Herbie in the anthology comic, Forbidden Worlds. Herbie moved into his own book after this story.

A couple of things really worked in Herbie, the aforementioned bizarre storylines--unlike anything else being published--and the wonderful solid artwork of Ogden Whitney. Somewhere I read that Whitney, who is apparently now deceased, was an alcoholic, but I've been unable to trace that story. If he drank he didn't drink and draw, because studying Whitney's inking is a study in a rock-steady hand.

Most, if not all, of the articles about Herbie usually have looked at the book from a strictly literal viewpoint. In other words, they have just accepted the fact that Herbie could walk in the air, knew all sorts of famous people, could talk to animals, or as in this story, could descend to hell and beat Satan. Perhaps Herbie had a form of autism and was prone to hallucinations. I don't think Hughes wrote it that way, nor did Whitney (who reportedly based Herbie on himself as a boy) draw it that way. But that's what it looks like to me.

In this particular story, "Herbie Goes To The Devil," Herbie not only sells his soul to the devil, he acts in the movie Cleopatra* with Elizabeth Taylor, and more importantly knows everyone, knows how to handle every situation, and can walk on air. Not bad for a "fat little nothing," as his verbally abusive father calls him. But what if Herbie is hallucinating? The story is straightforward up to this panel, where Herbie is sitting in class, "thinking." To me it's almost the best panel in the story because Whitney has, with very subtle drawing, indicated that Herbie is spacing out. After that I consider the rest of the story to be pure hallucination. Trust me on this. I know what I'm talking about.**



From Forbidden Worlds #116, 1963:

On another matter, I'd be surprised if editor/writer Hughes didn't get some feedback from conservative Christian groups, if any of them were reading comics, that is. The storyline using the devil as a funny character seems almost sacrilegious to people who would have Satan, "the adversary," as part of their theology. He's handled in this story in a very flippant way. But then, since we know now that Herbie is hallucinating, even Satan can act any way that Herbie wants him to act. After all, it's Herbie's fantasy, and we're just looking in.

*In the early 1960s the movie, Cleopatra, was a scandal-plagued, costly production in the grand scale of that era's blockbuster movies. Elizabeth Taylor, married to singer Eddie Fisher (after "stealing him away" from Debbie Reynolds in another scandal), was having an affair with co-star Richard Burton, whom she later married. So the production was a natural to feature on the cover of a Herbie comic book. After all, it was on the cover of every other magazine of the time as well. It also might have gotten the interest of conservative groups who'd wonder why Taylor, considered an adulteress and condemned from the pulpit, was featured on the cover of a comic book sold to children.

**Update, May 14, 2014: When I wrote this post in 2007 I immediately got a couple of e-mails, now lost, that took me to task for the autism remark. It was not classy, I know. I was attempting a joke. At the time I was surprised people took it serious. Additionally, ne reader pointed out to me that Herbie was not hallucinating. I agree. But for some reason saying he was seemed like a good idea at the time, and still does. But take it as a joke. After all, I know that comic books are reality and autism and hallucinations are fantasy.

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