Little Feat’s 1972 classic Sailin’ Shoes LP featured an unforgettable image painted by Neon Park, an exceptional artist who made his mark through the creation of such provocative pieces as the infamous “Weasels Ripped My Flesh” cover for the Frank Zappa LP of the same name. He sadly passed away in 1993 from Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
Here’s a “tasteful” pre-Code horror story about a scheming rat exterminator – is there ever any other kind? – who overlooks a key point in his devious plan to earn a quick million.
“The Rat Man” originally appeared in The Unseen #9 (Standard, March 1953). The art is by Jack Katz of The First Kingdom fame.
The Lone Ranger had his share of imitators during the heyday of Western-themed comic-books, although the owners of that particular crime-fighters’ copyright were a heck of a lot less litigious than Harry Donnenfeld.
Alongside the ranks of The Masked Raider, The Mystery Rider, The Masked Ranger and The Black Rider – to name but a few – Ajax-Farrell’s Lone Rider stands alone as my favorite Lone Ranger analogue because of his striking character design.
Although the Rider was sometimes accompanied by a young Indian boy – emulating Red Rider’s Little Beaver, rather than the more fabled Tonto – the character’s closest friend and most trusted companion was his preternaturally skilled horse, Lightnin’.
Laugh if you want, but as one character in the following tale states: “A man’s hoss is his best friend.” You didn’t think Wild West heroes liked to hang around icky girls, did you?
From The Lone Rider #26 (Ajax-Farrell, June-July 1955), here’s “You Can’t Bargain With Horse Traitors!”
The writer and artist are not credited.
Charlton was known throughout its history for giving its artists carte blanche to offset their bargain basement rates, a policy that probably explains Steve Ditko’s decades-long loyalty to the company.
Back in the 1950s, when Ditko was honing his skills and testing the limits of his imagination, few other publishers would have allowed the artist to create such offbeat covers for a post-Comics Code science-fiction title like Out Of This World.
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As is customary with comics books of any era, the inside contents didn’t always live up to the covers. However, the stories illustrated by Ditko always had something special to offer and the following tale is easily the equal of any science-fiction comic published by the fabled – and at the time, defunct – EC line.
From Out Of This World #3 (Charlton, March 1957), here’s “The Supermen” as illustrated by Steve Ditko.
Plastic Man was 100 percent Jack Cole’s baby. No other creator has ever come close to equaling the brilliance of Cole’s take on Eel O’Brien’s heroic alter ego.
Of course, that hasn’t stopped people from trying. Over the past 46 years, a who’s-who of talent (Arnold Drake, Phil Foglio, Steve Skeates, Ramona Fradon, Kyle Baker, Frank Miller, etc. etc.) has attempted – and failed – to successfully integrate Plastic Man into DC’s fictional universe, and by extension the modern comics marketplace.
Interestingly enough, the Golden Age Plastic Man enjoyed a phenomenally long run (1941-1956) under the Quality Comics banner and Cole didn’t write and/or draw every single appearance of his most famous creation.
(Although Cole’s output was formidable …)
So what did the writers and artists who ghosted on Plas do differently from the modern creators who tried to reignite the character’s popularity? In my opinion, they stuck to Cole’s basic formula of portraying Plastic Man as the lone voice of reason in an insane world.
It’s an approach that works wonderfully when Plas is allowed to exist in his own, quirky universe, a condition that unfortunately cannot be met in an era where super-hero comics are ruled by serious, tightly integrated continuities that weave stories out of Batman’s or Wolverine’s every hiccup.
(Kyle Baker’s take on Plas’ universe probably came closest to Cole’s, but his Plastic Man was just as crazy as everyone else – which ultimately left no “sane” character to provide an entryway for readers.)
The following story is a good example of how the Golden Age Plastic Man fared without Jack Cole. The adventure is nowhere near as inventive or enthralling as Cole’s efforts, but it’s still fun and does a nice job of addressing the “horror comics” fad of the early 1950s without losing Plas’ unique style of humor.
From Plastic Man #40 (Quality Comics, March 1953), here’s “The Maker Of Monsters.” The writer and artist are unknown.
Don Rico entered the comic-book field in 1939 and enjoyed a long career that branched out into scripting television programs and films, writing more than 60 paperback novels under a variety of pseudonyms, drawing storyboards for Hannah-Barbara and even teaching courses on comic books at UCLA and drawing technique at Cal State Northridge.
His earliest work for such Golden Age publishers as Fox and Lev Gleason were easily as insane as the more celebrated Fletcher Hanks, yet Rico’s name rarely pops up on Internet comics blogs or the even recent spate of deluxe reprint books.
The “problem” – if it can even be classified as such – is that Rico improved his scripting and illustrative skills to the point where his output was routinely slicker and more professional than Hanks, an advance achieved at the cost of losing the inspired lunacy that makes the creator of “Stardust” so appealing to modern readers.
Rico’s work – which included a solid run on the Golden Age Daredevil and the creation of Atlas’ stable of jungle girls (Leopard Girl, Jann Of The Jungle and Lorna The Jungle Girl) – also failed to rise to the level of an Otto Binder or a Jack Cole, leaving his oeuvre betwixt and between the punk-rock thrills of the medium’s primitive origins and the innovations spurred by true comic-book visionaries.
(Although, to be fair, few people to this day equal the likes of a Binder or a Cole …)
If Rico was bothered by this relative lack of notoriety, it never manifested itself in his decades-long career. Like many from his era, he probably didn’t give a second thought to any notions of comic book creators or their creations being remembered decades after their heydays.
In fact, when Rico returned to comics in the early 1960s to script a few stories for Stan Lee (including an Iron Man tale that introduced a future summer blockbuster movie star, The Black Widow), he used a pseudonym so his paperback publisher wouldn’t know the writer-artist was accepting lower-paying comic-book work.
At any rate, here’s a good example of a solid super-hero yarn scripted and scribbled by one of the more dependable comic-book talents of any era, Don Rico.
From Silver Streak Comics #14 (Lev Gleason, Sept. 1941), the Golden Age Daredevil takes on a sinister hypnotist in “Enter The Parson.”
A beautiful video of the Philippine National Anthem that effectively demonstrates the power of animated images. The video is animated and directed by Arnold Arre; the music is performed by Radioactive Sago Project.
I’ve devoted many a post to the work of writer-artist Bob Powell, a talent equal to any of the Golden Age’s better remembered creators. The following tale makes a strong case for why Powell is worthy of such praise: a one-off science-fiction fantasy that incorporates the story’s page numbers into the layout itself.
Judging by the editor’s note, Powell or whoever pulled the strings at Harvey back then hoped Atoma would graduate to an ongoing series. It was not to be, but at least we have this colorful and imaginative story to look back upon and appreciate.
“Atoma” originally appeared in Joe Palooka Comics #15 (Harvey Comics, December 1947). The art – and in all probability, the story – is by Bob Powell.
The good folks over at Better/Nedor/Standard/Whatchamacallit knew that striking covers sold comics back in the halcyon days of newsstands and magazine racks.
That is why the majority of their publications featured eye-catching illustrations from one of the greatest cover artists of the day, Alex Schomburg.
Once hooked, however, readers usually found the contents a bit more slapdash than Schomburg’s covers promised. Although Standard Comics featured the early work of such talents as Richard E. Hughes and George Tuska, the stories themselves appeared to have been put together quickly and rarely rise above assembly-line quality.
(At least until the publisher started employing the likes of Alex Toth, Mort Meskin and Jerry Robinson later in its existence…)
There are always exceptions to the rule, however, and I often find myself surprised by the gems that can be found in early Better/Nedor/Standard comics. The following story – taken from the same issue as the Schomburg cover reproduced at the top of this post – definitely delivers the goods, even if The Black Terror and Tim never mount a single flying torpedo to combat the Nazi menace.
From The Black Terror #6 (Standard, May 1944), here’s The Terror Twins’ titanic struggle against “The Invincibles.” The writer and artist are not credited.
