Around the Comics 'Sphere

Here's an interesting website dedicated to Dick Tracy Memorabilia. I was not much of a fan of Tracy in the comics pages in the 1960s, but I remember reading a bunch of the strips from the 1930s in a book at one point and being absolutely captivated with Flattop. Entertaining blog!

The Fortress Keeper posts a complete tentacle story from Airboy. Airboy is one of my favorite Golden Age characters. He started as a teenage flier fighting the Japs and Nazis, and survived the end of the war by going to more science-fiction like plots. FK also links to another blogger who has posted the two famous rat stories from Airboy. These stories were highlighted by Steranko in one of the volumes of the History of the Comic Books, and I'd wanted to read them for years. Thanks FK and Mr Door Tree!

Bill Jourdain has a more serious post on the topic of censorship of racially insensitive characterizations in reprints of comics from the 1940s. I'm a big believer in reprinting the material exactly as it originally appeared; if it's perceived to be racist, include a disclaimer. I wrote about the Comics Code censorship of a Two-Face reprint in the 1960s.

Robby Reed, author of Dial B for Blog, in my opinion the finest comics blog ever imagined, publishes his final post, including (at the end) a photo of Robby (real name Kirk Kimball). Kirk did it all, from witty and talented photoshops to terrific reporting. If you haven't checked out Dial B, there are 500 issues sitting in his archive.