Number 460


Journeyman


I know you guys are here to read comics and not get preached to, but bear with me. Here's a PSA, a Pappy Service Announcement:

Last week I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I don't want sympathy. It's a curable form of cancer, and because of my astute primary care physician and my habit of going to my doctor once a year, it was caught at an early stage. So while I have cancer right now, there's no reason to believe I will have it after my surgery in a couple of weeks, or that it will be what ultimately kills me. Here's my preaching, though: Because this blog is read mostly by males, I am advising if you are over 40 you have your prostate examined once a year. Most guys don't like the idea of a Digital Rectal Exam (DRE), but for a couple of seconds of inconvenience and indignity, your life may be saved.

So, now that I've had my say, we return to our regularly scheduled program...


Vern Henkel's artwork might not have been splashy, might have been derivative--in "The Man Who Made A Wish" the devil looks like he's swiped from Will Eisner--but the Golden Age of comics wouldn't have happened without artists like Henkel. They were the guys who weren't stars, who did all of the backup stuff, kept the comic book machine running.

Henkel, who was born in 1917, sent a comic book story unsolicited to Quality Comics publisher Everett "Busy" Arnold in the 1930s. Arnold accepted it and Henkel's comic book career began, right around the time the comic book industry began. Over the years there were dozens, maybe hundreds, of guys like Henkel, who were the journeymen of the business.

"The Man Who Made a Wish" is originally from Mystic #7, 1952, but scanned from the reprint in Marvel's 1974 Crypt of Shadows #8. "Captain Fortune" is from Feature Comics #26, November 1939.

I posted a crime story by Henkel in Pappy's #132.