Viva Monsters! / New Movie Monsters...

Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Tư, 31 tháng 3, 2010

Let's celebrate April Fool's Day today with some spoofy creature feature fun and two of MAD Magazine's very finest artists, shall we? First up, classic monster gags by the amazing Sergio Aragones, followed by Wally Wood's "New Movie Monsters from Madison Ave." (PS: I'm not sure where any of these originated, all are taken from paperback reprints from the 60's and 70's.)


















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And congratulations to Jeff Overturf, he's the big winner of THOIA's "6 of Me on the Prowl" contest. And since the 6 Karswells couldn't agree between all the great entries in this contest, I left the decision up to my son Zander, who at the moment is probably the biggest Three Stooges fan on the planet, annnnd his choice was a no-brainer. Jeff wins himself a copy of Peter H. Brothers new book "Mushroom Clouds and Mushroom Men: The Fantastic Cinema of Ishiro Honda", published by Authorhouse. Nice work Jeff, please send me your mailing address! And thanks to everyone that joined in the fun, there's lots more horrific contests coming in 2010!

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Người đăng: vanmai yeu em


Number 710


Bed of Murder!


War Against Crime! #11 was the last issue of that title. With the next issue it became Vault of Horror. This last issue of WAC featured the second story hosted by the Vault Keeper, and EC's first horror cover. Those must've been heady days at EC when they saw their circulation jump as they moved into horror.

I could've shown you the Vault Keeper's story from this 1949 last issue of WAC, "The Mummy's Curse," but I'm contrary and want to show you story number two from that issue because I have the original art scans I purloined some years ago from Heritage Auctions, and because of the confusion over the artist of "Bed of Murder." When I showed some panels from this artwork in Pappy's #351 I identified it as being by Harry Harrison, because that was the credit I'd seen elsewhere. In Russ Cochran's reprint of WAC #11 the credit for the artwork is given to John Alton.

John...who? To paraphrase sportscaster Dick Vitale, "Let's go to the internet!" I found that John Alton was a Canadian artist who had worked for Bell Syndicate in Canada, and had done some jobs in the States after the Canadian comic industry crashed. Credits for Alton are scarce over the years, and after a time they disappear. I find Alton's style very clean, no white-out and no patches. There's nothing exceptionally dynamic about his artwork but Alton was obviously a professional and his style seems perfect for the late '40s crime comics.

Tomorrow is a non-EC posting, then I'll come back on Friday with a couple of EC love tales.









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Battler Britton - All 5 Parts

Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Ba, 30 tháng 3, 2010

Out of turn a post: I was planning to share 30+ more Commando Comics at present and some more by IUknown later. However a regular visitor TheBlabberingBard has offered another 59 Comics including these 6. All will be uploaded by himself from his e-collection. 








All credits go to TheBlabberingBard & original contributors (given at the end of file)
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Lois Lane #13

Người đăng: vanmai yeu em



This is a classic example of Weisinger's puzzle covers. The idea was to present a startling situation on the cover, with the hope that the kids would be compelled to pick up the comic and leaf through it to find out what shocking secret had compelled Lois to wear a lead mask. Weisinger knew through focus-group type studies that he had done that kids who actually picked up a comic and flipped through it were much more likely to purchase that actual issue, and thus his goal was to get them to grab the issue off the spinner rack.

The first story features a visit to Lois' hometown of Pittsdale. The local newspaper, where she got her start as a reporter, is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Perry kindly gives her the weekend off, but when she checks for a flight, she finds that the Metropolis Airport is all fogged in. Fortunately Superman takes pity on her and flies her back to Pittsdale. He agrees to stay the weekend:


Pop Lane realizes what a great son-in-law Superman would make when the Man of Steel helps out with some of the chores:

But when he pitches the idea, Superman demurs with the usual, "She'd make a wonderful wife, but my enemies would attack me through her," line. Unfortunately, a local snoop heard only the first part of the conversation and the rumor that Superman and Lois are getting married spreads like wildfire. And, as must happen in all comedies, it is decided that it would be too embarrassing to admit the truth, and thus they pretend to be ready to go through with it. Lois gets a visit from a former beau:

Yes, I am sure that Hector was once a hunk, before he started wearing the Joker's outfit. Pop Lane is generous to a fault:

But just as it looks like the wedding is inevitable:

Remember, Superman had to leave at six to photograph those stars, so the wedding has to be called off until the next time they're back in Pittsdale.

Comments: An extremely silly, slapstick story, that mines a lot of the same ground used for the rural comedies at CBS (Andy Griffith, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction) in the 1960s, although this November 1959 issue actually predates those shows.

Next up is Alias Lois Lane. Lois visits a western US town with the intent of getting a photograph of a TV star who's on his honeymoon. She dyes her hair blond to disguise herself, but a couple of crooks realize she's the spitting image of the famed girl reporter;

They blackmail her into helping them out (although she really goes along with their plot to get a scoop). Of course, they want her to imitate Lois Lane, but while her appearance is successful, she's nowhere near as smart or sophisticated as the genuine article:

But through effort, they teach her to recognize Lois' friends and to mimic her voice:

Hmmm, anybody hearing echoes of, "The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain,"?

But she enjoys ticking them off by getting things wrong, to the point where they're ready to give up hope. But then she manages to get saved by Superman:


Yep, it seems pretty obvious that an inspiration for this story was My Fair Lady, as one of the key songs in that Broadway play (and later movie) was "She Did It!" at any rate, the crooks now reveal their plot; they will have Lois photograph Superman with a special camera that contains Kryptonite, letting them steal a valuable mouse. Mouse? Superman explains:

As I have discussed before, animals being shot into space was a hot topic around then.

Comments: Cute take-off on the My Fair Lady theme. One interesting note: In both this story and the previous one, the pretext for the initial situation gets ignored the moment the real plot is introduced. Remember, Lois went back to Pittsdale for the 100th anniversary of her newspaper, but that never comes up once they get to the Lane family farm. Ditto with this tale, in which Lois never gets the photograph of the TV star and his blushing bride.

The finale is the cover tale, and it reveals the downside of puzzle covers; the story they represent is often wacky and filled with incredible coincidences. So it is with this tale, which starts out with Superman saving Lois and expressing exasperation with her curious nature:

The next day he spots her car crashed into a tree and rushes to the Daily Planet to see if she's okay:

He suspects that she was badly disfigured in the car crash, but that turns out to be wrong. Instead, Lois had attended a nightclub the evening before, where she watched a magic act:

And sure enough the first two people who see Lois the next day react oddly. When she looks into a lake:

She wraps herself in bandages, but realize this will not conceal her from Superman, so eventually she gets a welder to fashion the lead mask. Yet when Superman later removes the mask, it turns out her face is perfectly normal; all the magician had done was to plant a hypnotic suggestion in her mind that she would look like a cat the next day. But what about the people who reacted so strangely to her?


Comments: Clearly one of those stories where Weisinger came up with the cover idea and then assigned his writer the chore of creating a story where it happened. Incidentally, Lois got the head of a cat in another story appearing in Jimmy Olsen #66 a few years later.
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Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Hai, 29 tháng 3, 2010


Number 709


What Lee Ames did was a crime!


Lee J. Ames is a famous and popular artist who, among many other things, illustrates books and does the Draw 50... series of art instruction books. At one time Ames was doing comic book work, but I haven't found much information on that phase of his career. He seems to pass it by completely in the autobiographical information on his websites, here and here. Oh well...based on his fancy signature on the artwork for this story he seemed to have been pleased with what he had done.

This 12-page version of the life of Machine Gun Kelly (misspelled "Kelley" in the splash, tsk tsk), is found in War Against Crime #1, 1948, and I'm presenting it as part of a series this week on EC Pre-Trend comics. The scans are from the Russ Cochran reprint from 2000. War Against Crime! and its partner in crime, Crime Patrol, were just two of many crime comics titles from several publishers in the late 1940s. These two fair-to-middling-selling comics became more famous--or infamous--for introducing the features, The Vault of Horror and The Crypt of Terror, just before these two crime titles morphed into the horror titles.

I posted another version of the Machine Gun Kelly story in Pappy's #11.












Next: Better than the dial-a-number bed, dig that crazy murder bed!

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