Sisters of the Witch / The Witch's Claws

Two tales of weird witchcraft from the Gold and Silver Age plunge you headlong into a month of horrific Halloween madness and October Eve thrills 'n chills! Of course, it's like that around here all year long anyway so for some it'll just be a continuation of what we do best. "Sisters of the Witch" is from the '53 issue of Tales of Horror #5, and "The Witch's Claws" is from the Oct. '74 issue of Terror Tales Vol 6 No 5.

More about →

D2-041 H-Bomb Under the Mongo Sea

Writer: Harvey Kurtzman 

Art: Dan Barry

Summary: Ready to return to their moon base after completing 'Operation Rainmaker' (read D2-040 Space Construction Corps), Flash and his SCC crew is alerted to a stray atomic missile zooming through space. Following the armed bomb to the planet Mongo, they must stop and disarm the lethal missile before it is too late.
Meanwhile, the Space Kids on Mongo have been turned into an aquatic species for trespassing on an underwater kingdom...

(Source of summary: www.ipcomics.net)

Download 

Very thankful to Col. Worobu who sent some missing strips from this series. All credits go to him & "Allen Lane" who scanned and first shared at net.

More about →

Number 816

Love comes to Everett Raymond Kinstler

E. R. Kinstler, famous artist, portrait painter, distinguished watercolorist, started his career in comic books at age 16. Unlike most other famous artists, Kinstler never denied his comic book work. In the biography, The Talented Miss Highsmith by Joan Schenkar, Kinstler worked with writer Patricia Highsmith (Strangers On A Train, The Talented Mr. Ripley) at Nedor in the early 1940s, when Highsmith was scripting stories for editor Richard E. Hughes. Kinstler, a teenager at the time, claimed he had a crush on her.

When Highsmith went on to new heights in her career she (almost) completely buried her comic book past. She wrote comics like Black Terror, and after the war wrote for Fawcett, scripting Golden Arrow, amongst others. Kinstler's career in comics is much easier to track, because he usually signed his stories. Even when he didn't, his work is easily spotted by his slashing pen style, influenced by James Montgomery Flagg. In "Untamed," done for the first issue of DC's Romance Trail*, in 1949, he doesn't use quite the fancy penwork he used later at Avon...probably due to the editorial dictates at DC, which had a prominent house style.

Highsmith wrote comic books for the extra income, and then when she became a world famous novelist never mentioned her work in the field. Kinstler features his comic book work in his biography because it's important to him to show that even though he came from what was considered at the time the bottom of the illustration industry, it helped turn him into the artist he later became.

*Julius Schwartz, who edited Romance Trail for DC, claimed it was DC's first love comic. (Source: Alter Ego #26, page 12.)

More about →

D2-040 Space Construction Corps

Writer: Harvey Kurtzman 

Art: Dan Barry 

Summary: Arriving at the SCC moon base with a band of new recruits (read D2-039 Flash without Dale), Flash is invited to take part in Operation Rainmaker, an ambitious but risky effort to blast icebergs from Saturn’s rings to Mars for irrigation.

Embarking on the dangerous mission with the new recruits in tow, Flash is still unaware that a number of incidents and mishaps will place the delicate project in acute danger...

(Source of summary: www.ipcomics.net) 

Download 

Very thankful to Col. Worobu who sent some missing strips from this series. All credits go to him & "Allen Lane" who scanned and first shared at net.

More about →

Meanwhile, Elsewhere...

The guys at Comic Geek Speak have continued their look at the history of DC comics with a show on the 1960-1972 period that my readers will probably find highly entertaining; I know I enjoyed it.

Speaking of podcasts, a new one is coming called Alt3red Egos. Their stated goal is to bridge the gap between obsession and observation, and they will have three versions of every podcast to appeal to all levels of comics fans from newbies to geeks.

The Big Blog of Kids' Comics posts a couple of stories from Funny Stuff #72, a bit before the time period covered here. DC's funny animal line is largely forgotten today, and even in the Silver Age about the only remnant left was the terrific Fox and Crow series.

Superman Fan posts a review of Superman #175, a comic I covered here awhile ago.

Commander Benson has a series coming on the tryouts for the Legion of Super Heroes, a topic I have also delved into at some length.

More about →

Number 815

Maureen Marine

I believe Harold Delay (sometimes spelled DeLay) is the artist for this strip from the short-lived Blue Circle Comics. It's a well-drawn but silly feature from Blue Circle Comics #1. Unlike the Land Of The Lost story I showed you in Pappy's #706, this soggy saga is told straight-faced, without the whimsy of the EC children's comic.

Blue Circle Comics was one of a series of titles put out by Rural Home Publishing, who also did Blazing Comics.

Harold Delay was an old-time illustrator, working on book illustrations at the turn of the 20th Century, drawing for pulps in the twenties and thirties, then into comics for a time in the forties. I can't find any birth or death information on Delay, so if you know please tell me. He was one of a group of artists* who were working long before comic books existed, and whose drawing still reflected an earlier era. Maureen, for instance, looks like a girl out of a storybook from the pre-World War I era. In 1941 and '42 Delay did outstanding adaptations of Gulliver's Travels and Treasure Island in Target Comics, which fit his style well.

*Besides Delay I can think of H. (Henry) C. Keifer (who also had a strip in Blue Circle Comics #1), Alex Blum (sometimes under the name Alex Boon), H. (Harry) G. Peter, longtime Wonder Woman artist, and George Carlson (Jingle Jangle Comics).

More about →

Hand of Fate!

There's a brutal beast terrorizing the moors, in this second eerie offering from Tales of Horror #5 from 1953. "Hand of Fate" title aside, is it just me or does this story look and feel more like something Ace would have published in one of their horror mags?

More about →

Number 814

The Wild Pursuit

The chase is on! Crimebuster chases down the arch villain Iron Jaw in this breathless tale from Boy Illustories #69, 1951, drawn by Norman Maurer.

The first part of this tale, from Boy #68, was shown last Monday in Pappy's #811. You might want to read it first. Or what the hell, read the stories in reverse order! I guarantee, it won't make one bit of difference.

More about →