Wheaties Wishes They Had This One Back

Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Sáu, 30 tháng 8, 2013

Okay, Golden Age, here but still quite funny:

Take a tip from me, Wheaties, and don't fall in love with 30-year-old ballplayers who have a big season in AAA.  I'm a big baseball fan, have been ever since I was 8 years old, and I never heard of Jerry Witte.  Probably because he had only 172 at-bats in the majors (in 1946 and 1947) and batted .163.  While playing first base.  Even on the old Browns, that was not enough to cut it, and one hopes he went into insurance or real estate in Toledo on the basis of his admittedly great season there.

Every now and then some guy will come up and the announcers will be yammering about what a terrific prospect he is, and I look him up and he's like 27 or 28.  No real prospect, just a guy who plugged and plugged and finally made it to the top, but don't expect him to be a star or to stick around long.  If you want to know how long a major-league career to expect, just subtract the guy's age as a rookie from 30 and multiply by two.  Somebody like Witte should have almost no major league career (as he did); guys like Mike Trout and Manny Machado should have very long careers in the majors, as should Bryce Harper (if he stops running into fences).  About the only exceptions to this rule are the former Negro League players like Minnie Minoso, who were banned from the game until they were in their mid-twenties, and pitchers, who can flame out young or suddenly develop a pitch (like Phil Niekro).
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Number 1428: The UFO Spirit

Người đăng: vanmai yeu em

Orson Welles, the enfant terrible of theater, radio and the movies of his day, gets the Will Eisner treatment as “Awsum Bells” in this tale from the September 28, 1947 Spirit Section. I have scanned it from the blackline-and-graytone reprint in Warren’s The Spirit #2 (1974).

The update paragraph on the last page was new for the reprint version. The scripter (credited as Eisner by the Grand Comics Database) had been paying attention to the news stories that began appearing in June, 1947 about mysterious “flying disks” buzzing around in U.S. airspace.








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Bride of Satan

Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Năm, 29 tháng 8, 2013

Flash Forward to the satanic 70's, and here's an evil classic conjured up by George Kashdan and Vicente Alcazar for the December 1974 issue of Witching Hour #49. Also, for anyone looking for HAUNTED HORROR #6 this week (as incorrectly reported), it'll actually be in stores next week on Sept 4th!








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Number 1427: Zoro and the Devil’s Dagger

Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Tư, 28 tháng 8, 2013

In the wake of the initial comic book boom of the late thirties-early forties, comics, at 68 pages, all in color for a dime, were in constant need of talent and characters to fill those pages. If ideas and concepts from more successful comics were borrowed, well, that’s the comic book biz. There were so many characters spread across the industry they were popping up like weeds in my lawn. I wouldn’t want to try to count them.

Anyway, as promised on Monday, here are two more stories from 1941, this time from Fawcett’s Master Comics #12. I was not familiar with these characters at all, and apparently they didn’t set the comic book world on fire. But, so what? I like them well enough to show them here. “Devil’s Dagger” is drawn by journeyman comic artist Ken Battefield (NOT “Battlefield,” which is the way I often see his name misspelled). I know next to nothing about Battefield, because there isn’t much information available online. The other story is “Zoro the Mystery Man” (not “Zorro”), drawn by the great Mac Raboy. Raboy was an excellent illustrator, who did early work on Captain Marvel Jr. He also did fine work on Green Lama. Raboy went from comic books to the Flash Gordon Sunday comic strip in 1946, which he drew until his death at the young age of 53 in 1967.

Master Comics was a pretty good anthology comic. At some point I’ll be mining this issue for more stories.
















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Number 1426: Firebrand and the Brick Batman

Người đăng: vanmai yeu em on Thứ Hai, 26 tháng 8, 2013

It appears that the Firebrand, who appeared on the covers of the first four issues of Quality’s Police Comics, was intended to be the star of the comic. The feature was drawn by Reed Crandall, in a style obviously inspired by Lou Fine. Crandall’s figures stiffened up in his later years, looking something like statuary rather than the fluid, action-packed poses of the Firebrand. The Firebrand’s costume looks like something between a circus performer and ballet dancer, and maybe it's the see-through tunic, or a panel on page nine of Firebrand running — which looks like Nureyev leaping — that make me think that way,

711, who is a prison trusty, apparently has his own in-and-out door, unbeknownst to the warden (who seems a little too palsy-walsy with him). It’s drawn by comics veteran George Brenner. The story features a character in a Batman cowl. I don’t know how else to describe it. It reminds me of the “bad Batman” story we showed a few months ago, which you can go to by clicking on the thumbnail:


This issue, Police Comics #5 (1941) is the first issue with Plastic Man on the cover, and he kept that spot for the rest of his time in Police.

Wednesday, two more stories from 1941, this time from Fawcett.


















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