Number 947


The dead are with us always


At the end of April we had a tale of haunted love, the other day a funny story of Tubby and a ghost, today two stories of death and hauntings of an unusual sort.

In "Twice Alive" we have an imaginative setting for ghosts, our own bodies. We all know our genes live on beyond us, but what if all of our ancestors inhabited our body? Even such an outrageous idea works because of Bob Powell's masterful artwork. It's too bad Worlds Beyond #1, a Fawcett comic from 1951, wasn't printed better. My scans for this story are new. I showed the story a few years ago and my poor scans of the time made the bad printing look even worse. It has haunted me since. So to exorcise the ghosts of bad scans, I resurrected this eerie story and gave new life to the pages.

Harvey Comics' Black Cat Mystery #32, is dated December, 1951, one month later than Worlds Beyond, and has another eerie story, this time featuring "the ghost of death." Both stories are done by Powell with the assistance of Howard Nostrand, who worked his name into "Deadly Acres" on the side of the moving van.

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Number 821


Octoman is here!


Let it be stated now: I am not down with octopi. I am not a fan of slithery 8-armed critters from the depths of the seas. My parents took me to see the movie Beneath The 12-Mile Reef when I was a kid, and Robert Wagner fighting with an octopus made up my mind for me. I let the octos stay where they are, and I stay away from them. I can't even look at them in an aquarium.

So they spook me, especially when, as in "Arms Of Doom" from Harvey's Black Cat Mystery #32, 1952, they have googly cartoon eyes and are attached to a human body. Ugh. This disgustingly tentacled tale is drawn by the master of disgusting, Rudi Palais.

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Number 523


Rudy Palais pops a sweat!


Golden Age comic art by Rudy Palais can be spotted easily by looking for flying sweat drops. This past Monday I showed you a couple of stories by Johnny Craig, who also used perspiring faces to indicate stress or fear. But Palais used the type of sweat drops usually associated with funny animal comics. I'm thinking of Chad Grothkopf (Captain Marvel Bunny) or Floyd Gottfredson (Mickey Mouse). Both of those cartoonists drew characters with bullets of sweat flying from their heads. Sweat as Palais portrayed it wasn't usually used in more illustrative comic art, and I can think of no other artist who used sweat or tears in the bulbous and exaggerated way Palais did.

Here are originals for four stories by Rudy Palais I culled from the Internet, all of which show his signature flying sweat. "The Scarecrow's Revenge" is from Witches Tales #14. "The Clock Struck Doom" is from Black Cat Mystery #37, "Army of Scorpions" from Black Cat Mystery #33, and "The Man With the Iron Face" is from Witches Tales #12.

I also showed two crime comics stories by Palais here and here.

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Number 442


Boxing Day noir


Americans don't know what Boxing Day is, a holiday celebrated in the rest of the English-language speaking world. For my fellow Americans, here's an explanation of Boxing Day.

I don't have a posting that relates to the Boxing Day holiday so I came up with a boxing strip. This is from Silver Scream #2, from 1991, a black and white reprint from Harvey Comics' 1954 Black Cat Mystery #51. The drawing is by Mort Meskin. Because of the moodiness of horror comics, I think some would have been improved had they been printed originally in black and white. Oftentimes the coloring detracted, rather than added, to the mood. "Punch and Rudy," sans comic book colors, is a noirish story, stark and dark, with a punch ending (literally).

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While on the subject of noir, recently I watched the film, Blast Of Silence, part of the Criterion Collection on DVD. The movie was made as an indy film in 1960, released in '61. It was written , directed, and starred Allen Baron. The reason I mention it in Pappy's is that Allen Baron was a comic book artist sometime in the Golden Age. In the German-produced documentary that accompanies the movie, there are some quick and tantalizing shots of comic book original art. I did some screen captures. I didn't find Allen Baron in the Grand Comics Database, but maybe somebody out there will recognize these stories.

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