Number 1498: The back-ups

These three well-drawn short stories, all from Police Comics #11 (1942), struck me for different reasons. The first, “Chic Carter,” has a swamp monster (or at least what appears to be). Something shambling out of a swamp, fake or not, gets my attention.

“Firebrand” was the first cover feature of Police Comics. He lost the position to Jack Cole’s Plastic Man. “The Mouthpiece” appears to be one more Spirit lookalike from the company that owned the Spirit. In addition to Spirit, who dressed in a suit and wore a mask, Quality had Midnight and the Mouthpiece. Are there any more blue-suited crimefighters with Lone Ranger masks from Quality I have missed?

Fred Guardineer, who drew the Mouthpiece, is responsible for the above head-spinning electric chair panel. Fred drew many a similar panel when he went to work for Charles Biro at Crime Does Not Pay. Lee Ames, who drew this episode of Firebrand, went on to a career which included book illustration and how-to-draw books. Vern Henkel, artist on the Chic Carter story, began his career by sending a story he wrote and drew to publisher “Busy” Arnold in the days when comic books were in the so-called Platinum Age.

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Number 1310: Cleopatra turns on her headlights...and in turn, turns on Julius Caesar!

It's been only a short time since I showed you the most infamous headlights cover of Phantom Lady #17, and here I am again, to blind you with headlights set on high beam.

This Stuart Taylor tale from Jumbo Comics #41 (1942) is sexually suggestive, especially in its depiction of Cleopatra. Yet beyond its fictional framing, it’s essentially the story told in history books: Cleopatra's seduction of Julius Caesar, and after Caesar's death, Marc Antony. But told Fiction House-style makes history so much more entertaining.

Lee J. Ames is credited with penciling and inking. It’s been a while since I showed anything by Ames. He was a journeyman comic book artist who went into book illustration, and then into instruction books with titles like Draw 50 Animals, Draw 50 Famous Faces, etc., which taught many kids they could draw by taking the steps Ames showed them. The last thing I showed by Ames in this blog is the 1951 Avon adaptation of King Solomon’s Mines in Pappy's #919.

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Number 919


King Solomon's Mines


I read H. Rider Haggard's novel, King Solomon's Mines, a year ago. For a 125-year-old novel it holds up well. I’m half that age and not holding up half as well as the book.

Avon did a very good adaptation as a one-shot comic in 1951, drawn by Lee J. Ames, an artist who went from comics into much acclaim as an artist and author. He did the Draw 50 . . . series of how-to art books for young people. According to the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide the Avon version was a movie comic, but that’s never stated on the comic. The 1950 movie, with Deborah Kerr and Stewart Granger, changes the story into a woman looking for her missing husband rather than a man searching for his missing brother. The Avon version sticks close to Haggard’s novel, without the Hollywood treatment.

Classics Illustrated did their own version of King Solomon’s Mines in 1952, illustrated by Henry C. Kiefer.

Readers familiar with The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comic series will recognize the character, Allen Quatermain.

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