Number 1427: Zoro and the Devil’s Dagger

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.

More about →

Number 455


"Dey say it's hanuted!"


Emmanuel "Mac" Raboy was a top cartoonist, drawing Captain Marvel Jr. and Green Lama. He drew the Flash Gordon Sunday strips from 1946 until he died in 1967. At Fawcett he worked with Jack Binder, who ran a shop that provided artwork for comics. I talked with Jack in 1970 and he told me that "Raboy was talented, just slow." Apparently a perfectionist, he was also temperamental and could tear up a job he didn't like. Another story I heard about Raboy many years ago is that he moonlighted drawing comics while in the Navy during World War II. He had very little space on ship to draw, so drew his comic book pages the same size as the printed page. That looks like what happened with "The Punching Polties" from Master Comics #40, July 1943.

There's no telling why the speech balloon was changed on page 9, panel 3, to a crude paste-up misspelling "haunted" as "hanuted." You've got to wonder where in the production phase this happened, but it might have been done by poltergeists.

More about →