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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Number 427


Powell and Nostrand


For a brief time in the early 1990s the Harvey horror comics came back. Three issues of Silver Scream were published by Lorne-Harvey under the "Recollections" imprint, reprinting stories from the 1950s in black-and-white. Silver Scream #2 reprinted mostly from Black Cat Mystery #51. "The Old Mill Scream," drawn by Bob Powell, and "Come Back Bathsheba" are from that 1954 issue.

"Bathsheba," by Howard Nostrand, is a great example of Nostrand doing his Jack Davis-style work. The story is a satire on the 1952 movie, Come Back Little Sheba, which is in turn based on a stage play by William Inge. That's a caricature of Burt Lancaster as Doc.

I wish this series had gone more than three issues, but by the time they were published the black-and-white comics boom of the 1980s was bust, and most likely these comics didn't have the distribution they needed for survival.

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