Number 912


All eyes on George Evans


Suspense Detective was a short-lived crime comic from Fawcett, published in 1952 and 1953. It expired after five issues when Fawcett management decided to shut down their comic book line. George Evans, who bunked at Fawcett for a couple of years before they shut down, then found a home at EC.

The best way to spot George Evans' artwork is through the eyes. His characters have some of the most expressive eyes in comic books. Evans used them to increase the tension in an otherwise average panel.

The story, "A Short Step to Oblivion", from Suspense Detective #1, 1952, has a B-movie plot: innocent man about to go to the chair while wife and detective race against time to find evidence of his innocence. I think I saw that more than once in old movies. Whatever shortcomings the story has are overtaken by Evans' fine artwork.

One of my favorite Evans non-EC stories is "The Vanishing Hitchhiker," from a Classics Illustrated special, The Story Of Ghosts. You can find it in Pappy's #78.

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Number 730


That's "Baily" without an "e"


Bernard Baily, whose last name is often misspelled as the more common "Bailey," began work in the comics in their earliest years. His claims to fame included the Spectre, which he co-created with writer Jerry Siegel, and the Hourman, which he drew during that era.

These covers of More Fun, scanned from the DC Archives edition of the Golden Age Spectre, are from the first two episodes of that spectral superhero.


Baily went on to do several other features, was a publisher in the 1940s and had an art service that produced issues of horror comics like Mister Mystery and Weird Mysteries, among others. When it came to gruesome and horrible, Baily was up there with the best horror artists in the business. These covers are from that period.


The story I'm showing is from Suspense Detective #5 from 1953, the last issue of a series of mystery/horror comics from Fawcett. In the latter part of Baily's career he went back to DC Comics. I showed one of his unique and distinctive DC stories in Pappy's #495.

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