Number 854

Love is not in the cards for the Black Rider

Black Rider is a masked Western hero; not in the Lone Ranger style but a doctor who pretends to be a wimp. Like Zorro Doc Masters dresses up in his costume to whup on bad guys.

Everyone to their own thing. In the last panel of this story, Doc Masters asks the gal he's hot for, Marie, to ". . . close your eyes and pretend I'm the Black Rider." She says no. She knows better than to get involved in that kind of role-play. Doc must be in turmoil knowing he is his own rival. Several costumed heroes have found themselves in that situation.

The story is from The Black Rider #10 (actually #1), from 1951, credited by Atlas Tales to Joe Maneely. I showed the origin of Black Rider from the same issue last June in Pappy's #759.

As an add-on, here's a Black Rider story from '54 that I scanned 10 years ago from my copy of 3-D Tales Of The West, before I sold it on eBay. Atlas charged 10¢ less for this comic than other companies charged for their 3-D comics, but the 3-D effects in this book didn't work out so well. I wish I had a blackline copy of this story for those of you who don't have 3-D glasses, because even if the 3-D is lame, the artwork is good. It's drawn by the late Al Hartley, another versatile artist who drew in several genres for Atlas. Later in his life ended up at Archie, and then Spire Christian Comics.

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D2-087: Kenoma and the Space-Jacker

Story: Harry Harrison 

Art: Dan Barry 

Summary: Leaving Medusa for the Mars base (see D2-086 Operation Medusa), Flash and Kenoma discover that a stowaway has sneaked on board their ship, but are prevented from acting as the desperate criminal is well armed.

Demanding a hefty ransom and safe passage to Earth in Flash’ ship, the stowaway injures Kenoma before bailing out to safety, leaving Flash with the unenviable task of trying to find a needle in a haystack...

(Source of summary: www.ipcomics.net) 

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It's from Emile's e-collection. All credits go to her & "Allen Lane" who scanned and first shared at net.

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D2-086: Operation Medusa

Story: Harry Harrison 

Art: Dan Barry 

Summary: Heading towards Medusa to apprehend the mastermind behind the terror at the Jupiter construction camp (see D2-085 Convict Squad and the Drug Trade), Flash and Kenoma find that the enemy is way ahead of them as they discover their local contact murdered on arrival.

With the body count clocking up fast as they try to evade several assassination attempts in close succession, Flash and Kenoma must keep their eyes open at all times and trust nobody...

(Source of summary: www.ipcomics.net) 

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It's from Emile's e-collection. All credits go to her & "Allen Lane" who scanned and first shared at net.

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D2-085: Convict Squad and the Drug Trade

Story: Harry Harrison 

Art: Dan Barry 

Summary: Returning to the Special Corps Base after carrying out his mission to Skragg (see D2-084 Convict Squad and the Skraggs), Flash is paired with Kenoma, another of the hardened ex-convicts on parole duty, for a secret mission to a construction camp above Jupiter.

Reporting to the commander on the site, Flash and Kenoma learn that their brief is to keep their eyes open for anything suspicious as the site has been plagued by too many accidents - with more to come...

(Source of summary: www.ipcomics.net) 

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It's from Emile's e-collection. All credits go to her & "Allen Lane" who scanned and first shared at net.

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D2-084: Convict Squad and the Skraggs

Story: Harry Harrison
Art: Dan Barry

Summary: Leaving planet Rog with his rehabilitated murder crew (see D2-083 Convict Squad on Rog), Flash lands at the Special Corps Base with his new recruits only to learn that Dr. Zarkov has been kidnapped whilst on an observer mission to the planet Skragg (see also D2-049 The Ambassadors).

Leaving the Martian desert base in the company of ‘Baron’ Otto, an intensely intuitive member of the convicted murder crew assisting Flash on planet Rog, Flash touches down on a planet famous for its dangerously paranoid rulers...

(Source of summary: www.ipcomics.net)

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It's from Emile's e-collection. All credits go to her & "Allen Lane" who scanned and first shared at net.

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Showcase #73: The Creeper Becomes DC's Question

The Hawk and the Dove were only one of the two new projects that Steve Ditko brought to DC in 1968; the other was Beware the Creeper. But in a lot of ways, the Creeper is simply Ditko's Charlton hero, The Question. Consider:

Both Jack Ryder and Vic Sage are both TV talk show hosts who don't care if they offend one of their sponsors:

Both gain their powers from a "professor":

Both are capable of changing identities in a flash:

And both are subjected to the attentions of a gal they cannot stand:

Of the two, I'd say the Question is more interesting, as his character is even more uncompromising than the Creeper, and more of an exemplar of Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. Ditko was allowed to script his Charlton tales, while at DC his scripters included Don Segall (in the Showcase debut) and Denny O'Neill (in the ongoing series).

The plot in this issue is one of the most common in the Silver Age: Professor has invented something that the communists want. The underworld has kidnapped the prof and are about to deliver him to the reds, but... well, they're going to have a costume party as well at the house where he's being hidden. Because the leader of the mob is also a pillar of the community, the anti-violence crusader and Ryder's sponsor are also at the party:

So Ryder cobbles together the Creeper's costum--a green wig, yellow body paint and a sheepskin rug along with the Sub-Mariner's trunks, and crashes the party. But as he tries to search the house, some guards spot him, and he has to make a dash for it. He's wounded, but discovers a secret room behind a sliding panel where Professor Yatz is hidden. The professor decides to use the Creeper as his guinea pig for a serum that heals people quickly and gives them extra strength. He also implants in Ryder's arm a device that:

Hence Ryder's ability to make the quick costume change. The professor is killed when the guards burst through the sliding panel, and so the Creeper's secret is safe. The Creeper beats up the hoodlums and the cops catch the prof's killer. But all's not well:

The Creeper had only a short run at DC (six issues), although he made several guest appearances in the 1970s and has been a background character (as TV host Jack Ryder) for decades since. He had another short series in the mid-1990s. In 2003, Vertigo put out a mini-series with a female version of the Creeper set in 1930s France.

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Number 853

Interplanetary mailman meets the Tough-tails

This is a good story to follow up Monday's Basil Wolverton "Spacehawk." I've been wanting to share this story with you for a long time. The artwork is unique, stylized. It's credited to Munson Paddock and is so far the only example of Paddock's work I've seen. It's from Speed Comics #9, 1940. When looking at this frenetic tale "speed" seems the operative word.

It's another story where the rights of an indigenous society are ignored and the idea of white people taking what they want is taken for granted. The closest thing I can liken it to is the sort of craziness from Fletcher Hanks, only better drawn. Mars Mason himself isn't a Flash Gordon or typical comic book space adventurer type. He's an "interplanetary mailman"!

Paddock had a familiarity with design, geometric shapes, and art deco. According to Lambiek.net Paddock, who worked under several pseudonyms including Cecelia Munson and Lyle Ford, was born in 1886, and was another of those old-time artists who joined in the comic book revolution early in the history of the industry, but well into his own career. He died in 1970.

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