Number 1186: Life goes to the funnies

For a magazine that didn't run gag cartoons (unlike other popular publications, Saturday Evening Post, Look and Colliers), Life ran many articles on cartoonists, cartooning, and comic strips. Here are some examples I've culled from issues published in 1945 and '46.

The public watched Skeezix grow up and go off to war in Frank King's "Gasoline Alley." This article from the Life issue of June 4, 1946, shows a sequence with returned soldiers Skeezix and Wilmer hiring their old sergeant.

"Miss Lace" was a strip done for the troops by Milton Caniff. The article in Life was promoting the book, Male Call, bringing the sexy Miss Lace to the general public shortly before the war with Japan ended. This article is from the issue dated June 8, 1945.

Al Capp may have been the most popular cartoonist in America at the time. Capp had one leg and a huge ego. He got a chance to be the star by telling his own story, "Li'l Abner" style. The excerpts are from the comic Capp produced for amputees returning from the war. The text article is a biography of Capp that reads like a typical puff piece. It tells us he worked for Ham Fisher on "Joe Palooka," but not that Fisher claimed Capp stole the idea of the hillbilly family from him. We also read in the article that Li'l Abner was based on a young Henry Fonda. This longer than usual article is from Life, June 24, 1946.

The end of the article segués nicely into the contest that made Basil Wolverton known (and notorious) around the world! He won the Draw Lena the Hyena contest. As far as I'm concerned the runners-up shown here aren't even in the same league as Wolverton, who won out of a field of 500,000 entries.

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Number 1185: Mooning the cyclops

Moon Girl, the Pre-Trend EC Comics' version of Wonder Woman, fights off the cyclops, who has escaped from the prison, "miles inland on the island of Sicily," where he has been since Ulysses put him there. Having been out of action for a couple of thousand years at least, ol' One-Eye needs to eat. He grabs a shipload of grub before rising up sometime later on an American beach.

The story is from Moon Girl and contains at least one major howler: When meeting Moon Girl's enemy, the Professor, the caption reads, "In archaic Latin, the one-eyed giant speaks . . ." Maybe to 1948 comic book readers archaic Latin and archaic Greek were the same. But I'm surprised it slipped by even the most lax editor. That editor would have been William M. Gaines, as the indicia credit reads. Gaines took over Moon Girl from his father, Maxwell Charles Gaines, who had started Educational Comics after DC bought out his share of their publishing empire, All American Comics. The elder Gaines* had died in the summer of 1947, leaving the publishing company to his wife and son.

From Moon Girl #4 (1948), drawn by Sheldon Moldoff:

*The elder Gaines had also been the original publisher of Wonder Woman. Moon Girl was never close to being as bizarre as Wonder Woman, a comic in a class all its own. On Sunday, July 8, I'll be featuring a wild story featuring our favorite Amazon.

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The Trouble With Reprints...

Is that you can't be sure you're actually reading something that is 100% equivalent to the original. For some examples, consider the Essential Spiderman, Volume 1:

At $16.99, it's certainly a heckuva bargain compared to the price of buying up the individual issues reprinted inside. I doubt if you could find a water-damaged, bug-chewed copy of any of those comics for the same price. But you are giving up something, and not just the color, or the musty smell. For example consider this famous blunder, from ASM #1:

Peter Palmer? But in the Essential issue, that mistake has been cleaned up:

But whoever did the editing on the Essentials did let this well-known error through:

Sometimes the editing goes even deeper than clearing up a simple mistake. I talked awhile ago about Supergirl's first encounter with the Legion of Superheroes, where they explained that they were the children of the original Legion members. However, later on it was decided to put Supergirl in the same Legion as Superboy, and so when that story was reprinted the text in several panels had to be completely changed.

Another, very early example comes from Batman Annual #3. As I discussed a long time ago, the origin of the second Two Face initially involved a romantic triangle between the actor Paul Sloane, a prop man and the latter's girlfriend. Apparently in 1963 the Comics Code Authority decided that the reference to Sloane stealing the prop man's girlfriend had to go, and so a couple panels were redrawn and several others were deleted in their entirety.  Update: A reader named Christopher pointed out in an email that in all probability the real reason for the change was the violence inherent in the prop man using acid to burn Sloane's face.  I find this argument convincing, particularly because a splash panel in another story from Batman Annual #3 was also changed.  Here's how it appeared:

But in the original story, there were three cops falling to the ground:

Given that the effect of that change was to make the scene a little less violent, it makes sense to assume that the Two-Face change was made for the same reason.

Sometimes reprints are amended for cultural reasons. ASM #17 had the web-slinger mocking the Green Goblin's throwing arm:

When that comic was reprinted in England years later, the insult was changed to say that the Gobby would never make it as a "fast bowler" (the equivalent of a pitcher in the sport of cricket).

Another example involves the Famous First Editions. In the mid-1970s, DC reprinted oversized copies of some of their earlier and more valuable comics, including Action #1. The comics came with an outer cover identifying them as reprints, but underneath was purportedly a complete facsimile of the original, ads and all. Well, almost. Here's the cover of Action #1 as it appeared inside the FFE:

And here's an original:

Aside from the size difference, there are a couple of minor changes:

1. There is no white glare on the front fender in the FFE.
2. The man in the foreground is dripping sweat in the original.
3. There are two loose rocks by the front of the car in the original.
4. The running board is yellow in the original, green in the FFE.

There are a couple more problems with reprints that I can think of offhand.  Sometimes the space allotted for the reprint doesn't match the size of the original, and so some parts are excised.  For example, when ASM #122 first came out, it included this page:

It was a nice little farewell to Gwen, giving us a reason to feel for Peter's loss.  But when the story was reprinted in Marvel Tales #99, that flashback was deleted to get the page count down.

If I recall correctly, DC also deleted sequences from the reprinted second part of a two-part story that had originally served to recap the previous issue, since those scenes were now superfluous.

DC also changed the artwork on the story about the deaths of Jonathan and Martha Kent.  As I discussed a couple years back, DC had printed the story in 1964 or so, with the Kents as oldsters.  But in Superboy  #145, the Kents were suddenly transformed by an alien TV producer, appearing now as a couple of thirty-somethings.  Thus, when the story of their passing was reprinted, their faces had to be redrawn to make them younger.

Overall, while reprints are often a cheap way to fill in the blanks of your knowledge of a character, always be aware that what you are reading may not be completely what appeared in the original.

Any other examples of reprint problems?  I know, for example, that sometimes DC had their artists trace over old stories in order to reprint them; the Alfred origin in Batman #216 is an example of this.

Update: David's Amazing Adventures points out a coloring change in a reprint of the Thor origin story.

Update II: Scott Edelman notices a change in Spiderman's origin that took place between Amazing Fantasy #15 and ASM #1. BTW, I think the next time Spidey's origin was retold was in ASM Annual #1, and they went back to the Amazing Fantasy version.

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Number 1184: “The man who dares to cut holes in the Iron Curtain!”

Three fast-moving, well-illustrated tales from Atlas Comics' Spy Thrillers are presented for your pleasure. It's the pleasure of seeing Ross Andru and Mike Esposito's artwork, especially the dynamic and symbolic splash pages.

AtlasTales.com equivocates on the cover credits, giving both Sol Brodsky? and/or Carl Burgos? a credit. Kind of.

Rick Davis is a globe-trotting United States Secret Service agent who answers his country's call to duty in Dick Tracy's yellow topcoat, and suits only a color blind person would pick. Green with a red tie. Nice Christmas colors. Where's his black suit and sunglasses, the uniform we consider appropriate for a Secret Service agent? Rick's world of the mid-'50s is full of Reds and commies, those treacherous and dangerous Cold War enemies of America. They have an advantage over Rick, able to spot him from quite a distance, glowing like a neon sign.

A couple of months ago the Secret Service took a beating over some rogue agents and some unprofessional conduct in Colombia. I have a high regard for the agency and believe they will get through this and do the job they should be proud to do, and with much better sartorial sense than Rick Davis.

From Spy Thrillers #4 (last issue, 1955):

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