Number 133


Jet Powers and the Three Million Year Old Men!


In 1959 Mom and I used to go grocery shopping on Saturdays. Correction. Mom used to grocery shop, I hung out at the grocery store's magazine rack looking at issues of Cracked, Amazing Stories, or sneaking looks at Sexology or even Playboy. There was a comic book rack, also, and I did my share of looking at comics, usually picking up my weekly allotment at that store. There was also a cardboard dump (display case) with piles of comics in bags. These were the IW reprints, also called "A Top Quality Comic" on the covers.

"IW" was Israel Waldman, a publishing entrepreneur who used printing plates for old comics and published them with different covers under his own imprint. The comics were sold three to a bag for 25¢ a bag.

What I liked was that most of them were pre-Comics Code issues. And so it was with Jet #2 from 1951, reprinted in 1959 as Jet Power #2.  I read and re-read this issue practically to death. I'm showing a scan of the cover here, which has been taped because the cover was torn while I was re-reading it for the umpteenth time.

The cover of the reprint is unsigned but I believe to by the fabulous team of ex-EC Comics artists Reed Crandall and George Evans, who were teaming up in those post-EC days on things like issues of Classics Illustrated .

My imagination was captured by this comic, and it led to a lifelong love of the artwork of Bob Powell, and also for the four issues of Jet, published by Magazine Enterprises.

Almost 20 years after buying the IW reprint I bought the original series of Jet comics. Of all the comics I've wanted and then bought over the years the Jet comics were ones I really wanted. To find them in the near-mint shape I found them was a bonus.

Since I've already used up my allotment of space for talking about a story, I'll just let you read the lead story from Jet #2. I only have one thing to say about it, and it's that I wish Powell would have done some research on dinosaurs. He faked his drawings of the giant saurians and it shows.

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Number 132


Doctor Of Evil!


No, not Austin Powers' Dr. Evil, but Joseph "Doc" Moran, who dug bullets out of bad guys during the gang period of the 1930s.

This is a story from Crime Does Not Pay #43, January 1946, drawn by Vernon Henkel, a true Golden Age comic book artist, who was there for the duration, from the very beginnings in the 1930s.

As told by Henkel in an interview in the fanzine Alter Ego #48, May 2005, he grew up interested in art and cartooning, and sent Quality Comics publisher, Everett "Busy" Arnold, an original comic book story. He was rewarded with a check and a steady art gig for quite a while. Like most journeymen comic book men of the era Henkel worked for various publishers over the years. He didn't work for Charles Biro for long, but long enough to do some memorable stories, including this lurid 6 2/3 pager about a notorious drunken quack who catered to the bank robber clientele.

As usual, the Crime Does Not Pay story jibes with real life only long enough to establish the story. Although they purported to be true stories, "truth" was fictionalized. For some reason while Dillinger gang member John Hamilton is called by name, the Barker-Karpis gang's name is changed to the "Russ Gobson Gang." Say what? Gobson? I can't imagine the publisher was worried about getting sued, since the only survivor of that gang in 1945, when the story was drawn was Alvin Karpis, then residing in Alcatraz.

In real life Moran was killed by Dock and Freddie Barker because he was blabbing all over town about handling money from a kidnapping by the Barker-Karpis gang. Besides whittling fingerprints off criminals, botching plastic surgery, and operating to get bullets out of desperadoes, Moran was also a money launderer. He came to a bad end, just like it was shown in the comic book. His body has never been found.

Check out the cover to this issue, in a scene inspired by James Cagney's popular gangster movie, Public Enemy.


"I'm a dirty rat and got what was coming to me." Yow! The Code of the Underworld! If I had been old enough to see that on the comic book racks my hands would be sweating and my head would fill with lust and desire to own it.

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Number 131


Twin Terrors


These two horror comics stories, "Tale Of Cain," from Tomb Of Terror #12, November 1953, and "My Brother's Keeper," from Mysterious Adventures #17, December 1953, are basically the same story. They're told with different characters and different locales, and the motivations are slightly different, but the basic plot and endings are much the same.

They try for a surprise but it's pretty obvious as readers we're being manipulated, so the endings aren't much of a surprise.

These two stories could only be told in comic books, where such manipulation is possible. It would look too cumbersome using live actors in the movies or on TV. The artwork in "Tale Of Cain," is by Howard Nostrand,* and is better at its own manipulation than "My Brother's Keeper," attributed to Bill Savage by the Grand Comics Database.

Both artists are influenced by EC artists: Nostrand by Jack Davis, Savage by Reed Crandall.

The fact that both of these comics, published by completely different companies, were on the stands simultaneously in late '53, is another coincidence. You can't say one stole the story from the other. But what it shows is what we already know: there are only so many plots in horror comics.

The cover of Tomb Of Terror #12 is another great cover by our old pal, Lee Elias, discussed in Pappy's #129.



A Tale Of Cain

My Brother's Keeper

*Stories by Howard Nostrand were shown in Pappy's #15, and Pappy's #109.

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Number 130


Jet Powers and The Thing From The Meteor


Recently a couple of my local congressmen voted against a memorial to Rachel Carson. If you recall, Rachel Carson wrote a book called Silent Spring back in 1962 that showed the pesticide DDT to be a cause of much ecological damage. DDT was removed from legal usage. My congressmen apparently think it's a mistake that has cost lives.

I believe my congressmen are wrong, but have to admit if Jet Powers hadn't had DDT back in 1950, we'd now be ruled by 6' tall grasshoppers using neurostasis rays to numb us and we'd all be stored in jars.

This is an entertaining story with a 1950's alien invasion premise, and I don't think I'm ruining it for you by telling you that Jet Powers wins, saving the earth in the process.

"The Thing From The Meteor," written by Gardner Fox and illustrated by Bob Powell, appeared in Jet #1, 1950, from ME Comics. This is the fourth and final story from that issue. For you latecomers, you can read the rest of the magazine by going to: Pappy's #121, Pappy's #123, and Pappy's #127.

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Number 129


COVERING UP: Lee Elias and The Art Of The Horrible



Lee Elias died in 1998 at age 78, and left a lifetime's worth of very fine work behind him in the comics field.

He drew in several genres of comic art, but my favorites were his science fiction and horror. In the early '60s I liked his work on DC Comics' Showcase issues of Tommy Tomorrow.

I have read that Elias doubled as art director for Harvey Comics, specifically on their horror comics. The contents of the comics didn't always match the exteriors, but even without the contents, the comics are worth having just for the covers.

Click on the pictures for full-size images.

I'm sure these comics got lots of attention when they came out, both from readers and alarmed parents. Monsters, mutilation, skeletons! Living dead! Yow!

In my opinion from looking at hundreds of covers of horror comics over the past couple of years, the best artists were Jack Davis* of EC Comics, Bernard Baily,* of Fawcett and other publishers, and Lee Elias of Harvey Comics. Not only were they all great comic book artists, they were artists with a lovingly natural bent (and I do mean bent) for the gruesome and grotesque .


From Pappy's #38, some of my favorite Davis horror covers.

From Pappy's #34 and Pappy's #31, some classic Baily.

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