Number 1307: Undercover Girl meets Deep Throat!

Undercover Girl, who was featured for a time in the late forties in Manhunt comics from ME, was actually U.S. Government agent Starr Flagg.

Starr is a glamorous agent. She wears her spike heels and sexy lingerie while lounging about at home, and she has sexy fights with other women, including this evil babe, Lala the sword swallower. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been a lot more interested in that art since I read a judge’s decision from the early seventies about the movie, Deep Throat. The judge compared star Linda Lovelace to a sword swallower. Watching Lala in action in this tale is no disappointment.

Undercover Girl is mighty sexy. Check out another of her girlfights in Pappy's #1117, where she tussles with a chick with a whip and her pet gorilla...it's a lot for six pages.

Drawn by Ogden Whitney, written by Gardner Fox, “The Riddle of the Radio-Death” is from Manhunt #7 (1948):

I Suspect the Drawing Was Not Random

I was looking through Action #42 (November 1941) and came across this announcement:

That third prize winner's name sure sounds familiar, and it's not as if it's a common one.  George Kashdan was a long-time editor at DC.  According to his bio at Wikipedia, he was born in 1928, so he would have been 13 at the time.  So maybe this was just an early example of a fan who went on to work in the biz?  Uh, no, I don't think so:

In 1947, after having written two comic-book scripts for DC Comics, he was hired as an editor at that Manhattan-based publishing company, where his brother, Bernard Kashdan, was a business executive who'd joined the company in 1940.

(Italics added for emphasis)
Of course nowadays it is common for such contests to exclude employees of the company involved and their families.

Number 1306: Lorraine the Brain and her “Atomic Amour”

My heart swelled when I read this touching story of a girl who achieved greatness in her field — nuclear physics — only to find failure in love. Tsk, tsk. The only guy who really loved her was a boorish carny barker who embarrassed her endlessly. She fell for the sinister Frenchman who lead her astray, all the way to a cabin in the woods where we assume he wanted his way with her, only to find out he wanted to pick her nuclear brain!

This entertaining love story is from ACG’s Search For Love #2 (1950). In the comments section for this post comic art historian Alberto Becattini has named the artist as John Celardo. Thanks to Alberto for helping with that identification.

Search For Love was very short-lived, only two issues. I don't know why unless sales were bad. Yet ACG’s other love comics, Lovelorn and Romantic Adventures continued for years. It may have been cancelled because of the expanding ACG line taking resources that would have gone into Search For Love. That's a way of saying I don’t know why, trying to sound smarter than I am (no nuclear scientist, I) and now I’m kinda sorry I brought it up...

Monster from the Pit / Werewolf of Warsham Manor

The April - May 1954 issue of Avon's Eerie #15 is a complete reprint of their May - June 1951 issue of Eerie #1. Check the archive for "Subway Horror." I'll have the one remaining story in the next post along with another living dead yarn-- in the meantime, enjoy these two shaggy tales of terrors in the night!

Number 1305: “The Plague of Plastic People!”

Two months ago in Pappy's #1268 I showed a Plastic Man story that in my comments I said reminded me of my childhood, when I saw the character as belonging in the same league as Mad comic books. So, okay, then, “Plague of Plastic People!” belongs right alongside that earlier story. I'd call this incredible, joke-in-every-panel story zaniacal...a cross between zany and maniacal. This one pulls out all the stops, the best of what Plastic Man could deliver, and that's saying something.

Also, if you read through the story you'll actually get to see Plastic Man in one panel without his goggles covering his eyes. I don't know if that happened any other time.

From Plastic Man #22 (1950):