Number 1617: Me love hate Bizarro!

“Tales of the Bizarro World” — featuring stories of the defective Superman clones and characters of the Superman universe — was a big favorite of mine when it appeared in Adventure Comics in 1961-62. The idea of an inverted world has passed from Superman comic books into pop culture, even showing up on an episode of Seinfeld.

This story, which originally appeared in Adventure #291, was reprinted with several others in Superman #202 (1968), an 80-Page Giant issue, which used as its theme the topsy-turvy Bizarro World stories. (It is also the only silver age comic book I bought in 2013, when I searched my collection and could not find it. Me hate it when that happens!) The Bizarro stories were also collected in a trade paperback a few years ago.

“The Bizarro Perfect Crimes” was written by Jerry Siegel and drawn by John Forte. At the time the series ended its 15 issue run I was extremely disappointed and stopped buying Adventure Comics, which means I missed out on the popular “Legion of Super Heroes” feature that took Bizarro’s spot. It went on to be a very collectible series. In that way it was a Bizarro thing for me to do.

This is the second of our three-part Spacey Stories theme week.

Where Man-Eaters Walk

We're chomping away on the July '53 issue of Advs into Weird Worlds #20, and here's a story featuring the magnificently odd art stylings of Joe Maneely. Hope everyone is enjoying this issue so far-- and hey Rachel, you're THOIA Thank You gift is in the mail! :)

Number 1619: Joy buzzers in space

We begin another theme week. Our three postings this week will be what I call Spacey Stories. That is, stories which take place in space, and also have a degree of spaciness (as in off-the-wall) in the storytelling, deliberately or not.

Gardner Fox wrote and Fred Guardineer drew this spacey tale of Space Ace, from the ME one-shot, Space Ace #5 (1952). The stories are all reprints from Manhunt. This particular story is originally from Manhunt #6 (1948). Space Ace (Jet Black) and his young crew member, Jak Tal are in orbit doing their Space Patrol duties when they encounter an alien spaceship. The story’s title calls the aliens men, but they look more like something out of H. P. Lovecraft. That isn’t enough to make it oddball...it’s the use of a common novelty item, a joy buzzer, called a handshake buzzer here, to help defeat the invasion-minded aliens.

Here is another posting with Space Ace. Just click on the thumbnail.

The Doubting Thomas

An incredibly generous dollar donation from new THOIA friend, Rachel Shaw, earns her a primo place right here in our musty 'n dusty hallowed horror fame! And with an eternal hearse-load of thanks and applause going way out to her in Albuquerque, NM-- another way we say thanks from our neck of the weird woods is give the people what they want! Rachel expressed a frightening fondness for Atlas tales, so here we go with a week of adventures into the weirdest worlds we can find-- more specifically, the July 1953 issue of Adv. into Weird Worlds #20. THANKS AGAIN, RACHEL!!! :)

#678 - S021 The Flame Pearls-VIII The Hungry Isles (11-09-41 to 04-12-42)

Emile has provided us with a high resolution version of this story - the last installment in that series.

Download the story here.

A couple of strips are in B&W while the rest are in color. Luckily I had these strips in color and here they are:

Thank you Emile, for the strip.

Number 1615: Dick Tracy, fit to be tied

I like the Dick Tracy strips by Chester Gould, and even while following it for years in newspapers I was also catching up on past stories by reading reprints. There are a couple of things about the character, though, that bug me. Tracy is not very smart. He seems smart, maybe because his surrounding characters seem less smart, but his villains are smarter than Tracy. They catch him flat-footed (pun intended), and put him in death traps. The fact that Tracy escapes the death traps isn't because he’s smarter than the villain, it is because at that point the villain has some sort of mental lapse and decides a death trap is better than just shooting Tracy and getting him out of the picture permanently. (The legacy of the dime novel, no doubt, and cliffhangers of all types.) Of course by sparing Tracy the villain is soon dead. Justice in Dick Tracy’s world was doled out without lawyers, judges and courtrooms.

Dell had published Tracy reprints during the forties. In issue #19 of Dick Tracy Monthly they dropped the reprints and went with original self-contained stories written and drawn for the comic. This went on through issue #25, when Harvey Comics took over the license. Chester Gould, creator of Tracy, is not even mentioned. I find that incredible, but then, those were the days of the all-powerful syndicates, and apparently the Chicago Tribune Syndicate, which owns Tracy, did not think it was important to put Gould’s name on a story not by him.

The drawing seems to be from Gould’s studio, though. Like most successful cartoonists of the era Gould ran a stable of artists. I’ve never known of the exact division of labor, or if there was one. I assumed Gould had at least a hand in the writing, if not the whole process, and perhaps inked faces to keep a consistent look. “The Black Cat Mystery” is written and drawn anonymously.*

From Dick Tracy Monthly #20 (1949):

*The final three page story of “Sparkle Plenty,” is a humor feature. Sparkle, daughter of B.O. Plenty and his wife, Gravel Gertie, had been introduced in 1947, and was a licensing and merchandising joy for the syndicate. You can read a later Sparkle Plenty story in a Harvey Comics reprint. Just click on the thumbnail: