Number 1098


The crimes of Matt Baker


After leaving the Iger shop where he had toiled on such features as the leggy Sky Girl, Matt Baker used a more sophisticated illustrative technique. When he went to St. John his artwork was just as recognizable and his girls as pretty, but not in the pin-up style of Fiction House. These two stories from 1950's Authentic Police Cases #10 are examples.

Of the two, the Canadian Mountie story, "The Case Of the Red Bearded Rogue," gives him more room for drawing. "Midwest Cops Smash the Crimson Gang" is written like a radio script with a lot of narration and dialogue, almost crowding his artwork off the page. He pulled it off, though. In the case of that story the real crime in this crime comic is over-writing.

Credit is given by comic book art expert Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr., to Baker alone for "Rogue" and for "Crimson Gang" pencils only, with inks by Ray Osrin.

Number 788

Crime Does Pay Week: "Where ya goin' on a night like this...?"

It's day three of Crime Does Pay week at Pappy's:

By the time Seduction Of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham, M.D. came out in 1954 the stories these panels were lifted from were old, having both appeared in comic books dated 1948. It would have been hard for the average 1954 comic reader to put his hands on either story. It was disingenuous for Wertham to use them as illustrations, but they got attention. As I've said before, having a panel from SOTI gives a Golden Age comic more value. It wasn't anything Dr. W. envisioned, but it's how it worked out in the weird world of comics collecting.

The lingerie panel is an apparent swipe from Bill Ward by Walter Johnson, who filled the story, "Human Cat Trapped By Death Gun Slugs!", with obvious stolen art by better artists. I see both Kirby and Eisner figures, traced directly into this infamous story from Authentic Police Cases #6, published by St. John.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, Victor Fox's comic books, especially Crimes By Women and Women Outlaws, where "Cattle Kate" appeared in issue #1, are infamous. Even for the normally raunchy and violent Fox comics, though, this story, drawn by an artist unidentified by the Grand Comics Database, is wild.

I've shown SOTI examples before. This is a notorious example, here with the "Jeepers! A dame and she's been croaked!" panel. In that posting I showed some examples of how swipes were traded around in the comics. Here is what I'm calling the Jeepers girl, from Murder Incorporated #1.

LATE ADDITION: My Lord! More Jeepers gals from another website that picked up on my original posting linked to in the above paragraph.

http://my-retrospace.blogspot.com/2010/05/vintage-themes-5-jeepers-shes-dead.html

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The Social Reformer

Fredric Wertham, M.D., who died in 1981, was more than just the anti-comics devil who brought about censorship of the comics with his 1954 book, Seduction Of The Innocent. He was a psychiatrist and social reformer whose concerns included African-Americans, and the state of their mental health. Since the 1930s he had been trying to get mental health aid to the disenfranchised black people of New York City. With the help of people like author Richard Wright, and singer/actor Paul Robeson, he opened the LaFargue Clinic in a Harlem church basement in 1946. It remained in business, providing free mental health services to anyone of any race who needed it, until 1958.

What surprises me as I read about this aspect of his career is how far into the forbidden zone of postwar American political thought he was in those days. Richard Wright and Paul Robeson were considered subversives by the FBI. The LaFargue clinic was named after Paul LaFargue, a French socialist who was the son-in-law of Karl Marx. But Wertham was called as an expert witness during the Senate hearings on comics, where EC publisher Bill Gaines testified, and, too late, found the spotlight too hot. The committee even pointed to the satiric EC ad, "Are You A Red Dupe?" which castigated the enemies of comic books as being manipulated by communists. Was this editorial satire an oblique reference to Wertham by Gaines?

Even before the gavel fell the Senate committee went into session with its mind made up on comic books. They'd even let a left-leaning psychiatrist be their expert witness during the worst period of official anti-communist hysteria.

This brief Life magazine article, from February 23, 1948, gives some information on Wertham and the LaFargue Clinic.

Number 699


The man who came to stay


Ralph Mayo was a very talented artist who worked for various comic book companies in the 1940s and '50s. According to Al Williamson in the book Hidden Lands, Mayo had lost his apartment when comic book work was hard to get in the 1950s. Williamson took him in to his home, where Mayo slept on a cot. Mayo helped Al by collaborating with him on several jobs for Stan Lee, including Jann of the Jungle. Mayo got on his feet, got a room, and then one day didn't show up at Williamson's studio. Mayo, a young man in his mid-forties, had died in his sleep.

Williamson said Mayo was from the UK, had sailed from England to the States in 1940, and when he put in his papers for citizenship something went amiss. He said to hell with it and just never left the U.S.

Most recently I showed Mayo's work on a Johnny Quick story from DC.

This story, "The Phantom of Marco's Villa," is a short supernatural story from St. John's Authentic Police Cases #5, 1948. You can see Mayo's skill at drawing women, which came in handy for his stint on jungle girl comics like Jann.

Number 601


"Outside the forbidden pages of deSade..."


Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham, M.D., is often mentioned in comic book circles but how many have actually read it? I read it a couple of times over 40 years ago and a lot of it is still vivid to me, especially in the illustration section with the out-of-context panels and covers. They were taken as examples from the worst comics Wertham could find.


"Veiled Lady" is from St. John's Authentic Police Cases #2, and is a reprint from Red Band Comics #16. Both of the appearances were in the 1940s, and long off sale by the time Wertham used them in his infamous 1954 book.

The whole silly story is best known for the first panel, page two (also the panel on top of this page). Dr. Wertham said this in a caption, "Outside the forbidden pages of deSade, you find draining a girl's blood only in children's comics." Like his other choices, he never gave any context to the panels, just used them for their shock value.

Wertham was not the only anti-comics crusader. There had been organized efforts against comic books practically since their inception. By the time Seduction was published the public clamor had reached a peak, had even provoked senate hearings. The Comics Code was an industry attempt to keep comic books on the stands, because there were boycotts going on. The illustrations in Seduction, including this crazy "deSade panel," had a lot to do with bringing major changes to an industry.