There should be a lesson in this crime story from Boy Comics #32 (1947) but I'm darned if I know exactly what it is. Regarding the two college dropouts who ride the rails to a logging camp looking for a meal and end up with jobs, it could be there is danger there, and not just because being a lumberjack is a really dangerous job. It also has to do with not messing with the boss's wife, especially a blonde who dresses in nylons and high heels in a logging camp and longs to see the sights of New York. Or it could be the lesson that some people — like the boss's wife — will stab someone in the back. Literally. Finally, it could be that an executed prisoner should be checked for signs of life before putting him in a coffin.
Crimebuster, the titular hero of the tale, pops up here and there throughout most of it. He doesn’t show up until page 7.
This is a tale of a wrongful conviction, and there is probably a lesson there, also. Police should always take a closer look, and not just the word of the hot blonde and a guy about to run off with her. It is nicely illustrated by Norman Maurer.
I learn something new all the time. I learned that artist Dick Briefer had for a time drawn the comic strip “Pinky Rankin” for The Daily Worker. To my knowledge Briefer's politics never showed up in other features he was known for, including “The Pirate Prince,” “Rex Dexter of Mars,” or his most enduring contribution to the golden age of comics, “Frankenstein.”
Today I’ve got three Briefer stories: a Frankenstein story and a Max the Magician story, both from Prize Comics #68 (1948), and a short-short, “Skelly the Liberated Skeleton,” from Boy Comics #29 (1946).
Chủ Nhật, 26 tháng 9, 2010
Number 814
The Wild Pursuit
The chase is on! Crimebuster chases down the arch villain Iron Jaw in this breathless tale from Boy Illustories #69, 1951, drawn by Norman Maurer.
The first part of this tale, from Boy #68, was shown last Monday in Pappy's #811. You might want to read it first. Or what the hell, read the stories in reverse order! I guarantee, it won't make one bit of difference.
Thứ Hai, 20 tháng 9, 2010
Number 811
Iron Jaw and the Iron Lung
Iron Jaw, one of the best comic book villains of the 1940s, stars in a two-part story from Boy Illustories (formerly Boy Comics) #68 and #69, 1951. This is part 1. Come back next Sunday for the second part.
I've shown a couple of vintage Iron Jaw appearances fighting Chuck Chandler, Crimebuster, in Pappy's #492 and Pappy's #532. Even after the war, Iron Jaw was still the totally ruthless villain he'd been when he was a Nazi agent.
Both stories are drawn by Norman Maurer. I've written about Maurer before. He did a lot of work for Charles Biro and Boy Comics, then teamed up with Joe Kubert to help create the first 3-D comic books.
Maurer married Moe Howard's daughter, Joan, and became the manager of the Three Stooges, moving on to Hollywood. Years later, in the '70s, Maurer did the comic book, Little Stooges, for Gold Key, in the same clean, clear style he'd used on these Crimebuster stories. Biro's comics became dense with dialogue, averaged about nine panels a page, and many of those panels were packed with detail. Notice the crowd scenes on page 10, where Maurer drew a bunch of characters which were haphazardly colored by slapping a single color over them, obscuring the drawing. This was fairly common in Biro's comics of the era, where he apparently demanded the artist draw everything, which was then sabotaged by the usual suspects: bad coloring, bad paper, and bad printing. I hope the paychecks made up for the artist's inevitable disappointment in how all his hard work looked in the finished product.
