Number 1613: Frankenstein’s terror under trance!

You already know this, don’t you? If not, the funny Frankenstein character published by Prize Comics ended its run with issue #17 in 1949. A couple of years later the character was resurrected n a more serious version, more like the Karloff monster of the movies. In the latter version the Frankenstein monster is mute, shambles along from town to town, country to country, getting involved in local doings, supernatural and otherwise.

This story, the lead for Frankenstein #19 (1952), has the monster under hypnotic control. It is drawn by the versatile Dick Briefer, whose career as a journeyman comic book artist would end when Frankenstein ceased publication in late 1954. The specter of another monster — the Comics Code Authority — finally did to Frankenstein what no mob of torch-waving villagers could do.

Number 1549: Action, please!

“Power Nelson, Futureman,” from Prize Comics #16 (1941) uses the Jack Kirby template of early comic book art. Action, action, action. The art is attributed to Paul Norris, a journeyman who drew for decades, comic books, pulps and comic strips.

 Copyright King Features, original art for a story illustration by Norris from 1947.

The breathless pace of the art covers up a lot of deficiencies in the story. Our eyes are so busy goggling the punches thrown (even by a girl) that we don’t have time to think that it is just WWII comic book silliness.

Norris, born in 1914, died in 2007.

Number 1513: Frankenstein makes his hobby pay

Dick Briefer, writer/artist of Frankenstein, shows a series of gags when our favorite funny monster presents his line of caskets in a coffin competition at the Mortician’s Convention (“We Undertake Anything!”). The comical comic story appeared in Frankenstein #6 (1947).

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Frankenstein #6 was a good issue. Here are a couple more stories. Just click on the thumbnails.

Number 1443: Charlie Chan on the Dude Ranch

Considering how well known Earl Derr Biggers’ character, Charlie Chan, was in books and movies, the comic book history wasn’t one of long-term success. The longest running series was published by DC in the late fifties, based on a TV show with J. Carroll Naish as Chan. It lasted for six issues. The Grand Comics database lists the publishers of comic books called Charlie Chan, and besides DC, amongst them are Prize Comics with five issues, Charlton with four, and Dell with two. That’s excluding various UK reprints and Pacific Comics Club reprints of the comic strip by Alfred Andriola.

Perhaps detectives like Chan and Ellery Queen (who also had a spotty publishing history), successful in more cerebral whodunnits, just didn’t fit in action-oriented comic books. But there were some interesting attempts to bring Chan to comic books, including the Prize Comics series, which included stories by Dick Briefer, who drew all Charlie Chan material in Prize’s last issue, #5 (1948). I’m posting this story because I like the Western setting. I like the crime plot that hinges on sex. And I think anything drawn by Briefer, famous in comic circles for his various incarnations of Frankenstein, is interesting.

Number 1349: A Briefer-threefer

 

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).