Number 1571: Captain Marvel goes Mad...then Nuts

A couple of things caught my eye when I read this Captain Marvel-King Kull tale in Captain Marvel Adventures #141 (1953). First, it has walking dead. That’s good. Second, it is told in the second person, which isn’t good or bad, just different than the usual third person that Captain Marvel stories were written in by chief scripter Otto Binder.

Then there is the so-so, which is a satire on Captain Marvel, “Captain Marble Flies Again,” done for Premier’s Nuts!#5 (1954), after Captain Marvel was cancelled. The story has its moments, but it depends on your tolerance for this type of satirical treatment. (It has a hooker under a street light putting the moves on Captain Marble; that’s interesting and solidly pre-Comics Code).

You remember another story done for Mad #4, “Superduperman” (below) featuring Captain Marbles and Superduperman in battle. It was a reference to the lawsuit against Fawcett by DC for copyright infringement, which which was ultimately decided in favor of DC. Go to Apocolyte’s World of Comics for the Mad story and some bonuses.

Ross Andru drew “Captain Marble Flies Again.” He and partner Mike Esposito published their own short-lived satire comic, Get Lost!. I wonder if this story was originally something they had prepared for that book.

Redrawn Faces in MSH #14?

It is well-known that when Jack Kirby came over to DC in the early 1970s and started working on Jimmy Olsen as well as other titles, that Superman and Jimmy Olsen's faces were redrawn by DC staff artists like Al Plastino and Murphy Anderson. But it appears that this practice actually started at Marvel.

I've already talked about the bizarre one-off Amazing Spiderman story that appeared in Marvel Super-Heroes #14. At least according to a note Stan appended to that story, Johnny Romita was ill and so Ross Andru was pressed into service to fill in for the Jazzy one for a single issue. But Romita apparently recovered and met the deadline, so the story was shelved.

There were a couple of oddities about this story. First, although Andre's longtime inking partner, Mike Esposito, was already inking ASM under the nom de plume of Mickey Demeo, he was not given this assignment; instead the tale was inked by Bill Everett. And second, it looks very much like Romita redrew the faces of Gwen and Mary Jane here:

A friend of mine named Jeff pointed this out to me in an email. As I noted in response to him, what clinches it for me is that while MJ and Gwen both look reasonably normal, Harry doesn't look like himself at all; he looks more like the Sandman. This also gives us a clue that the story must have been drawn well before the publication date of May 1968, as Romita had changed Gwen's hairstyle by then to make it longer. She looks more like she did in 1967:

By 1968 her hair was much longer and straighter:

Number 1184: “The man who dares to cut holes in the Iron Curtain!”

Three fast-moving, well-illustrated tales from Atlas Comics' Spy Thrillers are presented for your pleasure. It's the pleasure of seeing Ross Andru and Mike Esposito's artwork, especially the dynamic and symbolic splash pages.

AtlasTales.com equivocates on the cover credits, giving both Sol Brodsky? and/or Carl Burgos? a credit. Kind of.

Rick Davis is a globe-trotting United States Secret Service agent who answers his country's call to duty in Dick Tracy's yellow topcoat, and suits only a color blind person would pick. Green with a red tie. Nice Christmas colors. Where's his black suit and sunglasses, the uniform we consider appropriate for a Secret Service agent? Rick's world of the mid-'50s is full of Reds and commies, those treacherous and dangerous Cold War enemies of America. They have an advantage over Rick, able to spot him from quite a distance, glowing like a neon sign.

A couple of months ago the Secret Service took a beating over some rogue agents and some unprofessional conduct in Colombia. I have a high regard for the agency and believe they will get through this and do the job they should be proud to do, and with much better sartorial sense than Rick Davis.

From Spy Thrillers #4 (last issue, 1955):

Number 1051


Mr. Universe and the jungle that time forgot


Mister Universe ran for five issues in the early '50s, and it had different artists handling each issue. Ross Andru did some penciling and inking in number one, but number two, which I'm showing today, is the only issue done front to back by the Andru and Mike Esposito team, and the only issue with a book-length story.

"Jungle That Time Forgot" is credited to writer Harry Kantor. It's a precursor to many stories Andru and Esposito would later do for DC, featuring lost worlds and modern soldiers fighting dinos.

I took the scans from an online source, and although I've cleaned them up to the best of my ability, they still show that the issue was printed poorly with off-register colors. I've mentioned several time in this blog it's probably no surprise to anyone who has read comics for many years that early comics were the Rodney Dangerfield of the publishing world. They got no respect, printed by the millions on giant web presses by (sometimes) indifferent pressmen.