Number 608


Vigilante and the Dummy X 2


Ventriloquist's dummies are a cliché in horror stories. They're weird looking caricatures of humans, and voices come out of their mouths. One of Vigilante's enemies is a guy who looks like a ventriloquist's dummy. How weird is that? I guess it depends on how spooked you are by ventriloquists' dummies.

The Vigilante is Greg Sanders, who is a radio star, a singing cowboy. His partner is Stuff, also known as the Chinatown Kid.

These two stories are from Action Comics. "Blunderbuss Booty" is from Action #75, August 1944, and "The Dummy Art Expert" is from Action #87, August 1945. They're drawn by Mort Meskin, an artist who mentored the young Joe Kubert, and if the story is to be believed, influenced the young Steve Ditko. I like Meskin's use of blacks, which give the stories a deep, shadowy look.

Meskin was a comic book pro for many years until quitting in 1965 to go into advertising. He retired in the '80s and died in 1995. I'd consider him to be a pro's pro...an artist that other artists looked to for inspiration. The scans are from tearsheets I got in the late '70s. They're ragged and brittle around the edges so there are chunks missing here and there.

I have presented some other Vigilante stories, in Pappy's #406, and Pappy's #463.

Number 406


Feud on Rimfire Ridge!


Mosey on in and set a spell, podnuh. Got yet another Western--well, West as in West Virginia, anyhow--story to tell ya. This comes from Pappy's box of tear sheets. Someone years ago cut out stories they liked from comic books and threw them in a box. I put them back together. I have four Vigilante stories; this is the oldest, and first to be offered up.

The Vigilante was a long-running feature in Action Comics. I think he was one of the more popular characters who never got his own book. Vigilante was Greg Sanders, a radio singing cowboy who ran with a Chinatown kid named Stuff. When he slipped his kerchief over his face he became the Vigilante.

Mort Meskin, using the name Mort Jr., drew this action-packed 12-pager from Action Comics #57 in 1943, and Charles Paris inked it. The hillbilly kid in the splash panel, who says he's gonna shoot Tom Hatton "daid," learned to pronounce dead by the time this scene shows up on page 9.