Dollar Comics: G. I. Combat #201

 G. I. Combat #201 was one of the second wave of Dollar Comics, released on January 13th, 1977. This issue has a pretty great cover by Russ Heath and Neal Adams. DC's cover game was much improved from the Ernie Chan days, when the covers were both embarrassingly dialogue heavy and filled with bizarre anatomy and composition.

I was not a regular reader of DC's war comics back in the day. I was not even an irregular reader of them, although I had one or two vintage 60's war comics that were pretty OK.  This one, however, is kind of a drag. At 80 pages (64 of which are comics) it all kind of grinds into one big blur of blazing combat action.  

We start off with "The Rocking Chair Soldiers", a Haunted Tank story by Robert Kanigher and Sam Glanzman. This is also the first Haunted Tank story I have read outside of their cameo in Crisis on Infinite Earths. The Haunted Tank and their squadron are ordered to meet a French squadron of tanks at Brecy and take the combined squadron to wipe out the Casse Dam.

Sadly, their squadron is destroyed by a whole mess of Messerschmitts and the tanks and men are all gone save for The Haunted Tank and its crew.

Also, this is just an odd premise for the series. The ghost of a Confederate general, J.E.B. Stuart, haunts an American tank and gives out cryptic advice to the tank's commander, one Lt. Jeb Stuart. Also, the Haunted Tank flies a Confederate flag. Which, well, I just can't even. Even back in the 1970's we knew the Confederate flag was for racist losers. And the Dukes of Hazard.

The only advice I would want from a Confederate General is about the best way to surrender. Because that's what the Confederacy was good at.

The Haunted Tank joins up with the French tanks, and a tank on tank battle ensues in which The Haunted Tank is the only survivor. Again. 

Also, we meet some French villagers who fought in the last war. They congratulate the crew of the Haunted Tank for their victory and celebrate their heroism. Jeb (or maybe J.E.B.) promises to the last surviving French soldier that he will continue their mission, even though he only has the one tank.

But wait! The old guys from a couple pages ago just happen to have kept some World War I era tanks in perfect operating order in the local museum. They bust the tanks out and offer to help Jeb Stuart on his mission. Somehow he can hear them talk above the noise of the tanks.

Many pages of story happen, and the old French tankers eventually sacrifice themselves to blow the dam.

Lt. Stuart decides to add a French flag to his tank, which also might not be regulation. The Haunted Tank clanks off to its next mission. Will that French flag be there the next time we see the Haunted Tank? Who knows?

Next up is "The Human Flare" a "Tale of the O.S.S." by Bart Regan and Ric Estrada. It's got a twist ending, which I won't spoil for you. Ric Estrada's art here is pretty nice, a lot better than on his superhero work for DC.

After that is "The Sniper in Skirts". It's an uncredited "Battling WAC Special". It's perfectly fine, I guess. And vaguely tries to deal with the sexism of the day. Sort of.

Next is "Open the Grave-- and Fire", a Weird War Story by Bart Regan and John Calnan. It's pretty silly with a "twist ending" that I won't spoil for you. 

Bart Regan and E.R. Cruz give us "The Hawk Who Saved D-Day",  a pretty implausible O.S.S. story. It's nicely illustrated, though. E.R. Cruz gives us by far the nicest art we have seen inside this funnybook.

There's another Haunted Tank story, this time by Bart Regan and Dick Ayers. The story is titled "The Preacher Is A Gun" and features Gus, the African-American crewman. Gus goes off in search of well, something. And he definitely finds something.

In this story we learned that Gus is an ordained Baptist Minister. I don't know if this ever comes up again.

For that matter, it looks like the Haunted Tank has forsaken the French flag they swore they would fly forever in the lead story. Still flying the loser Confederate flag, though.

We get some more delightful E.R. Cruz art in "The 3-In-1 Soldier" written by Bart Regan. This story takes place in the Pacific theater, which is a nice change of pace. In this story, a group of soldiers survive an artillery blast. One is blinded, one loses the use of his legs, and one is deaf and also gets his arm broken. Together they improbably defeat some Japanese soldiers and make their way back to their comrades.

And there's one last Haunted Tank story by Robert Kanigher and Sam Glanzman. In "What's the Price of a G.I.?" the Haunted Tank crew rescues a wounded soldier and the nurses attending him. The Haunted Tank crew all get wounded in the process and the nurses manage to drive the tank, fire the main gun, and kill some Nazis. It's perfectly fine, the best story in the bunch.

I found this issue pretty dreary. I didn't read the DC War comics back in the day, and slogging through this issue makes it seem like that was the right decision on my part. I was hoping to cover all of the Dollar Comics on this blog, but this issue of G.I. Combat makes me want to skip the war comics. Or maybe what we need is some "War That Time Forgot" stories. Or maybe 80 (well, 64) pages of juvenile war comics is too much to read at one sitting.

Dollar Comics: Superman Family #182

Here's the second of the first two of DC's Dollar Comics, released on December 14th, 1976. From what I have read, the issue sold in some places that did not sell comics and sold very well overall, but was not really a fan-favorite. (See Comic Book Implosion page 30)

And looking over the book you can see why. Besides the snazzy cover by Curt Swan and Neal Adams the insides are pretty dreary.  

There's a nice table of contents that prints the cover image in a light blue and gives us story titles and credits. Nice to see DC putting credits in the front of the book.

A quick note on the printing: It's pretty bad. Actually, really bad. It probably does not do the artwork any favors, although as we will see some of the artwork does not do itself any favors thanks.

First up is a Jimmy Olsen story by Bill Dennehy, Kurt Schaffenberger and Vince Colletta. Bill Dennehy is referred to in one of the editorial pages as a "pseudonym for one of the most respected writer-editors in the business." In fact, it's Murray Boltinoff who I know did edit comics and wrote part of this one. I do not know how well respected he was in the field, just that he was in the comics biz. 

Kurt Schaffenberger is one of my favorite DC artists of this period. He'd drawn The Marvel Family (and probably some other related comics) at Fawcett. Later on he drew Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen (among other titles) at DC. He has a nice clean slightly bigfoot style. Really an all-around great comics artist, although he was probably a bit out of fashion by 1976.

Unfortunately for us, this story is inked by Vince Colletta, my least favorite inker in the history of comics. Much has been made of Mr. Colletta's genuine talent, and the fact that he didn't let that talent get in the way inking comics quickly and badly. Mr. Schaffenberger's clean lines are put through the mediocrity filter and this is what we get. It makes me sad to think of the many many penciled comics pages that were subjected to Colletaization. It's not one of the biggest tragedies of the 20th Century, but might well be in the top ten.

Jimmy finds out that a hockey player is on the take. Two mobsters recognize him and try and shoot him as he gets into his car. Jimmy wastes his time speculating as to whether he is in a dream or not, instead of trying to get away. When he does finally try to get away, he happens to see Clark turning into Superman.

Which Clark could do at super-speed, so fast that there's no way Jimmy could spot the switch. Supes hauls the bad guys car away and gets them i trouble with the law. Which brings us to the single finest panel in this comic, which barely looks like it was inked by Vince Colletta at all.

Jimmy decides that he only saw Clark turn into Superman in a dream. Or something

At some point Jimmy tries to run away from the gangsters again, and that great Kurt Schaffenberger cartooning is squashed under some heavy handed inks.

At some point Superman dresses as a goalie and captures the bad hockey players using his heat vision. Because that's just what Superman would do. And Jimmy once more decides that Clark can't be Superman. 

There's a goofy Superbaby story by E. Nelson Bridwell, John Calnan and Joe Giella. It's a reminder that the Superman comics at this time were aimed at pretty young children. That first panel of Ma Kent is an interesting experiment in showing the passage of time, but I'm not sure that it works.

Lois Lane finds corruption in the world of professional wrestling in a story by Bill Kunkel, Jose Delbo and Bob Layton. Apparently every sport in Metropolis is on the take somehow.

Kudos to whoever decided to put the bad guy in this story in a Mexican wrestling match. Do we know if any members of Los Straightjackets did jail time in Metropolis?

Paul Kupperberg, Marshall Rogers and Frank Springer give us a World of Krypton story that introduces Jo-Mon, sort of a Kryptonian Space Jesus. It's pretty silly.

Why doesn't Clark just clean the dishes and put everything away at super-speed? He's make the poor Ross family do a lot of extra work.

There's a story in which Supergirl battles Lex Luthor on Mars, the best part of which is the part where Luthor's rocket goes into a psychedelic "Space Warp". Paul Kupperberg, Mike Vosburg and Al Milgrom do the honors.

There's a Krypto the Superdog story by Bob Toomey, Bob Calnan and Bob Smith which is silly. Which is fine, really, as the story is aimed at very young children.

We get a one-age preview of the next issue, likely drawn by Kurt Schaffenberger, but without any credits. Man, Kurt Schaffenberger was pretty darn great!

And another Jimmy Olsen story in which he temporarily becomes telepathic.

And it's more Vince Colletta inks over the great Kurt Schaffenberger. Ugh. Cary Bates provides the story.

And that's it. 80 pages of comics, ads and editorial material. I've been wondering why the Dollar Comics didn't last, and the quality of the material may have been one of the reasons. I know I'm not the target audience for this, and even in 1976 I was a bit old for this approach to comics. But I would have liked to get better stories for my buck.

Next: You will believe a G.I. can combat!

Comics I Sold: Targitt #1

 Once upon a time Martin Goodman sold Marvel Comics (and his other magazines) to Perfect Film and Chemical. Marvel continued on without him and Perfect eventually fired his son, Chip Goodman, from whatever Marvel job he had.

In retaliation, Martin started Atlas Comics (Atlas was one of many names Goodman used for his comics publishing prior to standardizing on Marvel) and tried to snatch up the best talent from DC and Marvel. Folks working for Atlas included Larry Lieber (Stan Lee's brother and Martin's nephew), Neal Adams, Howard Chaykin, Ernie Colon and many others. There was a black and white Warren style line and a color Marvel style line. The color comics each lasted about three months, and the final issue was often a change of direction to make the title much more like a Marvel superhero comic.

So here we are with Targitt #1. The Atlas trade dress and design work look an awful lot like the Marvel trade dress of the day. And that cover, not credited in the comic, but attributed to Dick Giordano online, is pretty nice. I'm not sure that it needs the word balloon, it looks to me like Targitt is already in plenty of danger without letting him know he is going down with the ship.

Boy, if the artwork inside is this good, then this book will certainly be a hit.

Uh oh. 

To be fair, the artwork is pretty mixed throughout this issue. There are some panels that are occasionally grabbers, outnumbered by awkward storytelling and even more awkwardly drawn panels.

The single best panel is the double page spread with the story title, the credits and an exploding airplane, which is pretty spectacular.

The artist here is Howard Nostrand, who I mainly remember from Cracked magazine. He was a good airplane artist, kind of but not exactly like Bill Ward was a good girl artist.. Really. There was a nice picture of a jet plane in a movie or TV parody and there was a note from Howard Nostrand saying something like "Look at this plane! It looks like something out of Steve Canyon! Try and top that, Severin!". Probably one of the funnier things I saw in Cracked, which I would only get when I was too desperate for more Mad to wait until the next issue. Here Mr. Nostrand is clearly playing to his strengths in aviation art. It's too bad the rest of the book doesn't have more airplanes. 

Here's a nice Atlas house ad drawn by Ernie Colón, who at the time I thought of as "The Good Richie Rich Artist". That guy in the foreground looks like his and Roy Thomas' "Arak, Son of Thunder" who is about 10 years away at this point. Colón is a seriously underrated comics artist, in my humble opinion. His Medusa Chain is a pretty swell album-type science fiction graphic novel and his art on Arak, Son of Thunder and especially Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld are terrific.

The comic itself is kind of a violent mess, Targitt becomes a rogue FBI agent after his wife and daughter are killed in a really well drawn plane bombing. There are shootings and stabbings and various beatings going on. This is more violent than the cop shows of the day. But it's not particularly engaging.

There's also a helicopter explosion at the story's climax. It's not as well drawn as the plane explosion. It's still pretty cool.

There's also a Bullpen Bulletins style page listing the absurd number of comics Atlas was releasing in it's first couple of months. I wonder if Atlas could have made a go of it if they had eased into the market and not made so many changes to their titles after two issues. Had the Goodmans played this right, they could have their own staple of successful comics that launched a series of movies and merchandising. Instead, we just get a mess that was over before it started.

Next time I am here I want to take a look at Superman Family #182, one of DC's first two Dollar Comics. 

Dollar Comics: House of Mystery #215

 I like big books and I cannot lie.

Specifically, I like big comic books! 100 Page Super-Spectaculars, 80 Page Giants, Giant Size Man-Thing, Treasury editions, whatever!

For some reason, comics as periodicals keep reverting to 32 page floppies. Which are a low profit margin item at the best of times. Comics were dying a slow death in the 1970's.

When Jenette Kahn became publisher at DC in the 1970’s one of the first things she did was create Dollar Comics. These, as the name suggests, cost a buck. They had way more pages than a regular comic, sometimes they had wraparound covers and no ads, and they delivered more profit per unit than a standard sized floppy. I have read that they were sold in places that normally did not sell comics.

These lasted 5ish years - I think tying the name into the price point might have been a mistake during times of inflation. Dollar Comics went from 80 pages to 48 pages during this time. Not long after that, regular 32 page comics cost a buck.

The first two Dollar Comics were House of Mystery #251 and Superman Family #182, both on sale December 14th, 1976. (According to http://www.mikesamazingworld.com/mikes/features/guide.php?page=giant&groupid=38 which has a nice overview of the Dollar Comics line.)

Today, we will be looking at House of Mystery #251. Which cost a whole dollar.

There’s a wicked Neal Adams cover that vaguely ties in to one of the stories, although the monster on the cover is bigger, scarier, better drawn and menacing some children. Children always seem to get menaced on the front covers of ‘mystery’ titles.

Check it out!

As for the insides, it’s a mixed bag, which is pretty common for these ‘mystery’ anthologies. A couple of stories are really nicely illustrated, but none of the stories is much of a grabber. These are milder EC stories. Still, that cover is pretty great.

First off is a framing sequence that is not credited, but attributed online to Paul Kupperberg, John Calnan and Jack Abel. Cain and Abel are telling stories to some jaded kids that Goldie brought to the House of Mystery. Really, Cain and Abel’s whole existence (prior to The Sandman) was telling stories to jaded kids.

The storytelling in this sequence is a little off. The interactions between Cain, ABel and the kids pictured below don’t quite land. I am a man of no talents, but I think these panels could have been laid out a bit better and more funnily because the dialogue is amusing.

The first proper story is “Return of the Vampire” by Jack Oleck and Frank C. Reyes. It’s nicely drawn, but the production doesn’t help the artwork. The story is mystery book predictable, but perfectly OK.

As you can see, the printing technology of the time left some unsightly off-register bikini lines.

Next up is “Bride of the Pharaoh” written by Maxene Fabe and illustrated by the great Ramona Fradon. The splash panel is kind of a spoiler alert for a fairly predictable story that takes place in “Egypt”. Quote marks because I’m not sure how accurately the story reflects life in that country. Or, really, any country ever.

Curt Swan and Vince Colletta give us a story in which Aquaman uses Hostess Twinkies to defeat undersea miscreants. While the page says “Advertisement” at the top, I would prefer to think of it as being in Continuity. Even Post-Crisis and Post-Zero Hour and Post-New 52 and Post-Rebirth and Post-Convergence Continuity. Because Twinkies.

Here’s a house ad for Dollar Comics themselves, featuring this issue and the first Dollar Comics issue of Superman Family. I was reading comics at this time, but very rarely splurged on Dollar Comics. Not sure why, although none of the Dollar titles were things I had been reading regularly, or as regularly as one could given mid-70’s comics distribution in the small-town Midwest.

The next story is pretty spectacularly illustrated by Jess Joploman and written by George Kashdan. The story is a little predictable.

There are some short features in here as well, like one page cartoons by Sergio Aaragones, 2 pages of letters and a Diploma in which Jennette Kahn, Joe Orlando, Cain and Abel call me stupid for buying this comic for a dollar. The joke is on them, as I bought it as a back issue for even more than a dollar.

Steve Skeates, Ernie Chua and Bill Draut give us what is easily the best drawn thing I have seen from Ernie Chan’s work at DC. I dunno if that’s Bill Draut’s inks or what, but Mr. Chan’s cover at DC in the mid 1970’s were not good at all. Like weirdly amateurish. This story is pretty OK, too. Better than the average mystery book story.

The next story is illustrated by EC great Wally Wood and it’s the best thing in here. The story is fun and funny - maybe it was originally destined for Plop!. I liked it.

Wally Wood sure knew how to draw dames!

As a bonus, the story features a guest appearance by Wonder Wart-Hog!

There’s an uncredited three page look ‘Behind the Scenes’ at the House of Mystery, which has a caricature of Paul Levitz in it.

There’s a story by Paul Levitz, Michael Uslan and Q Redondo that is nicely illustrated and follows the mystery book formula pretty closely.

Our cover story is by Jack Oleck and Alfredo Alcala. Nicely illustrated. Has a kind of Swamp Thing thing going on, but without the tone that made that first Swamp Thing story so great.

And those kids from the framing sequence? I guess they didn’t find these stories all that scary at all.