Dudley #3 Cover

 

Dudley and his unnamed friend are kind gropey.

Missile Toe and The Crones at Jilly's Music Room 21/21/2024!

Missile Toe and our sister Band, The Crones, will be playing at Jilly's Music Room on December 21st. 

In Akron. 

Ohio. 

Missile Toe and the Crones at the Inferno Lounge Dec. 14th 2024!

 

Dudley #2 cover by Boody Rogers

Yummy? Did Chris Claremont write this?

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.