Friend of THOIA, Alex Grant, emailed me recently looking for an Atlas horror tale which turned out to be this masterfully illustrated Everett Raymond Kinstler criminal classic (and possibly the only story Kinstler ever did for Atlas), from the September 1953 issue of Mystery Tales #15.
The Dark Horse book, Blackjacked and Pistol-Whipped: The Best of Crime Does Not Pay, is available as of September 6. You can see a preview at Amazon.com. It looks like a must-have, double-bag item for me, a fan of crime comics, the more lurid the better.
And that's what we have today! "Master of Murder Castle," drawn by Fred Guardineer in his precise style, emphasizing the horrific story of a true serial killer, H. H. Holmes, who lived--and killed--in Chicago in the early 1890s.
As an add-on, I'm including some pages from Rick Geary's terrific book, A Treasury of Victorian Murder: The Beast of Chicago, published in 2003 by NBM. Geary, who has a real feel for the era, has done his usual superb job with his pen-and-ink drawings, evocative of steel engravings of that time. His story of H. H. Holmes is a not as lurid, but no less fascinating. Geary has a series of these books of famous murders and I highly recommend them.
I haven't seen the Crime Does Not Pay book, but I also recommend it based solely on the preview.
I'm very taken by this clever children's comic from the late '40s. Isabel Manning Hewson created and wrote the radio series on which the comic is based, and she also wrote the comic, illustrated by Olive Bailey.
Bhob Stewart explained it in his editorial, "Perigee to Perilune," in Heavy Metal magazine, Fall, 1987:
[Speaking of characters in comics who came from radio]: "Such linkages may have been strongest in the case of Isabel Manning Hewson. As the writer/producer/narrator of Land of the Lost (aired by ABC beginning in 1944) and the scripter of EC's Land of the Lost comic book (illustrated by Olive Bailey), she maintained a consistency of characters and stories in both, duplicating the storylines. She also received credit for the story in the 1948 Land of the Lost animated short. The control Hewson exercised over Land of the Lost enabled her to actually become a fantasy fiction character: she wrote herself (as a little girl) into both the comic book and radio storylines. Each week Isabel and her friend Billy traveled underwater with a glowing red fish named Red Lantern, tour guide to all "of-fish-ally-lost" objects beneath the waves. Today, Red Lantern has himself become "of-fish-ally-lost" and forgotten, even though the radio actor who brought him to life was Art Carney."
Archie Comics had initially started out in the 1940s as MLJ, and their early features were superhero characters like the Shield (the first patriotic superhero) and the Hangman. Archie himself didn't come along until Pep Comics #22, and wasn't featured on a cover until #36. But he rapidly eclipsed the other characters in MLJ's line, which proved fortunate as the superheros began dying out shortly after the war for almost all the publishers. Archie even got the rare tribute of having a radio series, which popularized the character even more.
In the late 1940s and 1950s, the Archie brand exploded. Archie's buddy Jughead got his own magazine, as did his girlfriends Betty and Veronica. The character proved so popular that they even started publishing Little Archie, the adventures of our hero as a tyke.
But at the same time, the publisher wanted to diversify. In 1959, Jack Kirby was between his short-term gig at DC Comics (where he created Challengers of the Unknown) and his famed period at Marvel. Archie Comics commissioned Joe Simon and him to create a new superhero, initially known as The Fly (later redubbed Flyman). For the next several years Archie Comics labored to create a superhero universe with The Jaguar, a resurrected Shield, Steel Sterling and other superheroes, collectively known as the Mighty Crusaders.
Ironically, nothing worked except a female version of Archie named Josie. Josie had pretty much the standard backup cast for a teen comic. There's Josie's ditzy blonde friend Melody, her (initially beatnik) boyfriend Albert, wealthy Alexander, and brainy (but plain-looking) Pepper. The comic does not appear to have been a big success at first; I don't remember ever seeing these in the spinner rack in my hometown. But it got lucky. In 1968-1969, a Saturday Morning show featuring Archie in the inevitable rock band was picked up by CBS. It was a huge success, and the group who recorded under the name The Archies came up with a smash hit in the song Sugar, Sugar. Josie quickly became a rock star too, her comic was renamed Josie and the Pussycats, and their Saturday morning cartoon debuted in 1970.
All that was far in the future at the time this issue came out. As you can probably guess, this issue featured Josie and her pals going to the New York World's Fair of 1964-65. Comics often did tie-ins to major events like this, although I confess this is one of the only ones that I can remember for that World's Fair. Which is remarkable, because Marvel's characters were all set in the New York metropolitan area at that time. The story starts out with Josie announcing that she and her pals are going to enter a contest:
And so the goal becomes to amass a horde of Crispy Crunchy boxtops. Josie gets two from her house. Albert contributes three, but only after getting sick from eating all those boxes of the cereal. Melody uses her charm:
And Alexander just buys up a warehouse of Crispy Crunchies. They're certain to win, right?
Fortunately for the story, Alexander decides to simply foot the bill for the trip to New York:
I believe the only structure still remaining at the site is that globe known as the Unisphere:
But Alex loses his wallet while riding the monorail. A kid in a cowboy hat picks it up, and the next several pages are consumed with the teens chasing him around the fair.
That's pretty interesting, because as you may recall, Alan Shepard did hit a few golf balls on the moon: Melody eventually turns up with the kid in tow; he's apparently been following her. Unfortunately, he gave the wallet to his mom, and now he's lost. They suggest putting him on the TV at the fair, but:
Nice mom! So now they go chasing after the mother, but it turns out that she gave it to a policeman. Fortunately she immediately spots the officer in question, and he actually has the wallet. Unfortunately, they are all so worn out from chasing around the fair that they decide to go home. But it turns out that their escapades with the Crispy Crunchies caused a flurry of publicity for the company, and so:
Comments: Entertaining fluff. Incidentally, there was a guest cameo:
***ADULTS ONLY!!*** If you've missed the recent posts over at AEET, we're celebrating Halloween a month early there by "Skipping September" altogether and jumping right into the spooky stuff. This also includes the kooky stuff, and no one was kookier than National Lampoon Magazine, who unleashed their great, all "HORROR" issue in November 1971. For obvious reasons I saved this Neal Adams illustrated vampire spoof classic for posting here at THOIA, add to that the additional cover art by Frank Frazetta, as well as a pulpy bonus image from Gray Morrow-- and well, this is definitely one hell of a fun issue! See more HERE!
