Exploits of Daniel Boone

 

When I first looked at Quality's Exploits of Daniel Boone, I could see that the covers were by Dick Dillin and Chuck Cuidera, and that the writers were the company's mainstays in its final year, Joe Millard and "Q" (whom I now know is Robert Bernstein). I could find John Forte's work on some of the back-up stories, but on the Boone stories themselves I had no idea of the artist.

When I looked at the title again after IDing artists on G.I. Combat, I knew who drew Daniel Boone: Sam Citron. His style at Quality matched up with credited work at ACG in the Sixties.

But when I took a third look, I realized that the artist ID wasn't quite so simple after all. The Boone stories' art in all six issues looked similar because of the inking. The layout of the figures in some stories, though, was more awkward than Citron's usual work.

The penciller on most of issues 3-5 I'd come to recognize on other Quality features like T-Man, and Fawcett's Monte Hale; fittingly enough, Edmond Good was the first artist on DC's frontiersman series, Tomahawk. At times his figures look like Bob Kane's filtered through Sheldon Moldoff's ghosting; usually it's the hand placement that tells, but see the full figure of the farmer in the second panel here from "Master of Magic." The first two stories in issue 5 look different enough that I'd give a very tentative guess at John Daly's pencils.

Exploits of Daniel Boone

Nov/55	1	Doom at the Stake	w: Joe Millard  a: Sam Citron
		Raid in the Scioto	w: Millard  a: Citron
		Assault on Boonesborough	w: Millard  a: Citron
Jan/56	2	The Ghost of Dan'l Boone	w: Millard  a: Citron
		Duel at Dawn	w: Millard  a: Citron
		Web of the White Savage	w: Millard  a Citron
Mar/	3	Island of Doom	w: Millard  p: Ed Good  i: Citron
		Rescue from the Redskins	w: Millard  p: Good  i: Citron
		The Honor of Daniel Boone	w: Millard  p: Good  i: Citron
May/	4	Master of Magic	w: Millard  p: Good  i: Citron
		Rendezvous with Disaster	w: Millard  p: Good  i: Citron
		The Pilgrims from Pennsylvania	w: Millard  p: Good  i: Citron
July/	5	Treaty of Doom	w: Robert Bernstein  p: ?  i: Citron
		The Cunning of Blackfish	w: Bernstein p: ?  i: Citron
		Mission of Peril	w: Bernstein  p: Good  i: Citron
Sept/	6	Menace of the Renegades	w: Bernstein  a: Citron
		Through the Indian Wall	w: Bernstein  a: Citron
		Desperate Mission	w: Bernstein  a: Citron

Miscellaneous Frontier Stories in
Exploits of Daniel Boone

Nov/55	1	How the Cheyennes First Got Guns	w: Millard  a: John Forte
Jan/56	2	Rain of Fire	w: Millard  a: Forte
Mar/	3	The Wizard of the Water	w: Millard  a: Citron
May/	4	Sons of Courage	w: Millard  a: Forte
July/	5	Four-Footed Menace	w: Bernstein  a: ?
Sept/	6	War to the Finish	w: Bernstein  a: John Rosenberger?

Woolfolk Records 1950/07

William Woolfolk's stories are split between publishers Fawcett and Orbit in July.

Again, the 2 pages of "Dorothy's love story" for Dorothy Woolfolk constitute a plot, not script pages; the record-book entries for similar pieces a few months later add that detail.

UPDATE: darkmark found the Monte Hale iron mask story.

 

July 1950 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

7 pg	Captain Marvel Jr.	menace of medicine man
		"CMJ Fights the Menace of the Medicine Man" CMJ 94, Feb/51
9	Wild Bill Pecos	Nuggets Nugent's feud
		"WPB Combats the Killin' Cappers" The Westerner 31, Dec/50
9	Captain Marvel Jr.	the demon fencer
		"CMJ Battles the Demon Fencer" CMJ 95, Mar/51
11	Wild Bill Pecos	ghost town raiders
		"Ghost Town Raiders" The Westerner 31, Dec/50
7	Monte Hale	sacred arrow in stone
		MH Western or Western Hero c. Apr/51
5	Calamity Kate	return of the Gaucho Kid
		"The Return of the Gaucho Kid" The Westerner 31, Dec/50
10	Citadel of Crime	gangster organizes his home town for crime
		"Citadel of Crime" Wanted 33, Jan/51
8	Dead Man's Witness	a horse provides clue to capture killer
		"Dead Man's Witness" Wanted 32, Dec/50
2	Dorothy's love story	Love Diary
7	Monte Hale	man in the iron mask
		"MH Battles the Human Fort" MH Western 58, Mar/51
8	Web of Crime	take the first step and there's no way out of crime
		"Web of Crime" Wanted 33, Jan/51
9	Ibis	a lost Roman galley looking for Cleopatra
		"Ibis and the Twist in Time" Whiz 131, Mar/51

George Ziel's Two Comic Book Covers

George Ziel was a cover artist for the paperbacks; by the early Seventies the genre he was called upon most often to illustrate was Gothic romance.

He painted the covers of DC's first Gothic comic book, Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love 1 (Sept-Oct/71), and one more, Sinister House of Secret Love 3 (Feb-Mar/72).

 

Lynn Monroe's Ziel checklist includes those comic book covers, as well as the Paperback Library cover (The House of Terror, as it happens) with the same figure of the candle-holding woman used on Sinister House 3.

Writer "Q" Gets a Name

In my Ken Shannon and G.I. Combat posts I identified one writer only as "Q"—I could see his style in story after story in Quality's last couple of years, but I couldn't put a name to him. He wasn't any of the writers listed in the Who's Who as working there; for all I knew, he never worked anyplace else and would remain unknown.

I found him at Atlas in the early Fifties. Robert Bernstein had a number of Black Rider stories signed for him by artist Jay Scott Pike. Bernstein scripted more Atlas stories at the time, but uncredited.

"Q" stands out at Quality by so many captions precise as to time: Ten minutes later..., Twenty minutes later.... Exclamations like "Iiieeee," "Eeiii," and "Urghh" distinguish his scripts from, say, Joe Millard's or Dick Wood's there at mid-Fifties Quality. These are details that jumped out at me when at last I read those Black Rider stories.

The problem is that these scripts don't sound much like Bernstein's half a decade later at Archie with the Fly and Jaguar, sat DC with the Superman family, or even at Marvel with Thor, Iron Man, and the Human Torch. His captions Moments after..., when the other writers use Moments later..., don't show up in the earlier stuff.

Writers' styles can change over the years, but my methodology depends on their not changing completely. I felt better about my IDing "Q" as Bernstein when I found a few of his later quirks sprinkled through these stories. One difference between Bernstein and Otto Binder on Superman: Binder uses "Omigosh" only; Bernstein uses "Migosh" as well. "Q" uses "Migosh." The clues that led me years ago to Bernstein on Aquaman, Green Arrow, and Congorilla were certain sound effects used on Superman, the Archie Adventure heroes, and the Marvel heroes. Pwanng connects this Two-Gun Lil story from Crack Western 83 (March/53) with the Aquaman story from Adventure 260 (May/59).

The Who's Who has Robert Bernstein working at Fawcett, strips unknown; I hope I can track him down there eventually, too.

Woolfolk records 1950/06

William Woolfolk's two publishers this month: Orbit and Fawcett.

His rate at Orbit has been $10 a page, but as of "Mockery of Love" it's raised to $12.50, his highest outside of promotional comics. He made $1008 on scripts this month; that would be $9800 in 2013 dollars..

In later months in these sales records he notes the love story pages he does for his wife Dorothy as plots. The plots are paid the same page rate as scripts for Orbit.

June 1950 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

9 pg	His Name Is Death	woman learns she is married to a Bluebeard
		"His Name Is Death" Wanted 31, Nov/50
9	Ibis	flame men live at the Earth's center
		"The Flame Men" Whiz 130, Feb/51
10	Mockery of Love	girl seeks love abroad, finds it from home
		"Mockery of Love" Love Diary 10, Nov/50
10	Wild Bill Pecos	battles the water rustlers
		"The Water Rustlers" The Westerner 30, Nov/50
8	Monte Hale	meets Kid Buzzard
		MH Western or Western Hero c. Apr/51
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	king of dogs
		"CMJ Battles the King of the Dogs" CMJ 95, Mar/51
8	The Corpse Laughed Last	man thinks to shield his insane wife, but he is the crazy one
		"The Corpse Laughed Last" Wanted 31, Nov/50
9	Wild Bill Pecos	marshal of no-gun town
		"Marshal of No-Gun Town" The Westerner 30, Nov/50
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	the exiled Earth
		"CMJ and the Exiled Earth" CMJ 95, Mar/51
3	pgs of Dorothy's love story	Love Diary
10	Man Who Lost His Face	pretty boy killer gets face of man he has condemned to death
		"The Man Who Lost His Face" Wanted 32, Dec/50

What's Jim Aparo Doing Here?

Jim Aparo looked for a job in comic books at EC in the mid-Fifties, but, unhired, went into commercial art. He drew the short-lived newspaper strip "Stern Wheeler" in 1963, and didn't get into comic books until he landed work at Charlton in 1967.

Or so says the conventional wisdom.

 

This page of early Aparo is relatively crude, but it's obviously his—he's not ghosting pencils under someone else's inks (like Sal Trapani's). If the final panel close-up isn't a giveaway that this is his art, the use of a Craftint-type texture paper in that and earlier panels should identify his style; the trees in the foreground of the tilted fifth panel are another Aparo technique.

This page comes from the story "The Sinister Stone," published by a company Aparo is not known to have worked for, Martin Goodman's Timely-Atlas-Marvel. The comic book is Worlds of Fantasy 11, and the cover date is February 1958.

Hersh and Goldman at Vulcan Comics

There's only one known copy of Vulcan Comics' Magnificent Thrill Comics 10 (Dec/39) in existence, and it's been sealed in a slab since 2000, even though it's in no better than good condition. The print run was pulped, aside from ten copies that made it to the Vulcan offices, and nine of those were thrown out shortly after. The comic was pulled when the Super Sleuth strip by Steve Hersh and Curly Goldman brought undue attention from another company's lawyers.

Magnificent Thrill isn't listed in Overstreet or on the Grand Comics Database, since it, Vulcan, Steve, and Curly are fictional. My novel Kings of the Comic Books reveals some of the secrets behind the early careers of Hersh & Goldman in the beginnings of the Golden Age. Did they become the kings of the comic book creators that Steve felt sure they'd be remembered as?

Kings is available at $2.99 from Amazon for the Kindle, from Barnes & Noble for the Nook, and from Smashwords in multiple formats for other readers. Kindle books can be read on a PC, Mac, Smartphone, or other platform with a free download from Amazon.