Thursday, October 23, 2014

Carl Memling at Charlton--Who Knew?

I was looking for Carl Memling scripts at Timely/Atlas in the Fifties, where he's known to have written for the horror anthologies (I haven't found any of his there yet); but with his style fresh in my mind, when I was merely reading some Fifties Charlton comics and not expecting to recognize writers, I happened across him. A Memling trademark that I've mentioned before is sirens or car engines going "Rowrrrrr."

Crime and Justice 19, The 64,000 Dollar Question--'Rowrrrrr'

There are one or two more Crime and Justice scripts that could be Memling's, but I'll err on the side of caution and leave them off for now. I'll get to more titles eventually; he wrote quite a bit in two years or so.

The writers known to have done some work for Charlton in the early-through-mid-Fifties include Walter B. Gibson, Bruce Hamilton, Ken Fitch, Harry Shorten, and Jerry Siegel. Fitch was one writer who, in addition to scripts written directly for Charlton, had work published there out of other companies' bought-out inventories. Joe Gill was writing for Charlton around 1954 but didn't become their house writer, filling almost all the pages, for another few years.

Carl Memling Scripts in
Crime and Justice


July/53 14  Down the Drain
Three O'Clock Shadow
Sep/     15  Vacation from Violence [MR & MRS CHASE]
Behind Locked Doors
Stormy Crossing
Eye Witness
Nov/     16  Peril on the Pacific [MR & MRS CHASE]
The Hatchet Is Buried
Feb/54 17  No Way Out
Apr/     18  Killer on the Loose [RADIO PATROL]
Terror under the Big Top [MR & MRS CHASE]
July/     19  Three's a Mob
Sep/     20  A Deadly Circle [RADIO PATROL]
Nov/     21  The $64,000 Question [MR & MRS CHASE]
Road Pirates

11 comments:

  1. forgive my ignorance, but why is the splash signed "J.Shuster/E.Osrin"?

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  2. Joe Shuster pencils, Ray Osrin inks.

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  3. Or pencils by Joe Shuster's ghost artist for his Charlton work..

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  4. I wouldn't have thought Joe Shuster was getting anywhere near enough work at this stage to justify (or even afford) employing ghost artists.

    Having said that, the panel shown here doesn't remind me of Shuster at all.

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  5. I wonder if it was offered to him as a nice gesture (what with his failing eyesight) to put his name out in the comics field one more time.

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  6. Dick Giordano explained this to me once. Shuster couldn't draw anymore so he'd get work and then have it 100% ghosted. Because of his fame, he got a slightly higher rate than the artists would have gotten on their own so Shuster could take a few bucks a page and the artists were still happy.

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  7. I've referenced this comment in the next post, Mark.

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  8. I go with the ghost theory--the pencils appear to be Bill Molno.

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  9. Over the holidays I showed all of the preprepared Sunday Comic section the Arrow from 1953 on my blog, which at least partly but possibly completely is written by Gibson. You may want to have a look.

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  10. I've bookmarked the blog pages, Ger, to compare to stuff like the Shadow newspaper strip.

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