Arneson, Not Segall

The misattributions to Don Segall on the GCD for these books, coalescing as far as anyone can tell out of thin air, originated decades earlier with me, back around the time I misidentified some non-William Woolfolk stories as Woolfolk's. I was correct in making the leap from these Dell stories to the Tower ones, but started from a misidentification of the writer. From what I can see now, Don Segall worked at Dell up through the middle of 1965; these are from 1966-67.

DJ Arneson not long ago recalled writing a comic's entire first issue for Tower, an "Undersea guy." He actually wrote two issue's worth of those double-sized books, going by the style. He remembered writing the Dell monster superheroes specifically. His other series like the Monkees and Dark Shadows (to name only two) never got misattributed.

An early warning sign for Arneson's writing is "Great Scot" rather than "Scott" (although I've seen him use the latter once or twice). The full page here is from 1966's bookstore comic THE GREAT SOCIETY COMIC BOOK, on which he and Tony Tallarico (though not ghost-penciller Bill Fraccio) got cover and splash credits; the tier below it is from FLYING SAUCERS 1, art by Chic Stone.

DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN, of course, took up their numbering after one-shot tie-ins to the Universal movies a few years earlier. DRACULA 5 was skipped. The reasoning is obvious: 5 would have reprinted 1, but they skipped over it to the superhero issues. It may be a persnickety reason for the numbering gap, but it is a reason, not the mistake that fans have called it.

Scripts by DJ ARNESON, not Don Segall, at Dell

DRACULA 2-4
DRACULA 6-8 (reprints 2-4)

FRANKENSTEIN 2-4

WEREWOLF 1-3

FLYING SAUCERS 1-4
FLYING SAUCERS 5 (reprints 1)

at Tower

UNDERSEA AGENT 1-2

The Legion Artist You've Heard Of. "Who Was It?" "Same Guy!"

Win Mortimer took over as regular artist on the Legion of Super-Heroes in late 1968. Naturally, if you didn't take a good look, you'd assume he's the penciller of "Lament for a Legionnaire" in Action 384 (Jan/70). Well, he may have touched up the figure of Element Lad in the splash panel. But otherwise Curt Swan returns for his final bow on the strip's first run.

If it explains the long-standing misattribution, Swan is being inked on this story by Jack Abel, the regular on the strip at this point, whereas on the very same issue's Superman story George Roussos is his inker.

Nelson Bridwell mistook Swan's 1952 art for Mortimer's in the reprint of the Batman story "The Masterminds of Crime." He was corrected and ran the correction soon after.

But certainly by 1970 (if not as early as 1952), Mortimer's and Swan's art styles don't look very much alike, do they?

Mary Marvel's Final Artist at Fawcett

In 1948 Mary Marvel loses her strip in Wow Comics to Tom Mix and even has her own book retitled and taken over by another screen cowboy, Monte Hale. She remains a member of the Marvel Family, of course, and her solo strip continues as a backup in Marvel Family into 1951.

Her final penciller there is Pete Riss. There seem to be a number of inkers—or finishers—some obscuring his style more than others. On this page from "Mary Marvel Fights the Likeness Peril" the woman in green, especially in the middle tier (note her arms), is the best example of Riss's pencils.

There are no Mary Marvel strips in 52, 56, and 59, as those issues' Marvel Family stories are full-length. The Mary story in 51, like the Marvel Family lead, seems to be out of inventory from a number of years earlier.

Mary Marvel in Marvel Family
Penciled by Pete Riss

Jul/50	49	MM and the Adult Children
Aug/	50	MM Battles the Melody of Crime
Nov/	53	MM Battles the Evil Exterminator
Dec/	54	MM Battles the Predatory Plants
Jan/51	55	MM and the Miser of Resources
Mar/	57	MM Battles the Collector of Hate
Apr/	58	MM Fights the Likeness Peril
Jun/	60	MM and the Man Who Killed with Kindness

Superman Writer Woolfolk. But Probably Not the One You Expected.

A quarter of a century ago I IDed a number of William Woolfolk's Superman stories. His records later showed, however, that I'd mistakenly attributed too many stories to him—some from before and some from after he actually worked on the character.

On the earlier stories, it turns out that my Woolfolk ID was just given to the wrong Woolfolk. Compare these panels from "Super-Cowboy" with those from Dorothy Woolfolk's "Hardboiled Heart" in Love Diary in the previous post.

In places such as Steranko's History of Comics it's been told that Dorothy was writing Lois Lane stories when William started writing Superman. That made people assume it was around 1946, since that's when the Lois Lane back-up strip in Superman ended. Actually, it was a few years later: she was writing the Superman strip, with a number of Lois-centered stories in the mix (not unlike the other writers, of course; recall that "Lois Lane, Cavegirl" in Action 129 is by Alvin Schwartz). Those Lois Lane back-ups' writers are accounted for: Don Cameron on some, Whitney Ellsworth on others.

This is my first pass on IDing Dorothy Woolfolk's Superman stories in Action; I'm looking over Superman too. The stories I misIDed as William's that fall after his actual run belong to a third hand.

Superman in Action Comics
Scripts by Dorothy Woolfolk

Jun/49	#133	The World's Most Perfect Girl
Jul/	#134	Super-Cowboy
Jan/50	#140	Superman Becomes a Hermit
Apr/	#143	The Bride of Superman
Jun/	#145	Merton Gloop and His Magic Horseshoe
Jul/	#146	The Statues That Came to Life
Nov/	#150	The Secret of the 6 Superman Statues

Dorothy Woolfolk's Early Entries in Love Diary

Since some of Dorothy Woolfolk's Love Diary scripts (in #17-19) were noted in William Woolfolk's records because he'd supplied the plots, I was able to get a handle on her writing style. I've mentioned that one of his pet expressions was "Good glory"; one of hers is "Oh, glory." She uses "Oh" in other expressions like "Oh, golly" and "Oh, (name). Dorothy does use "Good glory" herself once or twice. These panels are from "Hardboiled Heart" in #6.

These are the stories that I'm quite sure of at this point. There are others I might add later when I get an even better handle on her style (in other words, beyond those particular expressions); I have fifteen more stories from #1-10 down with a question mark after her name. From his records we know that William had two stories in #8 and one in #10. There are other writers on the comic; for instance, there's a run of the Prescription for Happiness feature all by the same writer.

UPDATE: I thought I might be retconning Dorothy (Roubicek) Woolfolk's name at this point, but Jake Oster tells me she married William in September 1948.

Love Diary scripts by
Dorothy Woolfolk included in #1-10

Nov/49	#3	Afraid to Love
		Not My Decision to Make
Jan/50	#4	I Lied to My Heart
		Movie Crazy [SALLY WEEKS]
Mar/	#5	She Wanted My Man [A NURSE CONFESSES]
		Stolen Kisses
May/	#6	Love Tyrant
		Hardboiled Heart
		Too Sure of My Man [SALLY WEEKS]
Oct/	#9	Too Young to Love

The Superman Artist You've Heard Of--Believe Me

"If There Were No Superman" in World's Finest 38 (Jan-Feb/49) seems to have been a stumper as far as IDing the penciller goes. His final World's Finest Boy Commandos, as it happens, was in the previous issue. This is his second Superman story, the first being "The Man Who Bossed Superman" in Superman 51 (Mar-Apr/48); before 1949 is out he'll start contributing the occasional story to Superboy.

Curt Swan will return to drawing Superman.

The best guess on the penciller for "If There Were No Superman" has been Wayne Boring, with a question mark. That just goes to show how important it is to ignore the inking; in this case Stan Kaye's inks on Swan immediately remind you of his inks on Boring. Try to imagine these panels as if inked by George Klein. One way or the other, you have to look behind the inks for Swan's poses and layouts and a few recognizable facial types. The less you look at Superman himself, where Boring's version is certainly the model, the better. On other pages than these, objects like castles and ships showcase Swan's realistic approach rather than Boring's impressionistic one.

Speaking of inkers obscuring pencillers, that Boy Commandos story in WF 38, "Rip Carter—Fugitive from a Chain Gang," has been attributed to Swan, but its pencils are by another BC artist you've heard of: Jack Kirby.

The Golden Age Batman Artist You Never Heard Of

When asked if he drew a number of the Batman stories listed below, Bob Kane said "Yes." He didn't explain why the creator of Batman, using this temporary new style, would be doing a few work-for-hire crime stories for DC a year later in Gang Busters and such. The pencils for those crime back-ups have been variously attributed to Jim Mooney or Charles Paris; evidently they evoked Batman in a way the indexers couldn't put their fingers on.

To be fair, I had some stories on this list (like "Nine Lives Has the Catwoman" in Batman 35) that I removed after a few more looks when I did see Bob Kane's work after all, or the work of various hands. (Maybe some of those Batman stories belong back here; maybe some here don't belong. The crime stories I'm sure of.) Although the inks for 35-36 have been attributed to Ray Burnley, with Jack Burnley's corroboration, I'd suggest there are different inkers on different stories; I won't try to ID them.

Above are tiers from two of the stories I saw in reprint in the Seventies ("Dinosaur Island" and "The Case of the Crooked Gambler"). For years I'd IDed this artist for myself as just the "Dinosaur Island artist." Then finally—last month—I saw a signed story by him at Atlas: "The House That Wasn't There" in Journey into Unknown Worlds 7 (Oct/51). The signature is Paul Cooper. He has other early-Fifties signed stories at Atlas as well as at companies like Youthful. He's not trying to ape Bob Kane at this point.

Paul Cooper at DC:
Batman

Jun-Jul/46	35	Dinosaur Island
		Dick Grayson, Author
Aug-Sep/	36	The Penguin's Nest
		Stand-In for Danger
		Sir Batman at King Arthur's Court

Batman in Detective

Nov/46	117	Steeplejack's Showdown (plus cover)
May/47	123	The Dawn Patrol Crimes
Oct/	128	Crimes in Reverse

Batman in World's Finest

May-Jun/47	28	Crime under Glass
Nov-Dec/	31	The Man with the X-Ray Eyes
Jan-Feb/48	32	The Man Who Could Not Die
Jul-Aug/	35	Crime by the Book

Perfect Crime Mystery etc. in Mr. District Attorney

Jan-Feb/48	1	Studio Cop
Jul-Aug/	4	Border Cop
Sep-Oct/	5	The Murder with a Million Witnesses

Perfect Crime Mystery etc. in Gang Busters

Aug-Sep/48	5	The Case of the Crooked Gambler
Oct-Nov/49	12	The Case of the Perfect Alibi

Perfect Crime Mystery in Star Spangled Comics

Mar/49

90

Remote Control Murder