Mighty Samson 1970s Index

The original run of Mighty Samson, from 1964 to 1969, was written entirely by Otto Binder—both Samson and backup Tom Morrow stories. Frank Thorne drew issues 1-7's Samson stories, Jack Sparling the Samson and Tom Morrow in issues 8-20; Mike Sekowsky pencilled and Mike Peppe inked the first Tom Morrow story in 7. Mo Gollub (among others?) painted the covers of issues 1-4, and George Wilson those of 5-20.

21, 22, and 32 were reprint issues.

1970s Mighty Samson Revival Writers and Artists

Mar/74	#23	In the Country of the Blind	w: Gerry Boudreau
			a: José Delbo
Jun/74	#24	The Manchu of C'nal Street	w: Boudreau
			a: Delbo & Jack Abel
Sep/74	#25	The Fugitives	w: Boudreau
			a: Delbo & Abel
Dec/74	#26	The Pollution People	w: Boudreau
			a: Delbo & Abel
Mar/75	#27	Noah's Ark	w: Allan Moniz
			a: Delbo & Abel
Jun/75	#28	Samson's Masters	w: Paul S. Newman
			a: Abel
Sep/75	#29	Journey into the Past	w: John David Warner
			a: Abel
Dec/75	#30	The Balloon Gods	w: Arnold Drake
			a: Abel
Mar/76	#31	The Attack of the Lepidop-Terror	w: Drake
			a: Abel

in Gold Key Champion

May/78	#2	The Night Glowers	w: Drake
			a: Don Heck

The covers of 23, 24, and GK Champion 2 were painted by George Wilson; those of 25-31 by Luis Dominguez.

The Comic Reader 96 (Apr/73) said "...Mighty Samson is returning to the stands in a new title by Gerry Boudreau and José Delbo...", meaning 23. Issues 28-30 contain writer and artist credits. The rest of the credits here are my IDs of the respective styles.

The Grand Comics Database credits Abel with writing 23, nobody with pencilling, and Delbo with inking.  The GCD says that art experts see Delbo ghost-pencilling for Abel on 28, but 24-27 (a page from 25 is shown here) are the ones where I see Abel's inks, and they let a lot of Delbo's pencils show through. Abel's style overwhelms 28, if there's anybody but himself to overwhelm.

Woolfolk Records 1945/08

The printer's foul-up I mentioned in the post about July 1945 meant that the Mad Hatter 1 cover illustrated the story that ended up in issue 2.

Sales to Fawcett, Quality, Timely, and Holyoke/Aviation Press; and another Mad Hatter unpaid-for because it was written for Woolfolk's own company, OW.

The Sybil feature was paid for, at the same rate as Black Raiders and Chin Chop, so I imagine it went unpublished like those stories—I can't find it anywhere. I couldn't track down the Super Rabbit story's publication. UPDATE: I found the Manhunter falcons story since first posting.

Woolfolk crossed out one entry in the notebook: what would have been his last Spirit story (thus making one he wrote in October 1944 his last sold). Instead of "payment received" on this one he noted "duplicate plot" but gave no description.

August 1945 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

8 pg	Captain Marvel	man who made earthquakes
		"The Man Who Made Earthquakes" CM Advs Wheaties Giveaway, 1945
12	Captain Midnight	goes to Arabia
		"Adventure in Arabia" Capt Mid 51, May/47
6	Swing Sisson	banquet for absent guests
		[untitled] Feature 96, Mar/46
12	Captain Midnight	Albright's treachery
		"Captain Albright's Treachery" Capt Mid 51, May/47
15	Plastic Man	Dr. Erudite's double
		[untitled] Police 53, Apr/46
8	Black Raiders	bird master
		[unpublished]
8	Super Rabbit	duplicator machine
		All Surprise or Comedy or Comic Capers or Ideal or Movie Tunes or Super Rabbit
11	Mad Hatter	date with M H
		"A Date with the Mad Hatter" MH 1, Jan-Feb/46
6	2 outlines—Merlin & Miss Espionage
		[never scripted; unpubl]
12	Young Allies	pygmies & Quex crown
		"The Crown of Quetzacoatl" YA 20, Oct/46
6	Chin Chop	fake diamonds
		[unpubl]
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	the zombie master
		"CMJ and the Zombie Master" Master 75, Dec/46
10	Manhunter	Houdini under water
		[untitled] Police 53, Apr/46
12	Ibis	jaguar men
		"Menace of the Jaguar Men" Ibis 3, Win/45
6	Sybil	mistaken for rich gal—fortune hunter
6	Sybil	lady wrestler
10	Manhunter	the falcons of death
		"The Vengeance" Police 56, July/46
12	Ibis	Sir Hector's shield
		Ibis 4, Spr/46
8	Tommy Tomahawk	the Tasmanian plot
		[untitled] Contact 10, Jan/46

Sal Trapani's Ghosts: Charles Nicholas

Sal Trapani's inks on Mod Wheels for Gold Key make all the stories involved look pretty much alike—at first glance. Jack Sparling's pencils on the first issue are pretty hard to hide, though. After that, Jack Abel's angular faces show through, even without the later ruler-straight inking he gives his own pencils when Trapani leaves.

Amid the Abel stories, issue 5's first story ("The Midas Run," February 1972) is pencilled by an artist who at that point was working solely for Charlton—officially. Charles Nicholas had worked for a number of companies before settling down at Charlton in the mid-Fifties. He'd end up at DC in the later Seventies and early Eighties.

The Gold Key editors who, as Len Wein told Mark Evanier, didn't realize they were getting Jack Abel's work when they hired Sal Trapani, doubtless had no idea they were getting work from Nicholas as well.

Charles Nicholas' art is so undistinctive as to be distinctive. His stock poses are geometrically set within the panels. In the same issue's second story, Abel has a couple of faces set solidly in the foreground, at panel's edge and facing directly across the reader's line of sight; that's one that Nicholas uses all the time, as in the sixth panel here. But Abel doesn't use Nicholas' trademark pose, seen here in the second panel. The character faces directly toward the reader as if set there with surveying equipment. Abel's poses are more dynamic. (And he's much better at car-and-road perspective, a useful skill on a comic book about automobiles.) This story would be even more typically the work of Nicholas only if in panel 5 Wheels faced front as solidly as Houston does in panel 2; the faces at a precise ninety-degree angle would be a quintessential Charles Nicholas layout.

Abel and Nicholas aren't the only ghosts Sal Trapani used at Gold Key. More to come...

Woolfolk Records 1945/07

Here's my transcription of William Woolfolk's July 1945 sales records of comic book scripts. Bold indicates my additions of publication data. The original notebook was scanned by Marc Svensson through the courtesy of Donna Woolfolk.

Most of the sales this month are divided between Fawcett and Quality, and one story is sold to Hillman. And then one script, the Mad Hatter, has no payment marked received in the notebook because Woolfolk published that comic book himself (as an owner of OW Publications). This first story of the character appeared in the second issue because the printer fouled up badly; the first issue was planned for 52 pages but came out at 36.

UPDATE: I found this Manhunter story in Woolfolk's style after posting; the next one he writes, in August 1945, is published in Police 53.

July 1945 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

13 pg	Doll Man	Feature
10	Manhunter	[untitled] Police 52, Mar/46
13	Doll Man	crime city
		"The City of Crime" Feature 100, July/46
10	Ibis	return of Titans
		"The Revolt of the Titans" Ibis 6, Spr/48
8	Captain Marvel	greatest actor
		"CM Meets the World's Greatest Actor" Marvel Family 6, Nov/46
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	whistle wouldn't stop
		"The Whistle That Wouldn't Stop" Master 72, Sep/46
15	Mad Hatter	man who becomes gorilla
		[untitled] MH 2, Sep-Oct/46
8	Captain Midnight	centenarian sky ride
		"Ten Tickets to Terror" Capt Mid 55, Sep/47
8	Sally O'Neil	National
10	Sky Wolf	Orien & one winged bird
		"The Bird with One Wing" Airboy vol. 2 no. 11, Dec/45
6	The Whistler	namesake murders
		"Another Namesake Murder" National 54, June/46
6	Swing Sisson	Feature

Sal Trapani's Ghosts: Bill Molno

Sal Trapani used a lot of ghost pencillers in the Sixties. A number of Charlton artists were published at DC, Gold Key, and Warren, in many cases I imagine without the publishers ever knowing. Dick Giordano's and Steve Ditko's first stories at DC were ghost pencils for Trapani. Giordano's was the Flash-Doom Patrol team-up in The Brave and the Bold 65. Ditko considers his first work for DC to be the The Creeper (although he had two Strange Adventures stories, in numbers 188 and 189, published earlier) because he was working for Trapani on the latter. At ACG, on the other hand, Ditko was credited for the work he did with Trapani.

Giordano and Ditko's work appeared at Dell, I believe, only when inked by Trapani, so I suspect it was ghost work as far as the publisher was concerned. Super Heroes was pencilled by Bill Fraccio. Although Fraccio worked anonymously for Dell with Tony Tallarico's inking on Frankenstein, Dracula, and Werewolf, Super Heroes is signed by Trapani, making Fraccio a ghost.

At Warren, in Creepy 16 (August 1967), the credit line to the story "There Was an Old Lady" says "Art by Sal Trapani"; he signs the splash as well. The Grand Comics Database indexers suspect a ghost penciller here, and they're correct. The penciller is Charlton mainstay Bill Molno.

For comparison, here's a page from "Nightmare" in Charlton's Haunted 16 (June 1974). Here Molno is inked by Wayne Howard, with both credited. The face at the lower left of each page is the obvious point of similarity, but even the jagged panel corners used by no one else in that issue of Creepy suggest the same artist.

Trapani had work in later issues of Creepy, getting the sole credit in the GCD; I haven't seen those stories.

Certainly Sal Trapani inked a lot of art directly for the publishers, and if credit was given at all, the pencillers were credited. At some points he even did his own pencilling, as far as I can tell. But there were at least three Charlton artists with some work at Gold Key that I don't imagine the editors knew they were getting; I'll get to them in later posts.

Woolfolk Records 1945/05 and /06

William Woolfolk's scripts went to Fawcett and Quality in these two months, plus one to MLJ.

These Kid Eternity stories are the next ones published at these lengths—the ones in Hit were 15 pages—so even if undescribed here, have to be from issue 2 of the Kid's own title. UPDATE: Likewise the Manhunter story has to fit in Police 51; the stories before and after it in the run are other Woolfolk scripts (per these records) or Joe Millard scripts, and #51's is in Woolfolk's style. Later update: darkmark found the Captain Midnight "Tunnel of Terror" story.

The Grand Comics Database attribution to Woolfolk on "Uncle Marvel's Wedding" originated some years ago with my seeing his writing style on the DC reprint of the story. The same goes for "Jives Becomes a Jockey," the Mary Marvel story on the March 1945 list.

May 1945 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

7 pg	Captain Marvel Jr.	Greybeard dies
		"The Death of Graybeard" CMJ 39, June/46
14	Kid Eternity	"The Man Who Controlled the Past" KE 2, Sum/46
11	Kid Eternity	"Pogo" KE 2, Sum/46
8	Mary Marvel	Sindbad the sailor
		"MM Meets Sinbad the Sailor" Wow 47, Sept/46
8	Captain Midnight	tunnel of terror
		"Tunnel of Terror" Capt Mid 39, Apr/46
7	Destroyer 171	National
13	Doll Man	Feature
9	Captain Marvel	Aunt Minerva
		"Uncle Marvel's Wedding" CM Advs 59, Apr/26/46
7	Captain Marvel	Milady the pigeon
		"CM Meets Milady" CM Advs 59, Apr/26/46
13	Doll Man	Feature
10	Manhunter	"Crime Declares an Armistice" Police 51, Feb/46

Update: I couldn't read the second word here, but darkmark's comment led me to the story. I've added it below after originally posting it as "vanishing b___," Captain Midnight, no issue known. A number of stories featuring Sergeant Twilight (Midnight's assistant Ichabod Mudd) were given the Captain Midnight logo.

June 1945

9	Black Hood	Sleepytime Sam
		"The Case of the Sleeping Bandit" Black Hood 17, Win/46
7	Sergeant Twilight	vanishing fossil
8	Captain Midnight	"The Vanishing Fossil" Capt Mid 40, May/46
7	Captain Marvel	dinosaur
		"CM and the Marvelous Dinosaur" Marvel Family 3, July/46
6	Swing Sisson	Feature

Grass Green Hidden in Plain Sight

Richard "Grass" Green was a Big Name Fan in the beginnings of super-hero fandom in the 1960s. He was one of the major fanzine writer-artists; his signature feature was "Xal-Kor, the Human Cat." But he also did some pro work: in the 70s, for the undergrounds, but in the 60s, some work for Charlton. There he did humorous strips such as "Bestest League of America" in Go-Go and "The Shape" in the first issue of Charlton Premiere (September 1967). I believe the inker "Mac" would be Frank McLaughlin, and the "Friends" would be creator, designer, and plotter Roy Thomas (who had, by the way, originated the "Bestest League" in the fanzine Alter Ego).

Grass Green also ghosted the script and pencils on "Sinistro, Boy Fiend," in Charlton Premiere 3 (January 1968). The splash page credit read: "Art by Henry Scarpelli," and if I haven't missed it this time, he's the only creator who's been connected with the issue since.

I've only seen Scarpelli's pencils on teen features where he was emulating Stan Goldberg's style, but I can't see why he'd try to imitate Green's style here. The writing as well as the penciling style are Green's. Notice, for one thing, the reference to "It's a bird, it's a plane" in both features.

Why Green didn't get credit here is another mystery lost to time.

Woolfolk Records 1945/04

Continuing my transcription of William Woolfolk's own records of Golden Age scripts written and sold; with my additions, in bold, of publication data.

Scripts sold this month to Fawcett, Quality, and Aviation Press.

The Kid Eternity story in Hit 41, which by the style Woolfolk did write, could be one of the KE stories listed this month—so I've used the cover as an illustration.

Captain Marvel Adventures, published every three weeks at this point, is dated month/date/year.

(I've updated the Ibis, Don Winslow, and Golden Arrow publication data, which I hadn't found for the original post, from darkmark's comments. The Captain Midnight story I had down incorrectly as a Captain Marvel about Casey Jones; I misread Woolfolk's handwriting on "James" but just zoned on his clearly-written "Midnight." darkmark's comment on my Woolfolk Update 2 correctly posited "Swamp of Death" as this story, although he hadn't the issue itself at the time; he since got it and uploaded at the Digital Comic Museum.) I haven't seen Golden Arrow 3 to confirm if my reading of the description fits; "barker" is the best I could get out of the handwriting here:

April 1945 William Woolfolk Comic Book Scripts

5 pg	Ibis	the master of discord
		"Music Madness" Ibis 3, Win/45
7	Captain Midnight	Casey James in swamp
		"Swamp of Death" Capt Midnight 39, Apr/46
7	Destroyer 171	National
5	Golden Arrow	elephant barker [?]
		"Two Men on an Elephant" GA 3, Win/45
8	Captain Marvel	gorgon's head
		"The Gorgon's Curse" CM Advs 55, Mar/1/46
13	Doll Man	Feature
7	Radar	Int. Red Cross plot
		"The Red Cross Mystery" Master 72, Sept/46
15	Kid Eternity	Hit
8	Tommy Tomahawk	Contact
6	Black Venus	Contact
6	Swing Sisson	Feature
9	Captain Marvel	WHIZ goes television
		"Station WHIZ Goes Television" CM Advs 54, Feb/15/46
9	PT Boat	Modern
8	Golden Eagle	Contact
9	Don Winslow	dynamite ship
		"The Good Ship SS Courageous" DW 49, Sept/47
15	Kid Eternity	Hit

Jack Kirby Hidden in Plain Sight

DC published a Jack Kirby piece and credited it solely to the inker. As far as I can tell, that miscredit has stood for over 35 years.

"Modern Technology and the 'Get-Away Car'" was a two-pager published in the house fanzine Amazing World of DC Comics 10 (January 1976). The contents page credited it to John Costanza. As of this post, the Grand Comics Database indexers credit the pencils and inks to Costanza and give him a tentative writer's credit. Perhaps, the GCD entry says, it was intended for Plop.

Costanza certainly inked it. But Kirby wrote and penciled it. Obviously a gangster piece was meant for In the Days of the Mob, the 1971 black-and-white magazine DC put out under the imprint Hampshire Distributors. I imagine Kirby intended it for #1, but the higher-ups shelved it for two pages of Sergio Aragonés cartoons.

Of course Kirby did humor—From Here to Insanity and Not Brand Echh, for example. But John Costanza never tried to draw in Kirby's style anywhere else. I think more Kirby shows through here than under Tom Sutton's finishes in some issues of NBE.

I would have thought the writing shouts Kirby. To repeat one of the first things I said in my blog: writers have individual styles. If they didn't, who would have cared that Stan Lee scripted over Jack Kirby's plots in the Sixties but Kirby scripted for himself in the Seventies? Was I wrong? If Kirby had hired John Costanza as a front and credited him with the scripts on the Fourth World books, would nobody have carped about the emphatically non-Lee captions and dialogue?

I see, for instance, the typical Kirby emphasis in unusual parts of the sentence, and the idiosyncratic use of quotation marks:

At the RAPID rate of recent advances in things mechanical, a simple adjustment by an amoral, money-hungry mechanic could add a "CAPTURE-PROOF" appendage to the standard "GANG WAGON"!

Since nobody else seems to have caught it in over a third of a century*, I guess I can't fault the Amazing World editors for not divining the correct credits in an inventory piece (I'll assume that the Costanza inks were applied a few years prior to 1975). Certainly DC wouldn't be petty enough to treat Jack Kirby as a non-person soon after he left the company. No more than they'd erase the Siegel and Shuster credits from Superman reprints...

At any rate, I repeat what I said in my Teen Titans post—the credits may not tell the whole story.

*Actually, it was caught soon after it was published—see the comments.

Woolfolk Records 1945/03

I'm transcribing William Woolfolk's comic book scriptwriting records from the Forties. For January and February 1945, I included scans of the original pages, but from here on I'll stick to presenting just the information relevant to tracking his stories' publication: page count, strip title, and description, if any. Bold indicates my additions of whatever publication data I could track down.

Woolfolk divided scripts between Fawcett and Quality this month, apart from one for Holyoke.

Note that the Mary Marvel story sat on the shelf for four years.

Captain Marvel Adventures is published every three weeks at this point, so includes a day of the month in its date: here, May 10.

Anyone know the issue where the "boon companions" Captain Marvel story appeared? Update: darkmark, as you'll see in the comments, knew the Don Winslow story's issue, info that I didn't know when I posted.

March 1945 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

6 pg	Sky Scouts	Captain Aero
8	Don Winslow	Hollywood goes to the Pacific
		"Hollywood Bound" DW 44, Apr/47
6	Ibis	Karlan, last of sorcerers
		"Karlan, the Last of the Sorcerers" Ibis 3, Win/45
13	Doll Man	Feature
8	Mary Marvel	Jives becomes a jockey
		"Jives Becomes a Jockey" Marvel Family 33, Mar/49
12	Captain Midnight	flying tomb
		"The Flying Tomb" Capt Mid 54, Aug/47
12	Kid Eternity	"Terror from the Tomb" KE 1, Spr/46
8	Captain Marvel Jr.	Xmas story
		"CMJ and Freddy Freeman's Xmas" CMJ 46, Feb/47
8	Captain Midnight	flame plane
		"The Flame Planes" Capt Mid 37, Feb/46
8	Martha	"The Riddle of the Missing Ears" Doll Man 10, Fall/46
6	Swing Sisson	Feature
7	Captain Marvel	life insurance
		"CM's Life Insurance" CM Advs 60, May/10/46
7	Captain Marvel	boon companions
		Whiz or CM Advs
15	Kid Eternity	Hit

Bob Haney's Secret Takeover of Teen Titans

When Dick Giordano left as a DC editor in the early Seventies, Teen Titans was handed over to Murray Boltinoff. TT 32 (March-April 1971) has Boltinoff's name in the indicia, but the cover and story inventory numbers carry Giordano's G prefix. The story is credited to Steve Skeates, writer of the previous four issues, and Nick Cardy, artist. In the letters column, Boltinoff mentions that Bob Haney will take over the writing with the next issue. Actually, he takes it over, uncredited, partway through this issue. In issue 35's letters column, Haney says so: "literally in the middle of an issue (#32)."

Mal, the Titan in training, is flung into the past when an experiment of the Titans' mentor, Mr. Jupiter, goes awry. Kid Flash uses a cosmic treadmill to rescue him. But, having inadvertently let a caveman die and so changing prehistory, they return to an alternate, medieval-style 1971.

The telling sign of Haney's taking over the script is the florid verse that "tells it like it is" atop page 16. There are more subtle things: the interjection "hunh," used twice in the first half, I've seen Skeates use all the time, but Haney never; whereas "A split instant later'" on the last page, is used elsewhere by Haney, but not Skeates.

The less quantifiable but very obvious difference is the speech patterns. Haney returns the Titans to his earlier issues' patented "hep," "with-it" dialogue. His dialogue makes much of Mal's being black. In fact, I think Haney takes over the scripting with page 15, the point at which Mal starts mentioning the ghetto, which continues in the next issue.  The younger Skeates stays away from the obvious character tags:

So Bob Haney did roughly the final third of this story. Even the credits in a particular issue may not always tell the whole story.

Woolfolk Records 1945/02

Again, this is my transcription from William Woolfolk's handwritten notebook recording comic book scripts as he finished them. I didn't copy down payment info. Bold indicates my additions of publication data.

Woolfolk sold scripts to Continental, Holyoke, Fawcett, and Quality in February 1945.

This month's Kid Eternity stories were the first ones Woolfolk wrote at those lengths and I match them with the first published at those lengths. I think it's safe to figure, even without descriptions, that these were the scripts commissioned for the first issue of Kid Eternity's own title. (The writing style confirms the first-issue stories as by Woolfolk.)

The Grand Comics Database indexers spell Sherry Flippe as Filpe and Fuppe in the writeups on different issues. Admittedly the logo in cursive could be a bit hard to decipher, but those who didn't get the pun on the drink "sherry flip" are obviously not cross-referencing with the ones who did.

Ibis's title was suspended for a couple of years, so the 10-page script sat on the shelves at Fawcett until 1948.

Any ideas on where the whale sub Captain Midnight story appeared? Update: I found the Mary Marvel story when Wow 41 appeared on the Digital Comic Museum site; the script was cut by a page. And darkmark in his comment supplied the Don Winslow story's publication data.

February 1945 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

10 pg	Ibis	beasts of outer darkness
		"Beasts of Darkness" Ibis 6, Spr/48
7	Captain Midnight	blimp patrol
		"The Blimp Patrol" Capt Midnight 37, Feb/46
6	Satan	Suspense
6	Sherry Flippe	Suspense
11	Kid Eternity	"The Land of the Amazons" Kid Eternity 1, Spr/46
4	fiction idea
3	syndicated pages
8	Mary Marvel	juvenile delinquent double
7		"Trouble on the Double" Wow 41, Feb/46
6	Mighty Mite	Capt Aero
6	Lightfingers Louie	Power 2, July/45
6	The Reckoner	Cat-Man
9	Don Winslow	trail of the S-29
		"On the Trail of the S-29" DW 34, May/46
12	fiction story
9	Capt Midnight	whale sub
		Capt Mid
14	Kid Eternity	"The Black Diamond of Doom" KE 1, Spr/46
5	Ibis	dead man's revenge
		"Dead Man's Revenge" Whiz 70, Jan/46
6	Phantom Eagle	phantom Spad
		"The Phantom Spad" Wow 44, June/46
6	Red Cross	Capt Aero
9	PT Boat	Modern
12	Radar	evil Shangri-La
		"Evil Shangrila" Master 73, Oct/46

Scan © Marc Svensson

From John Schoenherr Comes...Nebulos!

I remember seeing a website awhile ago that pasted together old Ditko pages to show which poses Dan Adkins had swiped in his Doctor Strange stories, but the references I've found on other sites have the links broken, with the images no longer available. Johnny Craig and Virgil Finlay are among the other sources people have found for panels in these stories.

At any rate, this paperback cover by John Schoenherr came out in 1962. I remember it was still on the stands in a new printing in 1967, when Strange Tales 161 (the first appearance of Nebulos) and 162 (this cover appearance) came out.

Woolfolk Records 1945/01

William Woolfolk sold scripts to Continental, Holyoke, Rural, Fawcett, MLJ, and Quality this month. He was getting $5-$7 a page, and made $1064 (over $12,000 if adjusted for 2011) on comic book scripts in January 1945.

I'll leave out the payment info in the transcriptions. Bold indicates my publication data added; with few descriptions at this point, some can be no more specific than comic book series title.

Graybeard appeared in three consecutive issues of Captain Marvel Jr: 37-39. From the writing style on the stories themselves, I'd credit all three to Woolfolk. I'm pretty sure that the story labelled simply "The Gray Beard" here is the second one of the three, since the third is on the May page and there are no Graybeard stories described between (and there are no undescribed CMJ stories this year).

Some stories' issue numbers I deduced from Howard Keltner's definitive Golden Age Comic Books Index. Chin Chop appeared in Mask 2 and Power 3, and Dr. Mephisto appeared in Power 3 and 4; Woolfolk had submitted his first stories of each in December. UPDATE: I misread "Palui" as "Palvi"; seeing the comic itself eventually showed me my mistake and let me specify the Captain Midnight story's publication..

Can anyone pinpoint the publication of the Don Winslow story by its two-word descriptions?

The scan of the original notebook page is © Marc Svensson.

January 1945 comic book scripts by William Woolfolk

6 pg	Sentence of Death	"Sentence of Death" Suspense 9, Aug/45
8	Miss Espionage	Power
8	Don Winslow	overland trek
		Don Winslow
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	Antbear returns
		"The Return of the Antbear" Capt Marvel Jr 35, Jan/46
6	Murder at the Rodeo	"Murder at the Rodeo" Suspense 10, Win/45
6	Chin Chop	Power 3, Aug/45
8	Dr. Mephisto	Power 4, Sept/45
8	Merlin, the Boy Magician	Mask 3, Aug/45
10	Black Hood	Pep or Black Hood
7	Destroyer 171	National
12	Black Raider	Power
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	Gray Beard
		"The Stolen Half Century" CMJ 38, May/46
8	Captain Midnight	Palui Island
		"The Phantom Army of Palui" Capt Midnight 41, Jun/46
8	Captain Aero	Capt Aero
6	The Looney Crimes	[not published in Suspense before cancellation]
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	Zugqumps
		"The Amazing Zugqumps" CMJ 42, Sep/46
9	PT Boat	Modern
12	The Green Feather	[not published in Suspense]
4	fiction story for Wiggles	Taffy
6	Phantom Eagle	boxing champ
		"PE Catapults His Punch" Wow 42, Apr/46