Woolfolk Records 1947/04

These posts present my transcriptions of William Woolfolk's Golden Age comic book script-writing and -selling records from his handwritten notebook. Donna Woolfolk allowed the pages to be scanned by Marc Svensson. Boldface shows my addition of publication data not in the records.

Stories sold this month to Timely, Quality, Fawcett, EC, and Orbit.

I couldn't tell which Babs story went in which issue of Ozzie & Babs. NON-UPDATE: The Babs stories in both #1 and 2 concern department stores!

April 1947 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

7 pg	Human Torch	girl runs a trucking line
		"The Hyena Strikes" HT 30, May/48
11	Doll Man	vs. Polka Dot
		"Polka Dot on the Spot" Feature 117, Dec/47
8	Babs	dep't store
		Ozzie & Babs 1, Dec/47 or 2, Mar/48
11	Doll Man	in a sideshow
		"Mr. Skeleton" Feature 118, Jan/48
5	Hector the Inspector	world's dumbest crook
		"HTI Meets the World's Dumbest Crook" Animal Fables 7, Nov-Dec/47
8	Freddy Firefly	Atomic Bug
		"FF versus Atomic Bug" AF 7, Nov-Dec/47
11	Babs	dress contest
		O&B 1, Dec/47 or 2, Mar/48
11	Doll Man	boy who knew all the answers
		"The Boy Who Knew All the Answers" DM 15, Win/47
12	Captain America	versus the Matador
		"Meet the Matador" CA 65, Jan/48
6	Ibis	the Ibistick fails
		"The Ibistick Fails" Whiz 92, Dec/47
7	Captain Marvel	world's worst actor
		"The World's Worst Actor" CM Advs 79, Dec/47
11	Doll Man	transcontinental railroad
		"The Undertaker" DM 15, Win/47
10	Blonde Phantom	sultan of bankrupt country
		"The Sultan Strikes" BP 16, Win/47-48
6	Juvenile Delinquent	Jay Jostyn
		"Jay Jostyn: Radio's Mr. District Attorney" Wanted 9, Sept-Oct/47
7	Captain Marvel	Minerva's true love
		"Minerva's True Love" CM Advs 79, Dec/47
8	Captain Marvel Jr.	wolf of Wall St.
		"The Wolf of Wall Street" CMJ 55, Nov/47
12	Doll Man	man in iron mask
		"The Man in the Iron Mask" DM 15, Win/47
8	Captain Marvel Jr.	city run by machines
		"The City of Machines" Master 86, Dec/47

"Till Death Do Us Part" 1950s Swipes

Marvel reprinted "Till Death Do Us Part" (Journey into Mystery 15, Apr/54), from its Atlas days, in Vault of Evil 4, Aug/73. Artist Vic Carrabotta signed the splash page. A number of years later, when Eclipse reprinted some stories from Standard in Seduction of the Innocent, I felt I recognized a few panels and eventually matched them up with "Till Death." I found another familiar panel in an EC reprint. Carrabotta's panels come first in each pair below:

On the right: "Grip on Life" art by Alex Toth from The Unseen 13, Nov/53.

On the right: "Your Grave Is Ready" art by Ross Andru from The Unseen 9, Mar/53.

On the bottom: "Atom Bomb!" art by Wally Wood, Two-Fisted Tales 33, May-June/53.

(Toth and Andru were inked here by, respectively, Mike Peppe and Mike Esposito, but the pencillers' layouts were what Carrabotta took.) I wonder how many swipes I've missed in this and other Carrabotta stories, when I happened to chance upon just these three source panels.

By the way: "Till Death Do Us Part" opens with a four-panel tier before the splash panel, and at one point someone says "Ow-w-w!" The unsigned writer is Hank Chapman.

Woolfolk Records 1947/03

March 1947's stories sold to Timely, Fawcett, and Quality; and, I'm pretty sure, Orbit—next month, Woolfolk records a better-described crime story that I could narrow down to a specific issue of Wanted, paid at the same rate as this one.

The Mary Marvel story was cut by a page. UPDATE: I posted it as appearing in MARVEL FAMILY 19 until corrected.

March 1947 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

12 pg	Sub-Mariner	ships of all eras
		"Viking's Vengeance" S-M 24, Win/48
12	Captain Marvel	Mr. Atom
		"CM Meets Mr. Atom" CM Advs 78, Nov/47
11	Doll Man	horse race & boy
		"The Sphinx" Feature 115, Oct/47
8	True Detective Mystery	Wanted
9	Captain Marvel Jr.	man who lived forever
		"The Man Who Lived Forever" CMJ 54, Oct/47
12	Human Torch	thief of Bagdad
		"Terror from Baghdad" Mar Mys 84, Oct/47
8	Blonde Phantom	Frankenstein's castle
		"Horror at Haunted Castle" BP 14, Sum/47
11	Doll Man	crime doctor
		"Elbows" Feature 116, Nov/47
11	Captain Marvel Jr.	phantom canoe
		"The Phantom Canoe" CMJ 56, Dec/47
7	Mary Marvel	enchanted forest
6		"MM in the Enchanted Forest" MM 19, Dec/47
9	Marvel Family	curse on Marvels
		"The Marvel Family Curse" MF 17, Nov/47
9	Ibis	man who escaped from Hell
		"Ibis and the Man who Escaped" Whiz 91, Nov/47

Speed Carter, Spaceman Writer

Hank Chapman's getting writing credits at Timely/Atlas in the Fifties puts him ahead of all the other writers except Stan Lee, but the crediting was inconsistent. Spaceman shows this: Chapman's name appears on just two stories, the second and third ones in issue 3, but he scripted the entire series.

The splash page layouts that I mentioned in my post on the Human Torch stories written by Chapman appear among these stories: a splash panel taking almost the entire page, with one story panel; and a tier of story panels before the splash.

The contemporary-sounding "Holy smokes" in Chapman's Torch and mystery stories doesn't appear here; the futuristic "Great galaxy" and "Holy atoms" substitute. "Ow-w-w," with some variations of length and hyphenation, appears throughout.

The Famous Explorers of Space back-ups take place in Speed Carter's past. The Eadeh and Savage art guesses I pass along from the GCD.

Speed Carter, Spaceman—written by Hank Chapman

Sept/53	#1	Speed Carter, Spaceman, and the Pirate Planet	a: Joe Maneely
		Slaughter on a Star	a: Maneely
		The Robots' Revenge	a: Maneely
Nov/53	#2	[The Birdmen of Uranus]	a: Maneely
		The Half-Horrors of Hyades	a: Maneely
		Who Stole the Sun	a: Maneely
Jan/54	#3	[Grave-Robbers from Outer Space]	a: Maneely
		[The Core People]	a: Maneely
		[The Bems]	a: Maneely
Mar/54	#4	[The Positpeople and the Neganatives]	p: Mike Sekowsky  i: Jack Abel
		[The Jet-Men]	p: Sekowsky  i: Abel
		[The Mosquito Men]	p: Sekowsky  i: Abel
May/54	#5	Die, Spaceman, Die!	a: George Tuska
		[Beastmen of Space]	a: Tuska
		A Slaughter in Space	a: Tuska
July/54	#6	The Thing in Outer Space	a: Bob Forgione
		The Kiss of Death	a: Forgione
		[Spaceworld of the Scorpeople]	a: Forgione

Famous Explorers of Space in Spaceman—written by Chapman

Sept/53	#1	Venus: Earth's Twin Sister	a: John Romita
Nov/53	#2	Mercury: The Red-Hot Planet	p: Bill Benulis  i: Abel
Jan/54	#3	Mars: The Dying Planet	a: Al Eadeh?
Mar/54	#4	Jupiter: The Giant Planet	a: Maneely
May/54	#5	Ceres: The Biggest Little World in the Asteroid Belt	a: Bill Savage?
July/54	#6	How Saturn Got Its Fourth Ring	a: Benulis

Woolfolk Records 1947/02

This is the final month of the three where William Woolfolk left his scripts undescribed in his notebook. Some stories I've narrowed down to the likely title by page number; at this point the Blackhawk stories in Modern were 15 and then 13 pages, so this month's 12 and 14 pagers wouldn't fit there. "The Robe of Lucifer" is the only 12-page Doll Man from this period not already in Woolfolk's records (and it is in his style).

This 7-page Ibis has to be Part Two to last month's 6-page Part One in Whiz 88, featuring the Cat. The Ibis stories by Woolfolk in Whiz Comics' 80s and 90s are described in earlier and later months in these records; 85's is the sole story by someone else, as I interpret the styles. 88-90 have to fit in December-February's lists of scripts.

Stories sold to Timely, Quality, EC, and Fawcett this month.

February 1947 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

12 pg	Doll Man	"The Robe of Lucifer" DM 14, Autumn/47
12	Sub-Mariner	Marvel Mystery or S-M
11	Doll Man	Feature or DM
4	Hector the Inspector	[untitled] Animal Fables 6, Sep-Oct/47
12	Human Torch	Marvel Mystery or HT
12	Blackhawk	BH
8	Captain Marvel	Whiz or CM Advs or Marvel Family
8	Freddy Firefly	[untitled] AF 6, Sep-Oct/47
14	Blackhawk	BH
7	Ibis	"Death of the Cat" Whiz 89, Sept/47
13	Kid Eternity	Hit or KE

Dark Shadows Writers: Full Update

Updating my earlier post, here's a writers' index of the entire run of Gold Key's Dark Shadows; thanks go to darkmark for my seeing the issues filling in the first half of the list. The artist was Joe Certa.



D. J. Arneson had an uninterrupted 17-issue tenure on the feature (and then one more issue). This article by Jeff Thompson quotes editor Wallace Green on  how, after finishing the first issue's script, Arneson had to hustle with six more pages—they went with an epilogue instead of a second story—when it was decided to publish the issue with no ads.

Arneson is probably best known for graphic novels (as they had yet to be labeled in the Sixties) like The Great Society Comic Book, bylined along with artist Tony Tallarico. With Bill Fraccio's and Tallarico's art at Dell, he wrote the monster superheroes, Frankenstein, Dracula, and Werewolf; I misattributed those books' uncredited scripting some time ago to Don Segall.

To touch very briefly upon writers' styles here, when the scream "Augh" appears for the first time in the series in issue 18, I know that John Warner has come aboard; he's the only one of these four early-70s Gold Key writers to use that particular exclamation (although not in his every issue).

The issue numbers in boldface indicate the ones new to this update.

Dark Shadows Writers

Mar/69	#1	The Vampire's Prey	D. J. Arneson
Aug/69	#2	The Fires of Darkness	Arneson
Nov/69	#3	Return for Revenge	Arneson
Feb/70	#4	The Man Who Could Not Die	Arneson
May/70	#5	The Curse of Collins Isle	Arneson
Aug/70	#6	Awake to Evil	Arneson
Nov/70	#7	Wings of Fear	Arneson
Feb/71	#8	The Vampire Trap	Arneson
May/71	#9	Creatures in Torment	Arneson
Aug/71	#10	Souls in Bondage	Arneson
Nov/71	#11	The Thirteenth Star	Arneson
Feb/72	#12	The Glove	Arneson
Apr/72	#13	Hellfire	Arneson
Jun/72	#14	The Mystic Painting	Arneson
Aug/72	#15	The Night Children	Arneson
Oct/72	#16	The Scarab	Arneson
Dec/72	#17	The Bride of Barnabas Collins	Arneson
Feb/73	#18	Guest in the House	John David Warner
Apr/73	#19	Island of Eternal Life	Arneson
Jun/73	#20	Quentin the Vampire	Warner
Aug/73	#21	The Crimson Carnival	Gerry Boudreau
Oct/73	#22	Seed of Evil	Arnold Drake
Dec/73	#23	The Cult of the Dasni	Warner
Feb/74	#24	On Borrowed Blood	Drake
Apr/74	#25	The Immortal	Warner
Jun/74	#26	The Witch Dolls	Drake
Aug/74	#27	My Blood or Yours	Drake
Oct/74	#28	The Visitor	Warner
Dec74	#29	Stolen Centuries	Warner
Feb/75	#30	The Weekend Witch Hunters	Drake
May/75	#31	The Doom of Helgi Kolnisson	Warner
Jun/75	#32	The Secret of the Lighthouse	Warner
Aug/75	#33	King of the Wolves	Drake
Nov/75	#34	Collinwood Possessed	Warner
Feb/76	#35	The Missing Manuscript	Warner

Woolfolk Records 1947/01

This is the second of three successive months where William Woolfolk went back to leaving the scripts undescribed in his records notebook. All boldface, as usual, shows my guesses at publication.

As I said on the December 1946 post, the 13-page Blackhawk stories this month and last may have been written in the opposite order, but the Modern 63 and 64 stories are in Woolfolk's style and their writing would have to fit in December-January.

Woolfolk wrote the 14-page story in Kid Eternity 7 but not 6 or 8, by the style, and the next 14-pager he wrote, in July 1947, is described—it's in number 9.

This 6-page Ibis story's direct sequel is next month's 7-pager, both involving the villain the Cat.

The Miss America and Sub-Mariner stories of these lengths in Blonde Phantom 13 read like Woolfolk's style to me and the ones in 14 don't. Although a Spring cover date, on sale in Winter, meant almost no turnaround time for art and production, I feel these are the stories. If the on-sale date was much earlier than the very end of Winter quarter (late March) then, my seeing his style or no, this month's scripts couldn't have gotten into that issue. Blonde Phantom dropped from 52 pages to 36 with issue 13; I presume the editors had to hustle to fill a space with non-BP material.

Scripts sold to Timely, EC, Quality, and Fawcett this month.

January 1947 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

5 pg	Miss America	"Burning Witness" Blonde Phantom 13, Spr/47   ?
4	Sub-Mariner	"Cruise of Death" BP 13, Spr/47   ?
2	Fable	Animal Fables
13	Blackhawk	"Thunder Bird" Modern 65, Sep/47
11	Doll Man	Feature or DM
9	Captain Marvel Jr.	Master or CMJ
14	Kid Eternity	"Yo-Ho-Ho and a Bottle of Rum..." KE 7, Autumn/47
14	Doll Man	DM 13, Sum/47 or 14, Autumn/47
9	Blonde Phantom	Marvel Mystery or BP if cut by at least 1 page; otherwise unpublished
6	Ibis	"The Man with Nine Lives" Whiz 88, Aug/47
7	Blonde Phantom	Mar Mys or BP
8	Captain Marvel Jr.	Master or CMJ
7	Sergeant Twilight	Captain Midnight
12	Kid Eternity	KE

A Mandrake Writer

Dick Wood became known as a scripter on the King Features heroes in comic books when Phantom stories for Charlton credited him.  I imagine his first scripts for Charlton were passed along out of inventory when King's own short-lived comic book line ended operations.

Wood wrote King Comics' early Mandrake stories.

The singular expressions in these panels from the two stories in Mandrake 2—"Suffering Hannah" and "Great suffering Caesar" more so than "Great grief," which you can find from a number of other writers—are the sort I mentioned in my post on Dick Wood's Plastic Man stories at Quality in the Fifties. They don't show up in the first issue, but its "Y-yipes" and "Thunderation," among other things, are interjections Wood uses elsewhere.

Out of my handful of Mandrake issues, I come to writers I can't put names to in issues 4 and 6. (Jerry Siegel, by the way, told the Who’s Who that he wrote one Mandrake.) I would say that Wood wrote the Mandrake back-up in Flash Gordon 1. The inking credits here are Alberto Becattini's from the GCD; I hadn't recognized LeBlanc by myself.

some Dick Wood Mandrake stories

Sept/66	#1	Menace of the City Jungle	p: Don Heck  i: Andre LeBlanc
		The Flying Phantom	p: Werner Roth  i: LeBlanc
Nov/66	#2	Specter from Space	a: LeBlanc
		The Phantom Casino	a: LeBlanc

a Dick Wood Mandrake in Flash Gordon

Sept/66

#1

Midnight with Mandrake

p: Heck  i: LeBlanc

Woolfolk Records 1946/12

For December 1946 through February 1947 in his notebook, William Woolfolk went back to leaving his scripts undescribed.

Here are stories that sold to Fawcett, Quality, and Timely; and stories that had to have been directly commissioned from EC (Land of the Lost being an established title), after it had been buying Woolfolk's inventory of stories meant for his own company, OW.

The 13-page Blackhawk stories this month and next may have been written in the opposite order, but the Modern 63 and 64 stories are in Woolfolk's style and would have to fit here.

This is the only Ibis slot in Whiz where a story will fit amid the described ones written in earlier and later months; January and February's, at 6 and 7 pages, will form a two-parter.

December 1946 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

11 pg	Doll Man	Feature or DM
2	Aesop Fable	Animal Fables
8	Land of the Lost	Land of the Lost 8, Nov-Dec/47 or 9, Spr/48
7	Blonde Phantom	Marvel Mystery or BP
11	Doll Man	Feature or DM
8	Freddy Firefly	"Firefly Battles the Red Ants" AF 5, July-Aug/47
9	Captain Marvel Jr.	Master or CMJ
6	Ibis	"The School for Sorcerers" Whiz 90, Oct/47
8	Blonde Phantom	Mar Mys or BP
13	Blackhawk	"Invaders from the Moon" Modern 64, Aug/47
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	Master or CMJ or Marvel Family
7	Mary Marvel	Wow or MM or MF

The First Human Torch Writer (of the Fifties)

Hank Chapman wrote the Human Torch in the Forties, if only as one of those remembered pitching in on the marathon weekend putting together a Torch/Sub-Mariner battle issue. I haven't yet run across his other stories in that decade. Luckily for me in tracking down his style, Chapman in a number of Fifties stories at Timely/Atlas was uncharacteristically (for a writer at the time) given a credit line. He was probably best known for his war stories, and he continued writing that genre in the Sixties at DC.

Uncredited, Chapman wrote the first two Torch stories in the Fifties revival, in Young Men 24 (Dec/53) and 25 (Feb/54).

Art on the YM 24 story is by Russ Heath, with the exception of a splash panel pasteover of the Torch by Carl Burgos.

The first clue to Chapman's writing a story is "Ow-w-w"—most often hyphenated exactly like that, but not always. That's best as an indication when the other writers at the particular company and time aren't using it, of course. And "Holy Smokes" in the splash panel helps lead me to Chapman here. The following panels are from a story with Chapman's credit line, "My Brother . . . the Ghoul" in Adventures into Weird Worlds 6 (May/52), with art by George Roussos.

Another occasional clue to Chapman is seen by comparing the first page of Young Men 25's Torch story with the first page of "My Brother . . . the Ghoul" (and note "Holy Smokes" again in the Torch splash).

The tier of panels before the splash in each case is something Chapman uses off and on; also, for that matter, the splash with a single story panel following, as in YM 24.

Other writers did the rest of the superhero stories in Atlas's short-lived revival experiment of the mid-Fifties.

Woolfolk Records 1946/11

These William Woolfolk scripts sold to Fawcett and Quality. The Mary Marvel story was cut by a page.

Woolfolk reused the flame planes concept from the Captain Midnight story he wrote in March 1945.

And this is the first month where I could add every single story's publication data to the original notations (boldface shows what wasn't in the records notebook).

November 1946 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

9 pg	Hopalong Cassidy	phantom stage coach
		"The Phantom Stagecoach" HC 8, June/47
15	Blackhawk	flame planes
		"The Flame Planes" Modern 62, Apr/47
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	man who hated midnight
		"The Man Who Feared Midnight" CMJ 51, July/47
8	Mary Marvel	town couldn't lie
7		"The Town That Couldn't Lie" Marvel Family 13, July/47
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	magic cap
		"The Magic Cap" CMJ 51, July/47
11	Doll Man	20 year old mail
		"The Return of the Undertaker" Feature 111, June/47
11	Blackhawk	Condor Man
		"The Condor Man" BH 16, Autumn/47
11	Doll Man	Mr. Curio & his miniatures
		"Mr. Curio and His Miniatures" Feature 112, July/47
6	Ibis	housing shortage ghosts
		"Ghost of a Chance" Whiz 87, July/47
8	Captain Marvel Jr.	voyage round the Horn
		"Voyage 'Round the Horn" Master 81, July/47

Change the Reprint to Fit

In a Comic Book Legends Revealed post, Brian Cronin quotes Roy Thomas about the time Chip Goodman (son of Marvel publisher Martin Goodman) gave some editorial input: demanding a cover for a Kid Colt reprint issue feature outlaws in animal masks. That meant the reprint story art, which featured nothing of the kind, had to be altered in a couple of panels to match the cover.

Here's another reprint where, as already pointed out in the Grand Comics Database, a story was altered (and again with masks). I submit that it was changed for the same reason as the Kid Colt story: to match the cover. Who knows whose decision it was? Weird Wonder Tales 2 (Feb/74), cover by Gil Kane and Frank Giacoia,  reprints "The Little People" from Marvel Tales 138 (Sept/55). The title is changed to "I Was Kidnapped by a Flying Saucer"—to match the cover. (Possibly the scripter is Joe Gill.)

The hurried redrawing certainly sticks out in the midst of Paul Reinman's earlier art:

From the next page:

The "improvements" don't end with the art. You can't miss where some dialogue has been relettered to fit the new plot point. In panels not shown here, names have been relettered, just as poorly, to those of Marvel Bullpenners: "Mabel" to "Carla," "Colonel Mite and his wife" to "Don the Dwarf and Tiny Tony," and "Cluny the Giant" to "Marvin the Giant"—but not consistently; "Cluny" is left unchanged once.

I can't cite a single instance where altering a story in reprint improved it for this reader. Reprints have been changed for any number of purposes beyond fitting the story to a new cover or a production person's whim. For instance:

cutting the story length
acquiescing to the Comics Code or new publisher policies
updating fashions or culture references
retconning or annotating
replacing a character because the license has expired, or for other reasons
redesigning the page
rewriting the story entirely

Every great once in a while, I suppose, an actual mistake in the original has been fixed.

I think the readers and original creators are respected more just by reprinting the stories unaltered.

Woolfolk Records 1946/10

William Woolfolk's scripts in October went to Quality, Fawcett, and Timely.

Not only does the Blonde Phantom story in issue 13 of her title fit the number of pages given for this month's undescribed script, but it's in Woolfolk's style—the exclamation "Good glory!" (the BP story, top) is one clue to his work, as seen in another tier from the Captain America story (bottom) in Marvel Mystery 83 that Woolfolk submitted in September.

The Hopalong Cassidy story's final disposition is a mystery to me.

October 1946 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

11 pg	Blackhawk	island in the sky
		"The Island in the Sky" BH 15, Sum/47
9	Hopalong Cassidy	plays a bluff
		HC
9	Blonde Phantom	"Peril from the Past" BP 13, Spr/47
12	Blackhawk	sky matador
		"The Sky Matador" BH 15, Sum/47
13	Doll Man	Fat Catt
		"The Man with Nine Lives" Feature 110, May/47
7	Captain America	gets amnesia
		"24 Hours of Terror" Marvel Mystery 82, May/47
7	Captain America	murder at the Mardi Gras
6		"The Murder at the Mardi Gras" BP 16, Win/47-48
12	Doll Man	Lazarus returns from the dead
		"The Man Who Returned from the Dead" DM 13, Sum/47