Blackhawk Writers 1955

The fewest gaps in my writer IDs on Blackhawk at Quality are in 1955-56, the final two years of Quality Comics; those gaps fall in 1956, and I'll try to fill them in the near future.

See if any Dick Wood or Bill Finger flags jump out at you in these tiers from #84's "The End of Blackhawk Island" and "The Race of Doom."

Unless I've missed an anomalous story, by this point Dick Dillin (pencils) and Chuck Cuidera (inks) are doing all the art on Blackhawk, including the covers. The Chop Chop back-ups by other hands are reprints.

Blackhawk Writers 1955

Jan/55	84	The Dreaded Brain Beam	Dick Wood
		The End of Blackhawk Island	Wood
		The Race of Doom	Bill Finger
Feb/	85	The Fiendish Impersonator	Wood
		The Fire-Wheel	Wood
		The Super-Sonic Menace	Wood
Mar/	86	The Human Torpedoes	Wood
		The Weapon for Conquest	Wood
		Suicide Decoy	Wood
Apr/	87	Inferno from the Sky	Wood
		The Sea Wolf	Wood
		The Ordeal of a Blackhawk	Wood
May/	88	Thunder, the Indestructible	Wood
		The Incredible Silencer	Wood
		The Phantom Sniper	Wood
June/	89	The Super Communists	Wood
		The Fight for Survival	Wood
		The Ghost Raiders of the Sky	Wood
July/	90	The Storm King	Wood
		The Bubbles of Doom	Wood
		Villainess Who Smashed the Blackhawk Team	Wood
Aug/	91	Treason in the Underground	Wood
		The Statue That Attacked Blackhawk Island	Wood
		The Steel Colossus	Finger
Sept/	92	Prisoners of the Black Dungeon	Wood
		The World Traitor	Wood
		The Flying Cutlass	Wood
Oct/	93	Garg the Destroyer	Joe Millard
		The Floating Fortress	Wood
		Breaking through the Time Barrier	Wood
Nov/	94	Web of the Black Widow	Millard
		Blind Victory	Millard
		The Prophet of Doom	Millard
Dec/	95	Madame Fury, Queen of Pirates	Millard
		Terra, the Trapper	Millard
		Lhala, Tigress of the Desert	Millard

Woolfolk Records 1950/09

After a time of selling to just Fawcett and Orbit, William Woolfolk includes Quality again among his publishers with this month.

He has used the last man on Earth concept before, in Plastic Man, but this CMJ story is entirely different.

This is the point at which Woolfolk notes payment for the Anthony Action script he wrote on speculation back in May 1946 (most likely for his own company, O.W., before it expired); he sells the story to Orbit and it's published in Wanted 31-32.

September 1950 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

10 pg	Captain Marvel Jr.	Captain Marvel Jr. vanishes!
		"Captain Marvel Jr. Vanishes" CMJ 96, Apr/51
9	Find My Killer	man locks up his enemy in chains in a hidden room
		"Don't Let Me Die" Wanted 35, Mar/51
9	Captain Marvel Jr.	gets the touch of life
10		"CMJ and the Touch of Life" CMJ 98, June/51
10	Wild Bill Pecos	the prairie pirates
		"WBP and the Prairie Pirates" The Westerner 33, Feb/51
5	Captain Marvel Jr.	the space fishermen
		"CMJ and the Space Fisherman" CMJ 95, Mar/51
12	Blackhawk	the spores of terror
		"The Spores of Terror" BH 39, Apr/51
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	the last man on Earth
		"CMJ Meets the Last Man on Earth" CMJ 97, May/51
9	Wild Bill Pecos	the secret of Lulu Belle
		"The Secret of Lulu Belle" The Westerner 33, Feb/51
7	Wild Bill Pecos	Wild Bill turns coward
		"Afraid to Fight" The Westerner 33, Feb/51
9	Ibis	invaders from the rubber world
		"Ibis and the Invaders from the Rubber World" Whiz 133, May/51
10	Hot Money	man organizes a huge counterfeiting ring
		"Hot Money" Wanted 34, Feb/51
7	Monte Hale	the dam on Rampage River
		MH Western or Western Hero c. Apr or May/51
6	Captain Marvel Jr.	the dumb dodo
		"CMJ and the Dumb Dodo" CMJ 96, Apr/51
6	Captain Marvel Jr.	Marvel Jr.'s strange appetite
		"CMJ's Strange Appetite" CMJ 98, June/51
4	Shoe Shine	thrifty man trapped in crime when he spends
		"Shoe Shine" Wanted 35, Mar/51
10	Blackhawk	city that time forgot
		"The City That Time Forgot" BH 42, July/51

Mary Marvel's Butler, Amateur Sleuth

In the third Mary Marvel story of her series, "A Telegram to Adventure" (Wow 11, March 10, 1943) the Bromfield butler Jives is introduced (Mary Batson Bromfield and her foster-mother had a different-looking butler called Peeves in the first story). We're told that "Jives is an addict of detective stories! And because of that, his imagination is a little 'overworked'!" When he trails Mary to discover the job she's keeping secret (telegram messenger), he lets a gang think he's English Harry, the slickest crook in the rackets.

The Wayne butler Alfred first appears in Batman 15 (April-May, 1943). Alfred, too, fancies himself a criminologist—on the splash page of "Here Comes Alfred" he's wearing a Sherlock Holmes deerstalker cap. These issues of Batman from DC and Wow from Fawcett would have been in production at about the same time.

Alfred's first story was written by Don Cameron. But Jives's was by Batman co-creator Bill Finger.

This post explains how a particular Captain America story jumped out at me as Finger's. The same writerly trademark is in "Telegram to Adventure": the throat-clearing "Arrumph," a spelling without an initial "H" used by no one else that I know of. As Mary can tell, Jives harrumphs when he lies, and so this becomes a plot point. (Mary winks at the readers with an "Arrumph" herself in the final panel.) When I encountered this I thought "Bill Finger???" only to find that, according to the Who's Who, he was indeed at Fawcett—known to be writing Captain Marvel, at any rate—in 1942-3.

Jives amateur-sleuths again in the next story, "Mary Marvel and the Anxious Auctioneer," (Wow 16, April 7, '43) and this time he wears the deerstalker cap. But here the writer is Joe Millard.

I won't try to guess at the Mary Marvel artists. I suppose Marc Swayze may be in there somewhere, but this is the point at which Fawcett starts using multiple artists in the production-line shop system on some features. That the Mary Marvel figures are by different artists than the secondary figures becomes more and more obvious over the next few issues of Wow.

Woolfolk Records 1950/08

The stories William Woolfolk entered in his records book as writing this month sold to Orbit and Fawcett.

Although the title of "Not Necessarily Dead" was changed by Orbit, the phrase still appears at the end of the splash page blurb—the place where many Golden Age stories repeated the title. "Case of the Perjured Parrot" kept Woolfolk's title up through the house ad of the previous month; perhaps, shortly after that, the editors decided not to go with an Erle Stanley Gardner title.

August 1950 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

9 pg	Not Necessarily Dead	victim of delusions really sees a murder done
		"He's the Killer" Wanted 33, Jan/51
9	Ibis	the Earth Brain
		"Ibis Battles the Earth Brain" Whiz 132, Apr/51
11	Wild Bill Pecos	Widowmaker's revenge
		"Widowmaker's Revenge" The Westerner 32, Jan/51
9	Wild Bill Pecos	meets Lobo, the wolf boy
		"Lobo the Wolf Boy" The Westerner 32, Jan/51
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	the world's strangest zoo
		"CMJ and the World's Strangest Zoo" CMJ 96, Apr/51
9	Wild Bill Pecos	legend of the outlaw
		"Legend of the Outlaw" The Westerner 32, Jan/51
5	Nuggets Nugent	mistaken for an outlaw
		"NN Slaps Leather with Whiskers Wilson" The Westerner 32, Jan/51
9	Captain Marvel Jr.	battles Vengeance Mountain
		"CMJ Battles Vengeance Mountain" CMJ 96, Apr/51
8	Case of the Perjured Parrot	a talking parrot betrays a killer
		"The Green Parrot Murder Case" Wanted 34, Feb/51
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	the ark of space
		"CMJ and the Ark from Space" CMJ 98, June/51
11	Wild Bill Pecos	battles the Thunderbird
		"The Thunderbird Strikes" The Westerner 33, Feb/51