Woolfolk Records 1950/11

William Woolfolk's only pirate story: Buccaneers took over the numbering of Kid Eternity back at the end of 1949 but this is its final issue.

Otherwise, an unsurprising month, with Fawcett, Orbit, and Quality the publishers he sold to.

As with earlier months, I'll say the 2-page "Dorothy (Woolfolk)'s love story" means the plot for a story she scripts.

I can't find a Captain Marvel Jr. "invisible moon" story, and wondered at first if it was a duplicate entry for this month's later "moon on fire" story, but they're very different lengths and the fire story has nothing to do with invisibility. UPDATE: darkmark tracked it down--and later he found the Monte Hale story.


November 1950 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

7 pg	Captain Marvel Jr.	slave of the genii
		"A Slave of the Genie" CMJ 102, Oct/51
2	Dorothy's love story	Love Diary
10	Blackhawk	man who owned BH Island
		"The Man Who Owned Blackhawk Island" BH 41, June/51
10	King of the Numbers	exposé of the numbers racket
		"Owney Mattern, King of the Numbers" Wanted 36, Apr/51
12	Wild Bill Pecos	marshal of Tombstone City
		"Marshal of Tombstone City" The Westerner 35, Apr/51
7	Black Roger	lady in the iron mask
		"Lady in the Iron Mask" Buccaneers 27, May/51
10	Captain Marvel Jr.	the invisible moon
		"CMJ and the Ghost of Sivana Jr." CMJ 99, July/51
7	Monte Hale	the town hero
		"MH and the Town Hero" Western Hero 104, July/51
8	Love Thief	a befriended gal who turns out to be a bitch
		"Love Thief" L Diary 15, Apr/51
12	Blackhawk	terror from the catacombs
		"Terror from the Catacombs" BH 43, Aug/51
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	a whole edition of a newspaper is stolen
		"CMJ and Headline of Horror" Marvel Family 60, June/51
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	the sea of space
		"CMJ and the Sea of Space" CMJ 101, Sept/51
5	Captain Marvel Jr.	moon on fire
		"CMJ and the Moon on Fire" CMJ 97, May/51

What's He Doing at Fawcett?

Fawcett's Motion Picture Comics 109 (March/52) presents "Rough Riders of Durango," a Rocky Lane movie. (The comic's numbering began with 101.) A number of these movie adaptations featured the Western stars who already had ongoing series in Fawcett comic books, but the movie tie-ins didn't often (if at all) use the creative teams from the stars' own books. In fact, on "Rough Riders of Durango" I see an artist not known to have worked at Fawcett at all.

On the full page, I can discern this artist's style most easily in the first and last panels. I find another couple of panels with close-ups (from different pages), even more recognizable.

At Atlas, Werner Roth drew the Apache Kid series from 1950 to 1956, and returned to the genre with a few stories of Kid Colt and Gunhawk around 1970.

The full page above also gives a few clues to the writer, with "Anxious moments later" and "Just then" in captions. It's Leo Dorfman. When Dorfman returned to writing Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen in the early Seventies, editor Murray Boltinoff confused indexers by mentioning that Dorfman had written, among others, the "classics in comics" Ivanhoe and The Red Badge of Courage. He meant nothing more than what he put down, uncapitalized, but fans assumed he meant "Classics Comics" and for many years attributed the Gilberton adaptations of those novels to Dorfman (see the paper first edition of the Who's Who). Ivanhoe and Red Badge were Fawcett Movie Comic and Motion Picture Comics issues by Dorfman, as we know now; two other "classics" mentioned by Boltinoff were Dell Movie Classics written by Dorfman later in the Fifties.

Woolfolk Records 1950/10

William Woolfolk's scripts were bought by Orbit, Fawcett, and Quality in October.

No surprises in the line-up of features here...

To repeat, Marc Svensson scanned these pages some time ago from the records book loaned him for the purpose by Donna Woolfolk. My additions of publication data and the occasional changed page length are in bold.

UPDATE: darkmark supplied the Monte Hale info in his comment.

October 1950 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

12 pg	Wild Bill Pecos	hollow logs have guns for Indians
		"WBP Battles Chief Angry Sun" The Westerner 34, Mar/51
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	the homeless ghost
		"CMJ and the Homeless Ghost" CMJ 101, Sept/51
10	Captain Marvel Jr.	the crime chariot
11		"CMJ Battles the Crime Chariot" CMJ 98, June/51
9	Wild Bill Pecos	return of Kid Runt
		"The Return of Kid Runt" The Westerner 34, Mar/51
6	Wild Bill Pecos	the mystery bandit
		"The Mystery Bandit" The Westerner 35, Apr/51
10	The Arson Racket	fires are set to collect insurance
		"The Arson Racket" Wanted 35, Mar/51
12	Blackhawk	the sky tanks
		"Battle of the Sky Tanks" BH 41, June/51
5	Captain Marvel Jr.	the sinister snow
		"CMJ Battles the Sinister Snow" CMJ 97, May/51
4	Invisible Gas	killer doesn't know gas was turned off
		"The Invisible Gas" Wanted 36, Apr/51
7	Monte Hale	dead man's treasure
		"Dead Man's Treasure" Western Hero 103, June/51
9	Ibis	Karnak & the plant men
		"Ibis Battles the Plant Men" Whiz 134, June/51

Recycling Text into Comics--Otto Binder

Here are an excerpt below from the text story "Fiend of Fire" in Fawcett's Beware! Terror Tales 2 (July/52), and a page above from the comics story "Flame Fiend" (illustrated by Gray Morrow) in Warren's Eerie 2 (Mar/66). Both are credited to Eando (i.e. Otto) Binder. The endings are the same too, but I didn't want to present a spoiler. A few posts hence on my William Woolfolk records transcriptions, I'll have an instance of his expanding a text for one company into a comics story at another.

Eando Binder started as a joint pseudonym for Otto and his brother Earl in the science fiction magazines, but out of about 135 prose magazine stories published under that name, only 27 early ones were by both brothers. According to the MIT Science Fiction Society's mid-Sixties index to the SF magazines, the final Eando Binder story by Earl and Otto was published in 1941, and it had probably been in the trunk since the mid-Thirties. Out of the Eando Binder novels, only two—Lords of Creation and Enslaved Brains—use material cowritten, quite a bit earlier, by Earl. In all his comics work, it should be safe to say that Eando was solely Otto.

Woolfolk Records Update 7--Mostly Love Diary

I found these Love Diary stories—most usefully the untitled Prescription for Happiness installments undescribed in the GCD indexes—when the issues were put online on the Digital Comic Museum and on Comic Book Plus.

Prescription for Happiness asks readers' advice in order to give cash prizes for the best letters. As of Love Diary 3 text, Ray Mann is "Miss Mann" (since she's publisher/editor Ray Hermann), but with the first Prescription in issue 4 and Mann's being pictured as a character, she becomes a he for the rest of the run.

Before seeing the scanned issue itself, I had figured "My Office Lover" fit into LD 8 with the other romance stories William Woolfolk recorded writing that month, but it actually waited twelve issues to get published under a changed title and page count.

Until I saw it, the Tom Mix Western 9 story "Mistaken Identity" seemed, from the title, the best match in the timeframe for the idol of outlaws description. But (this issue was also put online since my post) that story turns out not to be about Mix's being an idol of outlaws and it's not in Woolfolk's style.

darkmark tracked down the Monte Hale.

Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk
—updates to earlier posts

November 1947

9 pg	Tom Mix	the idol of outlaws
		TM Western or Wow

June 1948

9	Monte Hale	tournament for marksmen
		"The Killers' Tournament" MH Western 33, Feb/49

April 1950

9	My Office Lover	secretary & her boss
7		"I Loved My Boss" Love Diary 20, Sept/51

May 1953

3	Prescription for Happiness	guy supports his family and so can't marry
		[untitled PFH] L Diary 37, Oct/53

July 1953

2	Prescription for Happiness	gal with lousy family loves guy
		[untitled PFH] L Diary 39, Jan/54

August 1953

10	Cold, Cold Heart	a girl afraid of men because once she was nearly raped
		"Cold, Cold Heart" L Diary 40, Feb/54

September 1953

3	Prescription for Happiness	city gal loves farm boy
		[untitled PFH] L Diary 40, Feb/54

November 1953

2	Prescription for Happiness	guy loves a selfish gal
		[untitled PFH] L Diary 41, Mar/54

February 1954

3	Prescription for Happiness	girl afraid she'll lose guy if he goes back to college
		[untitled PFH] L Diary 44, June/54