Woolfolk Records 1953/04

DC and Orbit are the companies buying the scripts.

The "$100,000 on Clark Kent's Head" syndicated strip sequence ends at eight weeks.

My transcriptions of William Woolfolk's records, to the end of his career in comic books, continue with May 1953 in this post. He began his records with September 1944 after a few years of writing comics; he didn't describe any story further than the feature name through December 1944. I began blogging these transcriptions with January 1945's, when he began putting in descriptions. But a list of the strips he was writing is better than nothing (and I can find the publication of one or two through number of pages or his style), so those four months of 1944 will be my posts when I return to this subject.

April 1953 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

6 pg	Superman syndicate	2nd week
		Superman strip, May 25-30/53
10	I Put a Price on Love	girl who takes men for all she can get
		"I Put a Price on Love" Love Journal 21, Nov/53
6	Battle of the Alamo	only the flag survives to tell the story
		"Ghosts of the Alamo" All-American Men of War 7, Oct-Nov/53
6	Superman syndicate	3rd week
		Superman strip, June 1-6/53
12	Superboy	coronation of Lana Lang
		"The Coronation of Lana Lang" Adventure 192, Sept/53
6	Superman syndicate	4th week
		Superman strip, June 8-13/53
6	Farmers Can't Fight	farmer vs. Hessians in the Revolutionary War
		"Pitchfork Army" Star Spangled War Stories 14, Nov/53
6	Superman syndicate	5th week
		Superman strip, June 15-20/53
6	Superman syndicate	6th week
		Superman strip, June 22-27/53
8	Fighting Heart	gal loves a prizefighter
10		"Fighting Heart" Love Diary 37, Oct/53
12	Superman syndicate	7th & 8th weeks
		Superman strip, June 29-July 4, 6-11/53

Ray Cummings Writes Captain America

Ray Cummings, once a secretary/assistant to Thomas Edison, wrote science fiction and horror for the pulp magazines, beginning with The Girl in the Golden Atom in 1919 and on to around 1950. One novel, The Exile of Time, was reprinted by Ace Books in 1965 with a new cover painting by 1940s Captain America cover artist Alex Schomburg—appropriately enough, since Cummings had scripts in some of those Cap issues.

Cummings is credited with "The Princess of the Atom" in Captain America Comics, but without his actual name mentioned—the coming attraction in issue 24 just calls him the author of Girl in the Golden Atom. "The Princess of the Atom" two-parter uses the basic situation of "Girl in the Golden Atom"—miniaturizing into an atom world by means of a drug—but otherwise is a new plot.

The noticeable style characteristic on "Princess" that led me to the first of the other stories is "Oh migosh."

He's known to have written Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch too, but so far, concentrating on Cap, I have yet to run across any stories of those characters by him. Another pass through the Caps may well find more Cummings stories.

Ray Cummings scripts on Captain America

Apr/43	25	The Princess of the Atom
May/	26	The Princess of the Atom Part II
June/	27	North of the Border
Aug/	29	The King of the Dinosaurs
		The Case of the Phantom Engineer
		The Case of the Headless Monster
Sep/	30	The House of the Laughing Death

on Captain America in All Winners

Win/43-44

11

The Case of the Yellow Fire Monster

on Captain America in U.S.A. Comics

Sep/43

10

The Cylinder of Death

Woolfolk Records 1953/03

Orbit and DC, buyers. And: in 1952-53, William Woolfolk has noted the publishers alongside the stories; the Freddy Feline is sold to Fawcett. Pooch is mentioned in the May '53-written Slinky Stinky stories, Woolfolk's last for the company. When I posted that month's records out of order, I guessed from Woolfolk's "F" code that Fawcett was the publisher, but hadn't seen these previous years to confirm the same code on, for instance, Captain Marvel Jr. stories. The company bought these funny animal scripts but I don't find them published. UPDATE: And in fact Freddy Feline was turned into Slinky Stinky for that character's debut story.

I can't read the handwriting about a "Mickey J____ character" and can't guess the cultural reference, but the Love Diary 36 story "Easy to Love" is about a girl who works as a housemaid for the man she falls in love with.

It isn't completely out of left field, but a syndicated Superman strip sequence is a change of pace. Technically this was published by the syndicate, but DC bought the scripts from Woolfolk. Six tiers, a week's dailies, are paid as six pages (or three times as many panels), and in fact at a slightly higher rate. He continues writing the sequence next month. UPDATE: SangorShop supplied the strips' publication dates.

March 1953 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

6 pg	That's How I Am	athletic girl loves a lifeguard
		"Not the Right Type" Love Diary 36, Sept/53
10	Superman	Superman becomes pet of space men
		"A Doghouse for Superman" Superman 84, Aug-Sept/53
6	Command Performance	an actor who hates to play Nazis
		"Command Performance" Star Spangled War Stories 13, Sept/53
10	Superboy	makes a 4th dimension movie in the future
		"The Movie Star of Tomorrow" Superboy 27, Aug-Sept/53
9	Freddy Feline	wants Pooch's swimming pool
	as Slinky Stinky	"The Stolen Swimming Pool" Funny Animals 82, Oct/53
7	Flight into Passion	can a girl go too far and keep her man?
		"Flight into Passion" L Diary 36, Sept/53
6	Battle Decision	detective after crook—in the Army
		"Battle Detective" SSWS 13, Sept/53
7	Treacherous Love	girl works for a Mickey J____ character
10		"Easy to Love" L Diary 36, Sept/53
12	Batman	the invisible Batman
		"The Invisible Batman" Detective 199, Nov/53
6	Superman syndicate	$100,000 on Clark Kent's head
		Superman strip,  May 18 to May 23/53
6	Killer Tanks!	a man who is deathly afraid of the German tanks
		"Killer Tank" Our Army at War 14, Dec/53

Lee Marrs' First Comic Book Work?

When an artist is doing a licensed property, the best bet for identifying them by style is to look at the one-shot secondary characters. So, if I'm IDing correctly on these pages:

Lee Marrs' comic book work, both in undergrounds and mainstream, came after working on syndicated strips (writing gags on "Hi and Lois" for King in 1969 and doing backgrounds on "Little Orphan Annie" for Chicago Tribune-New York News starting in the same year, according to the Who's Who). Her underground work first appeared in 1972. I'd assumed her first four-color comic book credit was DC's Plop in 1974.

It would seem it was actually Blondie—at King's mid-Sixties comic book division. Out of a spotty collection (there could be something earlier), I see her work in #175 (Dec/67) on the story "Dagwood and the Go-Go Girl." Possibly she did "Emergency Dinner" in that issue and just possibly "Blondie Makes the Switch." The Dagwood story "The Offer" I'm pretty sure is by someone else, not that I could say who. The main artist on the Blondie comic books, Paul Fung Jr., channeled Chic Young more thoroughly.

Lee Marrs also drew an entire issue of Popeye (apart from regular artist/editor George Wildman’s cover), licensed from King at Charlton, a little later: #120 (Jun/73). It looks like she drew an unrelated back-up, Marvin the Mailman in "Dog Gone It," in Popeye 103 (Aug/70). Again, my collection is incomplete; she may have done other work on the title.