Joe Shuster's Charlton Ghost

Bill Molno was a Charlton mainstay for a decade or more on the anthology books; I see his occasional series entries mostly on the Westerns. Unless I've missed earlier stories, his debut at the company in 1954 was ghost pencils for Joe Shuster. Mark Evanier gives Dick Giordano's explanation of the ghosting in a comment on the previous post .

Here's a page from "The Well of Fear" in Strange Suspense Stories 21 compared with one from about three and a half years later—after Joe Shuster's credits are long gone—"The House of Man," Out of This World 7 (Feb/58). Molno is inking himself on this one

There are a few more stories with Shuster's credit at Charlton that I haven't seen—hot rod ones, for instance. Unsigned 1954 stories penciled by Molno and inked by others include "Food for Thought" (SSS 20, Aug), "Who Will He Be?" and "This Bite Is Sweet" (SSS 21, Sept), "Mental Wizard" and, possibly, "The Crusher" (The Thing 16, Sept), and "Where Do They Lurk?" (This Magazine Is Haunted 19, Aug). I mention them thinking of the uncredited Jerry Grandenetti pieces in the mid-Sixties that have been misattributed to Joe Orlando, for whom he was ghosting elsewhere at the time. There are other "Shuster" stories in the GCD that could be looked at a second time.

Bill Molno Stories Ghost-Penciling for Joe Shuster
(Inked by Ray Osrin except as noted)

Crime and Justice

July/54	19	The Death Watch [RADIO PATROL]
Sep/	20	The Anniversary Gift [MR & MRS CHASE]
		A Deadly Circle [RADIO PATROL]
Nov/	21	The $64,000 Question [MR & MRS CHASE]
		Road Pirates
		Finale for Fingers

Racket Squad in Action

A-S/54	12	Robbery by Appointment
		The Ransom Swindle
		Protection Game
O-N/	13	Malignant Model Agency
		The Basketball Scandals

Space Adventures

M-J/54

11

Interplanetary Safari (inked by Dick Giordano)

Strange Suspense Stories

July/54	19	Give Back My Body (no inker signature)
Sept/	21	The Well of Fear
Nov/	22	The Secret of the Box

The Thing

Sept/54

16

Death of a Gambler (inked by Vince Alascia)

This Magazine Is Haunted

July/54	18	The Last Earl (inked by John Belfi)
Sept/	20	Quest of the Beyond

Carl Memling at Charlton--Who Knew?

I was looking for Carl Memling scripts at Timely/Atlas in the Fifties, where he's known to have written for the horror anthologies (I haven't found any of his there yet); but with his style fresh in my mind, when I was merely reading some Fifties Charlton comics and not expecting to recognize writers, I happened across him. A Memling trademark that I've mentioned before is sirens or car engines going "Rowrrrrr."

There are one or two more Crime and Justice scripts that could be Memling's, but I'll err on the side of caution and leave them off for now. I'll get to more titles eventually; he wrote quite a bit in two years or so.

The writers known to have done some work for Charlton in the early-through-mid-Fifties include Walter B. Gibson, Bruce Hamilton, Ken Fitch, Harry Shorten, and Jerry Siegel. Fitch was one writer who, in addition to scripts written directly for Charlton, had work published there out of other companies' bought-out inventories. Joe Gill was writing for Charlton around 1954 but didn't become their house writer, filling almost all the pages, for another few years.

Carl Memling Scripts in
Crime and Justice

July/53	14	Down the Drain
		Three O'Clock Shadow
Sep/	15	Vacation from Violence [MR & MRS CHASE]
		Behind Locked Doors
		Stormy Crossing
		Eye Witness
Nov/	16	Peril on the Pacific [MR & MRS CHASE]
		The Hatchet Is Buried
Feb/54	17	No Way Out
Apr/	18	Killer on the Loose [RADIO PATROL]
		Terror under the Big Top [MR & MRS CHASE]
July/	19	Three's a Mob
Sep/	20	A Deadly Circle [RADIO PATROL]
Nov/	21	The $64,000 Question [MR & MRS CHASE]
		Road Pirates

Carmine Infantino Starts Off in Comics with Cap

I don't think anything earlier has been found: Carmine Infantino hit the ground running in comic books with a handful of stories on a major character, Captain America, in 1943.

From Cap 27, note the face of the French Underground fighter Pierre in panel 1; more to the point, look at him running in panel 6.

Infantino-pencilled stories in Captain America

June/43	27	Blitzkrieg to Berlin
July/	28	The Vultures of Violent Death

I dithered over whether the one-month earlier "Invasion of the Killer Beasts" was by Infantino—it seems so much cruder—but then I found that the Marvel Masterworks reprint credited him as one of the pencillers (others unknown), so I'll go along with that.

in U.S.A. Comics

May/43

8

The Invasion of the Killer Beasts

Blackhawk Writers 1956

This will echo the lists for Quality's Exploits of Daniel Boone and Robin Hood Tales in 1956. Joe Millard had been writing for Quality for some time; Robert Bernstein was Quality's final writer before they gave up the ghost in 1956. It's been pointed out that the plot of Blackhawk 101's "The Lost Island" is lifted from Marvel Boy 1's "The Lost World" (Dec/50); but although Bernstein was writing for Timely/Atlas at that point, I can't find his stylistic prints on the Marvel Boy story.

Blackhawk Writers 1956

Jan/56	96	7 Graves for 7 Blackhawks	Joe Millard
		Case of the Missing Blackhawk	Millard
		Doom in the Deep	Millard
Feb/	97	The Horde of the Bat	Millard
		Hitler's Daughter	Millard
		Revolt of the Slave Workers	Millard
Mar/	98	The Phantom Saboteur	Millard
		The Temple of Doom	Millard
		The Black Flag	Millard
Apr/	99	The Queen of Blackhawk Island	Millard
		The War That Never Ended	Robert Bernstein
		The Underground Menace	Bernstein
May/	100	The Delphian Menace	Bernstein
		The Citadel of Hate	?
		The Steel Scorpion	Millard
June/	101	General Steel	Millard
		Satan's Paymaster	Millard
		The Lost Island	Bernstein
July/	102	Master of Mankind	Millard
		The Doom Cloud	Millard
		The Red Professor's Secret	Bernstein
Aug/	103	The Super Race	Bernstein
		The Man Who Stole Tomorrow	Millard
		Menace from the Skies	Bernstein
Sept/	104	Rescue under Fire	Bernstein
		Treachery in the Antarctic	Bernstein
		The Jet Menace	Bernstein
Oct/	105	Nightmare Cruise	Bernstein
		The Red Kamakaze Terror	Bernstein
		The Master of Treachery	Bernstein
Nov/	106	The Flying Tank Platoon	Bernstein
		Stars of Disaster	Bernstein
		The Red Raiders	Bernstein
Dec/	107	The Winged Menace	Bernstein
		Red Timetable of Treachery	Bernstein
		One Minute Till Doom	Bernstein

Bernstein spells "Kamakaze" with an "a" throughout the story in #105, although the cover has it "Kamikaze."

The Model for Doc Played Flash Gordon

This is either a huge coincidence or a very esoteric in-joke on the part of cover artist Gray Morrow. I know which one I go with.