The GCD inexplicably attributes "You Can't Escape" in Atlas's Adventures into Terror 6 (Oct/51) to Joe Shuster when it isn't by him. His signed work at Charlton in the mid-Fifties is ghosted by Bill Molno. Attributions to Shuster on crime at St. John in the same time period are back-formations from the Charlton work; those St. John stories are drawn by Molno.
Shuster did have work at St. John, though. Their Approved Comics reprinted Ziff-Davis features, but issue 2 (March/54), Invisible Boy, is evidently inventory. The Who's Who puts Jerry Siegel's Invisible Boy scripting at Z-D, where he was an editor, and attributes the feature at St. John to Paul S. Newman. As far as I can tell, the scripter on the book is indeed Siegel.
I have no idea who drew the issue's three other stories, although the style feels familiar. But the art on the first one, "The Secret Formula," is by Joe Shuster; his style hasn't morphed into something dramatically different from the early Superboy stories. This, not those Charlton stories, would be his final work in comic books, and unlike the Superboy feature, teamed him one last time with Jerry Siegel.
Martin, I'll correct the Adventures into Terror credit. Did Shuster employ any other ghost artists besides Molno?
ReplyDeleteMolno is the only one I can think of in the Fifties, on those stories at Charlton, Nick.
ReplyDeleteRay Osrin ghosted a lot of stories for Shuster.
ReplyDeleteMark, I see Bill Molno ghosting the pencils on all the stories signed "Joe Shuster & Ray Osrin." I suppose Osrin is abetting the ghosting, but he's inking under his own name, as I read the signatures.
ReplyDeleteI recall seeing stories that I thought were penciled and inked by Osrin but I can't now recall where. I'll see if I can come up with that.
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