Mary Carey's only credit in the comics themselves was on the Golden Press adaptation of the 1981 movie Clash of the Titans. The Who's Who attributed a handful of 1970s Disney adaptations to her. The question was, how far back did her tenure go? As it happens, her run on Disney live-action movie adaptations coincides with the run of Walt Disney Showcase. It just now took me some extra time to work back to her writing The Boatniks and Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
Mary Carey Scripts
in Walt Disney Showcase
| Oct/70 | 1 | The Boatniks |
| Jan/72 | 6 | Bedknobs and Broomsticks |
| Sep/ | 10 | Napoleon and Samantha |
| Apr/73 | 14 | The World's Greatest Athlete |
| Aug/74 | 24 | Herbie Rides Again |
| Feb/75 | 27 | Island at the Top of the World |
| Jun/ | 29 | Escape to Witch Mountain |
| Oct/77 | 41 | Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo |
| Apr/78 | 43 | Pete's Dragon |
| May/ | 44 | Return from Witch Mountain |
| Sep/ | 46 | The Cat from Outer Space |
| Mar/79 | 49 | North Avenue Irregulars |
| Sep/ | 52 | Unidentified Flying Oddball |
| Jan/80 | 54 | The Black Hole [repr from tabloid edition] |
After Eric Freiwald and Robert Schaefer's last Disney movie adaptation (I believe The Legend of Young Dick Turpin, May/66), another writer to whom I haven't yet put a name took over on those one-shots, including the two the CGD assigns tentatively to Mary Carey, The Gnome-Mobile and Blackbeard's Ghost. His or her last movie comic, as far as I can see, was The Love Bug (June/69). This writer also did TV tie-ins like The Invaders and The Green Hornet.
But wait—the GCD says Paul S. Newman wrote The Green Hornet 3-issue run of 1967. No. In that year it's extremely unlikely that a writer for Western Publishing's East Coast office does a West Coast book (as the Dan Spiegle art shows this to be). Per his records, Newman wrote the Green Hornet in Four Color 496, Sept/53. There's a logical fallacy in taking that to mean he wrote every Green Hornet story published by Western.
One clue to this West Coast writer's style is captions like Several minutes have passed... and other variations on "time has passed." I have yet to see that in a single Newman script.
Do you think the mystery writer also scripted the HONEY WEST one-shot?
ReplyDeleteI see by the WHO'S WHO that Paul S. Newman was the writer on HONEY WEST--it was drawn by Jack Sparling, so done on the East Coast.
ReplyDeleteMartin,
ReplyDeletePer Paul S. Newman's records as published in Robin Snyder's The Comics, he was the writer of the Legend of Young Dick Turpin. Newman has no credits for The Green Hornet.