The Two 1950s Human Torch Writers

For completeness' sake I've listed all the Human Torch 1950s revival stories, but most of the Hank Chapman IDs are not new; I identified him on Young Men 24 and 25, and then Lou Mougin did on Human Torch 38's three stories, Sub-Mariner 35, and Captain America 78. When Chapman returns to the feature after the first YM stories, all of his scripts use Toro as narrator.

Joe Gill often sets up his story in the blurb, or fills in information in a caption, with the past participle: "They had defeated him." His use of past or present tense is inconsistent—a few times within a single script—but I found some of the stories in the different tenses tied together by references to the Torch's and Toro's "unique body chemistry." In his first two stories in YM 26 and 27 he uses "Up, flame!" and then "On flame!" before settling on the standard "Flame on!"

Human Torch scripts
in YOUNG MEN

Dec/53	24	The Return of...the Human Torch	Hank Chapman
Feb/54	25	[The Young Old Men]	Chapman
Mar/	26	[The Vulture]	Joe Gill
Apr/	27	The Face of Death	Gill
June/	28	[The Prize Was...the Moon]	Gill

in MEN'S ADVENTURES

May/54	27	[The Jet]	Gill
July/	28	[The Flying Saucer]	Gill

in HUMAN TORCH

Apr/54	36	[The Atomic Blaster]	Gill
		[Tyrannosaurus Rex]	Gill
		[The Monk]	Gill
June/	37	Vampire Tale	Gill
		A Spy There Was...	Gill
		The Menace of the Unhuman	Gill
Aug/	38	The World's End	Chapman
		In Korea	Chapman
		Flame On	Chapman

in SUB-MARINER

Apr/54	33	[The Flying Saucers]	Gill
Jun/	34	[Virus X]	Gill
Aug/	35	Human Torch--Fugitive at Large	Chapman

in CAPTAIN AMERICA

May/54	76	[The Vulture Returns]	Gill
July/	77	[The Thing]	Gill
Sept/	78	Playing with Fire	Chapman

out of inventory
in MARVEL SUPER-HEROES

Sept/68

16

The Un-Human

Chapman

...and a Sub-Mariner ID
There are a couple of exceptions to Bill Everett's run in Sub-Mariner's 1950s revival: two stories drawn by Bob Powell. It isn't a stretch to find Joe Gill on the Devil Octopus story when you know he's writing the Torch in the same issue. The Black Shark story in Men's Adventures 27 (May/54), though, is still a poser. "Aaeeeeegh" in two spellings and a "Walloping halibuts" suggest someone else yet to be determined.

Sub-Mariner script
in HUMAN TORCH

Apr/54

36

[The Devil Octopus]

Joe Gill

Mort Meskin at Dell/Western

Mort Meskin and Jerry Robinson collaborated on signed stories elsewhere, like The Black Terror at Standard, so Meskin's helping out Robinson at Western/Dell is not coming out of left field. This one issue is the only instance of Meskin's work there that I've seen so far.

This would be the "other hands" on Silvertip that I mentioned in my post about Kubert and Kinstler at Western/Dell.

Silvertip in Four Color
Pencils by Mort Meskin
Inks by Jerry Robinson

Sept/57	835	The False Rider ifc intro
		The False Rider

Young Men's C.A. (You've Got Nothing to Lose)

Captain America isn't mentioned on the Who's Who list of Don Rico's work for Atlas, but the features that he did script, like Rawhide Kid and the various jungle ones, contain stories that match the style on the 1950s Cap revival. I've gone back on forth on this for some time, but I'll come down on the side of this being Rico.

The panels are from the Serum to Korea story in CA 77, "The Sioux Strike" in Rawhide Kid 1 (Mar/55), and "While the Jungle Sleeps" in Lorna 17 (Jan/56).

Captain America scripts by Don Rico
in YOUNG MEN

Dec/53	24	Back from the Dead
Feb/54	26	Top Secret
Mar/	26	Captain America Turns Traitor
Apr/	27	Return of the Red Skull
June/	28	The Cargo of Death

in MEN'S ADVENTURES

May/54	27	The Girl Who Was Afraid
July/	28	Kill Captain America!

in CAPTAIN AMERICA

May/54	76	The Betrayers
		Captain America Strikes
		Come to the Commies
July/	77	You Die at Midnight
		The Man with No Face
		[Serum to Korea]
Sep/	78	His Touch Is Death
		The Green Dragon
		The Hour of Doom

Joe Kubert's Zorro, and More

At Western Publishing /Dell, Joe Kubert pencilled three features from novelists: Zorro, Max Brand's Silvertip, and Ernest Haycox's Western Marshal; and one TV tie-in: Steve Donovan, Western Marshal. The page above is from "The Sword of Zorro" in 1953

In the beginnings of Kubert's work on these, his inker was tending mostly to the close-up faces and nearer figures. Kubert's inks show on the backgrounds and distant figures. Even some of the display lettering is Kubert's. The emanata, to use Mort Walker's expression for the lines indicating emotion, are certainly a Kubert tool. The point arrives where Everett Raymond Kinstler inks mostly everything, but you can look hard enough and still see Kubert, ghostly, underneath; see the jail and especially its sign from "Silvertip's Trap" in 1959.

The only inside-front-cover page where I can see Kubert pencils is "Zorro's Pistol" in FC 538.

I haven't seen FC 572, "Silvertip's Search," but like the rest of these it's attributed to Kinstler, so it 's probably the 15th Kubert-and-Kinstler issue. The art on the other Silvertip not listed here, FC 835, "The False Riders," is by other hands.

As I was getting together these books out of order, it was after I'd started this list that I found this 2013 comment from Josemas on Comics Plus for FC 491: "Looks like Kinstler had been studying Kubert before doing this job."

Four Color
Pencils by Joe Kubert
Inks by Everett Raymond Kinstler and Kubert

Aug/53	491	Silvertip
Sept/	497	The Sword of Zorro
Feb/54	534	Western Marshal
Mar/	538	The Mask of Zorro
Aug/	574	The Hand of Zorro
Oct/	591	Western Marshal: The Spanish Mine
Feb/55	613	Western Marshal and the Cattle War

Pencils by Kubert
Inks by Kinstler

Aug/	640	Western Marshal and the Iron Horse
Dec/	667	Silvertip and the Stolen Stallion
Feb/56	675	Steve Donovan: Showdown
Oct/	731	Silvertip and the Fighting Four
Feb/57	768	Steve Donovan: White Gold
		Steve Donovan: Two Men Out
Apr/	789	Silvertip and the Valley Thieves
May/59	898	Silvertip's Trap

Some Leo Dorfman TV Westerns

Here's Day 1 of Freshman Intro to Logic illustrated again: Otto Binder is known to have written Broken Arrow; Four Color 947 is an issue of Broken Arrow; therefore Otto Binder wrote Four Color 947. Shakespeare wrote plays; Hamilton is a play; therefore Shakespeare wrote Hamilton.

Although at this point Leo Dorfman has yet to use the caption structure "In the next agonizing moment..." as heavily as he will in the Sixties, he's leading up to it with "Short moments later..."; these tiers are from his first issues of the respective titles below, with the stories "Vengeance Trail," "Last of the Buffalo," and  "The Maverick."

Another Dorfman clue is variations of "Eeeyowww" and "Yowww," whereas Paul S. Newman mostly sticks to a succint "Oww!" In Binder's Broken Arrow issue we find an "Ukkk!"

BROKEN ARROW

Nov/57	#855	Apache Dowry	Otto Binder
		Kingdom of Terror	Binder
Nov/58	#947	Desert Ordeal	Leo Dorfman
		Vengeance Trail	Dorfman
		Trackdown	Dorfman

CHEYENNE written by Leo Dorfman
(other issues written by Paul S. Newman)

May-July/58	#7	The Mustang Trail
		Last of the Buffalo
Aug-Oct/	#8	Devil's Canyon
		The Conspirators
Nov-Jan/59	#9	Manhunt
		Trouble in Peace Valley
Feb-Apr/	#10	Gunpowder Pass
		The Ghost Trail
May-July/	#11	The Rio Smugglers
		The Crooked Circle

GUNSMOKE written by Dorfman
(other Dell and Gold Key issues written by Newman)

Feb-Mar/58	#7	Showdown
		The Maverick
Apr-May/	#8	The Taming of Bull Halloran
		Six-Gun Fury
June-July/	#9	Man Without a Gun
		The Bounty Hunter
Aug-Sep/	#10	The Deadly Dude
		Badge of Honor

More 60s Carl Pfeufer Work

The art on Dell's TV tie-in Gentle Ben is an interesting progression across the issues: Henry Scarpelli on #1, José Delbo on #2, Scarpelli inking Delbo on #3—and then on #4 someone who was not the Dell stalwart that they were. The name of the mystery artist fell into place when I came back to look at that issue after finding Carl Pfeufer at Dell on one 2-issue title: The Courtship of Eddie's Father.

Carl Pfeufer art on Gentle Ben

Nov/68	4	The Derelict
		The Collector
		Dumb Animal?

All the stories in the 5-issue run (the last one a reprint, because of course Dell) of Gentle Ben were written by D. J. Arneson. His trademark "Great Scot" is in a few of them, and his use of ellipses instead of hyphens in stuttered words—"B...but" rather than "B-but"—in most.

Mr. District Attorney Writers III--"How in Hannah?"

Here are the writers that jumped out at me on a sweep through these issues. The panel from "Blueprint of a Traitor" shows how Dick Wood can be easily spotted more often than not. As with France Edward Herron and Jack Miller, and of course other writers, he may have more stories in these issues, but ones where he hasn't been quite so obvious.

Mr. District Attorney writers Part 3

Sep-Oct/50	#17	The Bachelors of Crime	Ed Herron
Nov-Dec/	#18	The Phantom Thief	Herron
May-June/51	#21	The D.A. Pounds a Beat	Herron
July-Aug/	#22	Blueprint of a Traitor	Dick Wood
Sep-Oct/	#23	Diary of a Criminal	Wood
		The Big Basketball Fix	Wood
		The Gang with 1,000 Gimmicks	Herron
Nov-Dec/	#24	The Killer in the Iron Mask	Herron
Jan-Feb/52	#25	I Hired My Killer!	Herron
Mar-Apr/	#26	The Case of the Wanted Criminals	Wood
		The Prisoner in Cell 13	Herron
May-June/	#27	The Crimes of Caesar Torro	Wood
July-Aug/	#28	The Sound Waves of Crime	Wood
Sep-Oct/	#29	The Crimes of Mr. Jumbo	Wood
		The Case of the Outlaw Broadcasters	Wood
Jan-Feb/53	#31	The Hot Money Gang	Wood
Mar-Apr/	#32	The Case of the Bad Luck Clues	Wood
		The T.V. Gang	Jack Miller
July-Aug/	#34	The Amazing Crimes of Mr. X	Herron
Sep-Oct/	#35	This Crime for Hire	Herron
		Gangland's Rubout Squad	Herron
Nov-Dec/	#36	The Chameleon of Crime	Herron
		The Life and Death of a Criminal	Miller

Casebook Mystery in Mr. District Attorney

May-Jun/53

#33

The Case of the Night-Shift Scandal

Miller

A Guess at a Madhouse Artist

I believe the artist who did three pieces for Madhouse, and as far as I can see nothing else for Archie, is Don Orehek. His style changes somewhat across the years at the B&W humor magazines like Cracked (the page here is from its #35, April/64), but I tell myself I see resemblances. The Madhouse page is from the #10 "Double Take." The first tier, at least, could be a Shut-Up at Cracked.

Or this may be someone whose name we'll never know.

Don Orehek(?) art in Archie's Madhouse

Feb/61	10	Double Take
Apr/	11	How to Improve TV
Dec/	16	Double Take [new]

The Sensation Character Find of 1953--Slinky Stinky

Here's a character-centric update to my transcriptions in this blog's early days of William Woolfolk's records notebook. (The original material is in plain text; bold represents my additions.) For years I couldn't find these stories—I couldn't even find mention of the character online in 2012. That particular long national nightmare is over...

As far as I know, it wasn't until a scan of Fawcett's Funny Animals 83 (by Narfstar and darkmark) was released into the wild that the name Slinky Stinky got onto the Grand Comics Database. I've only just gotten around to looking at the scan.

Although I suspected he was related by the fact that Mr. Pooch was mentioned, Freddy Feline, I now can see, was never in the GCD at all. But the Slinky Stinky story title in FA 82, as now reported, matches up handily with Woolfolk's storyline description.

Woolfolk wrote the entirety of the Slinky Stinky canon, as #83 was the last Fawcett issue.

Written by William Woolfolk in March 1953

9 pg	Freddy Feline	wants Pooch's swimming pool
	as Slinky Stinky	"The Stolen Swimming Pool" Funny Animals 82, Oct/53

In May 1953

9 pg	Slinky Stinky	poses as hare in a hare hunt
		"Safe—by a Hare!" FA 83, Jan/54
9 pg	Slinky Stinky	tries to collect on Mr. Pooch's insurance
		"Mr. Pooch's Policy" FA 83, Jan/54

Mr. District Attorney Writers--Spotlight on Phil Evans

Writer Phil Evans' records (published by Robin Snyder in his History of the Comics) specify some of his stories of Mr. District Attorney and the DC title's crime back-ups, but not all; there are unnamed others in the range of numbers 6-15 (I find one in #16 too).

The first clue to an Evans story is his use of "Hmm" or "Huh" at the beginning of a sentence but following by a comma rather than the more usual dash or ellipsis (not that he doesn't use those too). These are panels from "Fake Accident Racket," which is in the records, and "The Alibi King," which isn't; the latter uses "Huh" in this fashion a good four times. Pencils by Howard Purcell on issues 6 through 59.

Mr. District Attorney writers Part 2
(* = in Phil Evans' records)

Nov-Dec/48	#6	The Big Frame	Ed Herron
Jan-Feb/49	#7	The People vs. Killer Kale	Herron
		The Case of the Vanishing Crook	Herron
		The Street of Forgotten Men	Herron
Mar-Apr/	#8	The Rise and Fall of "Lucky" Lynn	Phil Evans
		The Case of the Money Makers	Herron
May-June/	#9	The Case of the Living Counterfeits	Herron
July-Aug/	#10	Dragnet	Herron
Sep-Oct/	#11	The Game That Has No Winners	Evans *
		The Man Who Laughed at Bullets	Herron
		Second Chance Farm	Herron
Nov-Dec/	#12	Fake Accident Racket	Evans *
		I Defended the Monkey Man	Evans
Jan-Feb/50	#13	The Execution of Caesar Larsen	Herron
		The False Rumor Factory	Evans *
		Where Is Marvyn Moon?	Herron
Mar-Apr/	#14	The Alibi King	Evans
		Murder at Ceiling Zero	Evans
May-June/	#15	Prison Train	Herron
		The Man Who Fooled Juries	Herron
July-Aug/	#16	The Crime Warden	Evans

Mr. District Attorney: Eppure è Ed Dobrotka

Nowadays I can't compare this artist's work to any of what he did on Superman, because on the Grand Comics Database the Jerry Siegel records at one remove of the Shuster Shop work seem to be disappearing Ed Dobrotka from the feature and replacing him in the history books with the mistakenly mentioned Sam Citron.

Well, Dobrotka also worked on the Seven Soldiers of Victory at DC, and Captain Triumph and Betty Bates at Quality (Sam Citron worked there too, but on different features and later, in a style recognizable from his credited stories later still at ACG). Here is art from the Betty Bates story in Hit 40 (May 1946) to compare with panels from DC's radio show tie-in title Mr. District Attorney—ones from "The Million-Dollar Racket," "Station K-I-L-L," and "The Case of the Fat Crook." A very different inking style almost suffocates the pencils on Mr. District Attorney; still, art-spotters have discerned Dobrotka's style underneath, but—sigh—misattributed it to Citron.

France Edward Herron's scripts are distinctive enough to jump out at me while I'm primarily looking for the artist.

Mr. District Attorney stories
pencilled by Ed Dobrotka

Jan-Feb/48	#1	The Innocent Forger
		The Five Days That Shook a City
		The Million-Dollar Racket	w: Ed Herron
		The Spook Crooks
Mar-Apr/	#2	The Richest Man in Prison	w: Herron
		The Case of the Crooked Models
		The Case of the Blind Crook	w: Herron
		Station K-I-L-L
May-June/	#3	The Honest Convicts	w: Herron
		The Case of the Fat Crook	w: Herron
		In This Corner—Death	w: Herron
July-Aug/	#4	The Merchant of Death	w: Herron
		The False Code of Honor	w: Herron
		Death Writes a Forgery
		The Case of the Loan Shark
Sept-Oct/	#5	The Booby-Trap Killer
		The Gas-Man Sleuth	w: Herron
		The Counterfeit Medicine Mob

More Sekowsky/Robinson

There's no question that Mike Sekowsky worked on Dear Nancy Parker, Gold Key's short-lived romance title. "Going Steady," the final Nancy Parker story in #2, has long been noted as his pencils; the inks are by Sekowsky perennial Frank Giacoia (and maybe Joe Giella, who often teamed with Giacoia on inking Sekowsky).

Sekowsky penciled the rest of the Nancy Parker stories too, as this page from "Sick at Heart" in #1 shows, even more clearly than the page I used as an example on my Lassie post. (This post is restating of my reply to Alberto's comment on that post—here I can show this page.) Again, the inks are, I take it, Jerry Robinson's. If Sekowsky did "Going Steady" for Gold Key then he must have done these stories for them too; he isn't actually a ghost for Robinson.

As on Lassie 60-62's Elephant Boy backup, the Nancy Parker Great Loves backup does not involve Mike Sekowsky.

Sekowsky/Robinson art on Dear Nancy Parker

June/63	#1	Sick at Heart
		Love Song for One
		Delay for Love
Sep/	#2	Summer Romance
		I'm Misunderstood

Joe Millard's Love and Jugheads

Quality put out a lot of romance stories, and on a lot of them I have no idea of the writer, but on the short-run western themed Range Romances I was able to ID writer Joe Millard—no stranger to westerns—on a good handful of stories.

On "Kisses of Hate" as seen here he uses "Grawwwk," something you see more often in his Plastic Man than in the typical romance story, but he also uses a term from his other westerns: "jughead" for a horse.

Joe Millard
Range Romances Scripts

Dec/49	1	Petticoat Law
		Outlaw Love
		Tenderfoot Sweetheart
Feb/50	2	Rustled Kisses
		She-Devil Canyon
		Passion for Vengeance
June/	4	Kisses of Hate

Mo Marcus Briefly Visits the House of Secrets

It's easier to find an artist by their work on one-shot secondary characters than on established ones. Thus you don't want to ID the pencils here by looking at House of Secrets host Abel; the soda jerk, in both of his panels, is a typical Mo Marcus character; he looks like he fell lengthwise in a vise.

Most of the framing material in HOS under Dick Giordano's editorship follows a storyline through the introduction, the interludes if any, and into the conclusion of the issue. In #84 the intro leads into the first story but the conclusion follows a different storyline out of the last story. I believe Bill Draut pencilled for himself on the #84 intro. Since he did do full art on most of the HOS frame stories Draut's inking the Marcus conclusion in #84 and the Dick Dillin full frame in #82 does make them look at first glance like his work.

Some Dick Giordano-era House of Secrets attributions

Oct-Nov/69	#82	[frame story]	p: Dick Dillin  i: Bill Draut
		Realer than Real	p: John Celardo  i: Vince Colletta
		Sudden Madness	p: Celardo  i: Celardo? Giordano?
		The Little Old Winemaker	w: D. J. Arneson
Feb-Mar/70	#84	[frame conclusion]	p: Mo Marcus  i: Draut
Dec-Jan/71	#89	Where Dead Men Walk	w: Jack Oleck

Jack Oleck is credited on the Direct Currents page in #89.

A Writer Credited in the Letters Column

Robert Plate is credited on the splash pages with writing over half the stories of Homer K. Beagle, Demon Detective in Novelty's Young King Cole and its retitled continuation Criminals on the Run; from my study of them he wrote every Homer K. Beagle story.

Novelty beat EC and ACG in regularly running letter columns by the better part of a decade, as the company began theirs in 1940. On Plate's other series for Novelty no one was ever credited as writer on the stories themselves, but he was credited with creating Toni Gayle, as he had Homer K. Beagle, in the letter column of Young King Cole Volume 3 #12 (July 1948). Thus he wrote their stories in Volume 1 #1 (Fall/45). The editors also mention him as the writer of detective/model Toni's story in Vol 3 #12 itself, a credit reflected in the Grand Comics Database.

Here I've added the Toni Gayle stories I can be certain from the style that Plate wrote, although I believe he authored most of her series in YKC. I don't see him writing her stories when the series moves to Guns Against Gangsters and 4Most.

Toni Gayle written by Robert Plate
in Young King Cole

Fall/45	v1 #1	Meet Toni Gayle [credited]
Win/46	v1 #2	A Lesson in Crime Detection
Spr/	v1 #3	Close to a Cold, Cold Ending
Sum/	v1 #4	Hollywood, the Land of Make-Believe
Dec-Jan/47	v2 #3	A Famous Winter Resort
June/	v2 #6	The Case of the Leaping Emerald
Sept/	v3 #2	Enacts the Role of a Dead Woman
Jan/48	v3 #6	Thrills and Chills in an Amusement Park
July/	v3 #12	Redstone Park [credited]

The Unnoticed Lassie Artist

Jerry Robinson drew Gold Key's Lassie #60-62, but he did full art on the Elephant Boy backups only.

Mike Sekowsky's pencils are buried at times under Robinson's inks on the Lassie stories. This page is from "The Yawning Pit." I'd say Sekowsky is most obvious in the first panel; if you judge by the middle tier as you flip through the comic, you might be hard put to attach his name to the page.

This title, by the way, is an example of why when I've mentioned the separation between Western Publishing's East and West Coast offices I've said something along the lines of "most of the time," because West Coast writer Gaylord Du Bois and East Coast artists like Sekowsky, Robinson, Bob Fujitani, and Jack Sparling share a long run on Lassie.

Sekowsky/Robinson art on Lassie

Jan/63	#60	Between Life and Death
		The Milk of Human Kindness
Apr/	#61	The Yawning Pit
		Spears Among the Shadows
July/	#62	Monster of the Marshes
		The Raft