The Artist on Gold Key's Wally

I had no idea who did the art on Gold Key's teen title Wally (#1, Dec/62–#4, Sep/63). I wondered if I'd seen it on a syndicated strip like Penny, but that one didn't match up.

Some time later I saw the same artist's work on a couple of fillers in Standard's Kathy--but that still didn't give me a name. And some time after that I found it again, in more of those fillers, on Standard's Intimate Love 25 (Nov/53). Here, however, James Vadeboncoeur, Jr., had already IDed the artist: Paul Robinson.

Robinson did do a sydicated strip--Etta Kett--for almost half a century: from 1925 to 1974. The day's strip here is from 1966. On the four issues of Wally he drew the Wally stories, backup Yvette stories, covers, and text headers; this tier is from "Ballots and Belles" in #2.

Are there any assistants involved? I don't know. The Wally writer is hardly likely to be John Stanley as the GCD guesses; he was pretty busy over at Dell at the time. UPDATE: Jake Oster has told me that in an Alter Ego interview Herb Rogoff recalled writing Wally for editor Wally Green.

These are Robinson's fillers in that issue of Kathy at Standard:

June/53	15	How's About That!! Starring Beezey!!
		Justeen and Bucky

Gunsmoke Western's Antedi-Lee-vian Kid Colt Writer

In an interview where Joe Gill was describing how he wrote at such a sustained pace, his example was not any one of the many Charlton characters but Kid Colt at Timely/Atlas. One sign of his scripting is "This was [situation]," as here on the splash of "No Place to Turn," as well as the splash caption of "The Gunhawks of Terror Street" and the first caption after the splash in "Showdown Street."

Jetta by Dan DeCarlo--But Not Exclusively

Dan DeCarlo started out Standard's Jetta but did not do the entire three-issue run. "What a Specimen" is indisputably DeCarlo--down to the dog--but "Pardon My Power (the bottom tier here) is just as indisputably not. The girl in the foreground in the second panel sure looks like a Joe Edwards one to me.

I think the inker on most of the Jetta stories and covers is Rudy Lapick, which would help explain the different pencillers' work being taken for that of one; Lapick and DeCarlo have a Leroy story signed together at Standard in Roger Dodger #5 (Aug/52).

Fred Eng signed the Zoomer back-up in #5. His inking credits on #4 are from the Grand Comiucs Database.

I picked out the writing style of Joe Archibald--at this point Standard's editor--on Supermouse, comparing it with his signed work a decade earlier at Ace; when I'm sure of more of his stories for the Mouse of Might I'll start posting those. The ones I've given question marks here are not 100% certainties but fairly good possibilities.

Jetta

Dec.52	5	[cover]	p: Dan DeCarlo
		Man Trouble	w: Joe Archibald  p: DeCarlo
		Jet Jaunt	w: Archibald? p: DeCarlo
		Frat Race [ZOOMER]	a: Fred Eng
		My Cosmic Hero	w: Archibald  p: DeCarlo
Feb/53	6	[cover]	p: DeCarlo
		What a Specimen	w: Archibald  p: DeCarlo
		Music from Afar	w: Archibald?  p: not DeCarlo  i: Eng
		Time Out for Trouble [ZOOMER]	w: Archibald  p: not DeCarlo  i: Eng
		Pardon My Power	w: Archibald  p: Joe Edwards
Apr/	7	[cover]	p: DeCarlo
		Act Your Age!	w: Archibald  p: Edwards?
		Double Trouble [ZOOMER]	w: Archibald? a: Eng?
		Atom and Evil	w: ? p: same as "Music" in #6
		Celestial Celebrity	w: Archibald?  p: Edwards

Leo Dorfman's Four-Color Classics

Now that I've seen all the Four-Color movie issues, I believe this is close to a full listing of Leo Dorfman's scripts on them--a handful out of the grand total of over a hundred produced by Western before the numbering ended in 1962. (I don't find any Dorfman movie comics after the switchover to Gold Key.)

These tiers from "The Boy and the Pirates" (art by Tom Gill) showcase a typical Dorfman caption: In the next frightening moment... and the like. In this issue he uses Just then... a couple of times, and a number of captions beginning with As.

I've mentioned before how an early-Seventies Murray Boltinoff letters page referred to "The Vikings" and others as "classics in comics," instantly leading fandom to conclude that Dorfman had written for Gilberton when it was Western and Fawcett he did movie adaptations for.

Leo Dorfman scripts on
Movie Four-Colors

Jun/56	709	The Searchers
Sep/	741	The Fastest Gun Alive
Jan/57	762	The Sharkfighters
Jul/	815	Dragoon Wells Massacre
Sep/	831	No Sleep Till Dawn
Jun/58	910	The Vikings
Jun/60	1117	The Boy and the Pirates
Jun/	1118	The Sword and the Dragon
Oct/	1148	I Aim at the Stars

A Paperback Cover Swipe -- Look Closely

Erstwhile comics artist Gray Morrow's cover for the Perry Rhodan book Fortress Atlantis (1974) reminded me of something else, and I finally realized it was the general layout of Robert Foster's cover for Davy (1964). A closer look shows that parts of it are actually swiped -- the torsos and legs of the figures are exactly the same on the two covers.

Nor a swipe, but possibly inspired by the same source I can't pin down, here is another Perry Rhodan that made me say, "Where have I seen that before?" The Wallace Wood page is from Dynamo #1 (Aug/66).

Jack Oleck Stories in Three Atlas Titles

Writer Jack Oleck came to Atlas right around the time the Comics Code was instituted, in 1955. His output there was steady but not prolific; his average on the fantasy titles wasn't much more than a story an issue.

Here are a couple of the titles that started up at the beginning of the Code era, and one that started later. Around the beginning of 1959 the writing was being turned over to pretty much Larry Lieber (with Stan Lee), leading into the monster era. Oleck had no stories in the newest titles, Strange Worlds or Tale to Astonish, and only this one in Tales of Suspense. World of Suspense ended with #8; World of Fantasy continued to #19 in 1959 with no more from Oleck.

Jack Oleck scripts
in World of Fantasy

Jul/56	#2	One Night
Nov/	#4	The Only Clue
Jan/57	#5	Back to the Lost City
May/	#7	Someone in the Flames
Feb/58	#10	The Secret Men
Jun/	#12	The Next World
Oct/	#14	Lost in the City That Didn't Exist
		The Mole Mystery
Dec/	#15	Mystery of the Mountain
		Strange Doings in Cell 4-B

in World of Suspense

Aug/56	#3	The Man Who Couldn't Be Touched
Oct/	#4	Something Is in This House
Dec/	#5	Menace Below
Feb/57	#6	Come into My Parlor
		Foster's Fear
Apr/	#7	The World's Strangest Crime
		The Lost Island
Jul/	#8	Prisoner of the Ghost Ship

in Tales of Suspense

Jan/59

#1

The Day I Left My Body

Some Mickey Klar Marks Comics Stories, from the Records

These are the comic book stories I could positively ID in the online listing of the Mickey Klar Marks papers in the University of Southern Mississippi's collection, having already posted her Zany Giraffe ones. The majority of her work in comics is text pieces, so USM notes which among her papers are comics scripts.

There are a good number not here, ones that are identified only by the feature (another Flip-Flap, more Pug & Curlys, and so on) and others whose titles were changed too completely to find, if they were indeed published. In the case of her Millie, Nellie, and Mitzi scripts for Timely, the relevant issues may well not be available to index yet.

On all listed here except for Little Audrey, the publisher is Parents' Magazine, so when something sold to Funny Book is published in Calling All Kids it's just been shifted among the publisher's titles.

The lines in bold are the descriptions of the scripts as given in USM's listing.

SOME COMICS STORIES WRITTEN BY
MICKEY KLAR MARKS

"Billy Boy," sold to "Funny Book," 20 March, 1946, 2 pp.

"Musical Comics: Billy Boy" Calling All Kids 5, Sep-Oct/46

"Comin' Thru the Rye," sold to "Funny Book," 1946, 2 pp.

"Musical Comics: Coming Through the Rye" Calling All Kids 7, Feb/47

"Flip Flap and the Crying Hyena," sold to "Funny Book," 1946, 4 pp.

"Flip-Flap and the Crying Hyena" Calling All Kids 7, Feb/47

"Flip Flap Joins the Navy," sold to "Funny Book," 1946, 4 pp.

"Flip-Flap Joins the Navy" Calling All Kids 18, Apr/48

"The Hobo Dog," sold to "True Comics," 1946, 3 pp.

"Butch the Bum" True Comics 60, May/47

"Kid Sister," sold to "Sweet Sixteen," 1947, 4 pp.

"Kid Sister" Sweet Sixteen 9, Sep/47

"Little Audrey and the Petticoats," sold to "St. John Pub.," 1949, 5pp.

"Little Audrey and the Petticoats" Little Audrey 8, Jan/50

"Little Audrey -- The Big Help," sold to "St. John Pub.," 1949, 6 pp.

"The Big Help" Little Audrey 9, Mar/50

"The Needle in the Haystack," sold to "Funny Book," 1947, 2 pp. (rebus)

"The Needle in the Haystack" Calling All Kids 4, Jul-Aug/46

"Mystery of Croak Pond," sold to "Funny Book," 1945, 4 pp.

"Croak Pond Mystery" Funny Book 8, Jun-Jul/45

"Pug & Curly," sold to "Calling All Kids,"

"Crossing Stream," March 1947, 4 pp.

"Pug and Curly" Calling All Kids 11, Aug/47

"Sailboat," May 1947, 4 pp.

"Pug and Curly in Trouble at Sea" Calling All Kids 12, Sep/47

"Sally's Slanguage," sold to "Polly Pigtails," 1945, 1 p.

"Sudie's Slanguage" Polly Pigtails 7, Aug/46 (2 pp.)

"Sea Shell Maker," sold to "Funny Book," 1945, 4 pp.

"The Sea-Shell Maker" Calling All Kids 5, Sep-Oct/46

"Twinkle: Amusement Park," sold to "Calling All Kids," 1947, 5 pp.

"Twinkle Makes a Merry-Go-Round" Calling All Kids 12, Sep/47

"The Yankee Clipper," sold to "True Comics," 1947, 8 pp.

"Joe Di Maggio--The Yankee Clipper" True Comics 71, May/48

Unnamed series for "Sweet Sixteen" and "Polly Pigtails"

"Teen Age Columnist," 1947, 4 pp.

"Kid Columnist" Polly Pigtails 25, Feb/48 (2pp.)

"Spot Sees Spots Before His Eyes," sold to "Novelty," 1945, 3 pp. has to be a Zany Giraffe story, although unidentified in the collection as such (in the published story the character is named Spots; Spot is the dog in Novelty's Speck, Spot and Sis series). I've updated my Zany post to reflect that.

Jack Mendelsohn's Issue of Alvin

I was rechecking Dell's Alvin for Don Segall's stories when I found Jack Mendelsohn's style on #5--unexpectedly, as the Who's Who does not mention that as one of his strips. Since I'd been looking through Standards' funny animal titles just before that, I soon recognized refries from Mendelsohn-scripted stories at Standard as well as Quality. Does anyone recognize the plots of the two stories for which I didn't find earlier versions?

It looks like Segall returns after this one Mendelsohn issue, but other hands have taken over the writing by the end of the run of new stories in 1967.

Alvin
(* = single page)

O-D/62	#1	A Trip to Chinatown *	w: Don Segall
		Alvin the Scientist	w: Segall
		Alvin's Pet	w: Segall
		A Day in the Country	w: Segall
		Let's Paint a House	w: Segall
		Flying Studio	w: Segall
		David's Birthday Present *	w: Segall
		Car Trouble *	w: Segall
J-M/63	#2	Do-It-Yourself Disaster *	w: Segall
		A Day at the Farm	w: Segall
		Alvin and the Burglars	w: Segall
		Alvin in Orbit	w: Segall
		Team Spirit	w: Segall
		Alvin's Interview	w: Segall
		Wrong Number *	w: Segall
A-J/	#3	Bubble Up *	w: Segall
		Among the Canned Goods	w: Segall
		Alvin's Paper Route	w: Segall
		A Day at the Zoo...	w: Segall
		The Motor Scooter	w: Segall
		E-fishin'-cy	w: Segall
		Chicken for Dinner *	w: Segall
J-S/	#4	Spoiled Brat *	w: Segall
		Roughing It	w: Segall
		Subway Sidney	w: Segall
		Sweet Kids	w: Segall
		Culture Caper	w: Segall
		Tree House	w: Segall
O-D/	#5	Share and Share a Bike *	w: Jack Mendelsohn
		from "3 of a Kind"

Buddy Bear in GOOFY 44 (Jul/51)

Water on the Brain

w: Mendelsohn

		from "Water, Water Everywhere"
		Percy Pig in HAPPY 41 (Feb/51)
		via "Water on the Brain"
		BUSTER BEAR 5 (Aug/54)

Snow Fun

w: Mendelsohn

		from 1st Prince Pinky and Pudd story
		in MARMADUKE MOUSE 35 (Feb/53)

		Auto Mission	w: Mendelsohn
		Rink Jinx	w: Mendelsohn

Little Angela in Alvin

O-D/63

#5

No Space for Rant

w: Mendelsohn

I didn't find an earlier version of this particular story, the first in the backup series, but Mendelsohn wrote for Standard's Little Angel--what's the difference in a single letter?

A Sound-Effect Clue

This is Jim Wilcox--most of whose work was on Dick Cole and Young King Cole for Novelty--on a non-comics piece of work, an ad for Grosset & Dunlap's Rick Brant Electronic Adventure series. This was run on the back of number 4, 100 Fathoms Below, and probably on others like the Hardy Boys series. Rick Brant was by "John Blaine"--Hal Goodwin with, on the first three (the ones mentioned in the ad) Peter J. Dawkins.

The thing that led me to Wilcox--and once you compare this to his comics work, it's obviously his art--is the sound effect "Soc!" In story after story the two Cole series contain ones like "Poc," "Thoc," Thuc," and "Whac"--do you see a pattern? This tier is from an early Dick Cole, in Blue Bolt vol 4 #9 (Apr/44).

In the letter column in Blue Bolt vol 9 #1 (Aug/48) the editors say that Wilcox "has been doing some of the writing and artwork on (Dick Cole) for five years." As the story in that issue is drawn by Alden McWilliams and it still contains a "Soc," I would say the writer has continued on the feature--whether that's necessarily Wilcox is the question.

Mickey Klar Marks's Zany Giraffe

Mickey Klar Marks donated her papers to the University of Southern Mississippi, and an inventory is online. These are not records like William Woolfolk's notebook, but rather copies--I suppose carbons--of her scripts, with a notation on each as to the publisher who bought it.

For comic books Marks wrote mostly fiction text pieces, but she did write a few comics stories. The Zany Giraffe series in Novelty's, later Premium's, Frisky Fables is hers. Although the installments were published without titles, these are her working ones. The only byline on each was "art by Jim Adams."

The story hook in each episode is that Zany is the only one who can solve a problem for the forest creatures but since giraffes have no vocal cords, it takes some effort to get his idea across.

Zany Giraffe's strip appeared on-and-off. I believe these are all of the strip's original appearances. There are a handful of scripts in the USM collection that seem to have gone unpublished: Zany Earns a Badge; Zany Giraffe, American; A New Twist; and Zany Takes a Stand. I can't reconcile any with the Spots story. [UPDATE: It wasn't labeled as a Zany story in the collection; here's Marks's working title replacing my description. The character is named Spots in the published story itself; Spot is the dog in Novelty's Speck, Spot and Sis series.] However, the collection of papers may not not complete; there are some bylined text pieces of hers published whose typescripts are not at USM (at least under the published titles).

Zany Giraffe in Frisky Fables
written by Mickey Klar Marks

Win/46	v1 #3	Zany Engineers a Rescue
Apr/	v2 #1	Zany Solves a Mystery
July/	v2 #4	Zany Furthers Education
Sept/	v2 #6	Zany Almost Talks
Oct/	v2 #7	Zany and the Tigers
Nov/	v2 #8	Zany Starts a Trading Post
Feb/47	v2 #11	Zany Debunks a Ghost
Apr/	v3 #1	Zany Sticks His Neck Out
May/	v3 #2	The Taffy Pull
Aug/	v3 #5	Spot Sees Spots Before His Eyes
Oct/	v3 #7	Zany Giraffe Becomes Mayor
Dec/	v3 #9	Zany Helps Heat a House
Feb-Mar/49	v4 #7	Zany Stars in a New Role
Aug-Sept/	v5 #3	Zany Turns Nautical

Who Are Roppe?

The signature "Roppe" on the cover of Charlton's Davy Crockett #1 in 1955 is a portmanteau name like "Brangelina." In this case it's Mike Roy and Mike Peppe. The fact that they did the issue's first story (unsigned) gives more pages of art to corroborate the ID.

Roy and Peppe were doing a knock-off here of Fess Parker's Davy Crockett from "Disneyland"; a decade later they were drawing Parker as another frontiersman, as in the story tier above, from Gold Key's Daniel Boone 6 (Aug/66).

I assume this first issue is assembled out of inventory bought from one of those companies getting out of comics in the mid-Fifties, but I have no idea which. There are a Red Roan text story and Big Bow and Little Arrow humor piece from Fawcett, but Charlton mixed those into everything.

Roy and Peppe art on
Charlton's Davy Crockett

Aug/55	1	[cover]
		Indian Attack

Jack Oleck's Western Oeuvre

Jack Oleck did all of one Western story for DC that I can think of, and it was a weird Western. EC had long given up on Westerns by the time he worked for them, and so far I haven't run across any such stories by him at Atlas.

As he was writing weird, crime, and romance for Prize, he did have two distinct blocks of issues on their Prize Western--and almost all on series. In fact, he wrote all of the Preacher and Jeff Baker stories and created the Drifter as well, although I don't think he wrote all of that series' stories.

Oleck's style is most distinctive when he philosophizes in captions in addition to the standard description, as in the first one in the story proper of "Lynch Law." He uses "In the end, __" and "Almost, __" often. To corroborate myself on some of these stories I did look further into his exclamations and sound effects.

Prize Comics Western
Written by Jack Oleck

Jul-Aug/50	82	The Preacher
		Death Draws a Circle [NON-FICTION]
Sep-Oct/	83	The Danger Trail [PREACHER]
Nov-Dec/	84	Lynch Law [PREACHER]
Jan-Feb/51	85	Dead Man's Gold [PREACHER]
Mar-Apr/	86	War Party [JEFF BAKER]
		Range War [PREACHER]
May-Jun/	87	Vengeance Trail [JEFF BAKER]
		The Preacher Goes Home
Jul-Aug/	88	Ambush! [JEFF BAKER]
		Double Trouble [PREACHER]
Sep-Oct/	89	Trouble in Lost Valley [JEFF BAKER]
		Death on the River [PREACHER]
Nov-Dec/	90	Six Gun Law [PREACHER]
Mar-Apr/52	92	Buffalo Stampede [JEFF BAKER]
Nov-Dec/55	114	American Eagle Meets the Maverick
		The Drifter
		American Eagle Discovers a Secret Weapon
Jan-Feb/56	115	Bad Medicine [AMERICAN EAGLE]
		The Drifter Uncovers the Brand of the Outlaw
		American Eagle Arranges a Duel
Sep-Oct/	118	Liberty Belle [AMERICAN EAGLE]
Nov-Dec/	119	American Eagle Battles a Fanged Fury
		The Drifter Stirs Up a Hornet's Nest of Lies, Loot and Lead

Joe Gill--After the Human Torch, What?

This is one of the features Joe Gill wrote at Timely/Atlas after the Human Torch revival. The only story in Spy Thillers that I can't make out as his is the backup in #4, which is actually a war story--it may have been brought over from one of the battle mags.

"This is" in captions is one of  the clues to Joe Gill--here you see it in "The Double Identities" and "Oil!" In the same tier in the latter you see it in the past tense too, as you're more likely to see it in Gill's Charlton scripts.

Rick Davis in Spy Thrillers—Written by Joe Gill

Nov/54	#1	The Double Identities
		The Purple Pyramid
		The Eyes of Death [MISC SPY]
		The Ticking Death
Jan/55	#2	The Whirl of Death
		The Unseen Killers
		Incident [MISC SPY]
		The Telltale Machines
Mar/	#3	Safari of Death
		The Moon Rocket
		Oil! [MISC SPY]
		The Hatchet Man
May/	#4	The China Doll
		The Tiger's Claws
		The Deadly Dutch Plates

A One-Shot Wonder at Dell Penciling The Music Man

This penciler did only one comic for Dell: the Movie Classic The Music Man (January 1963). His style is rather overwhelmed under the inking, so IDing him calls for the thought experiment of unseeing the inks. It might be easier to imagine someone else's inks here. Try John Forte's; he inked Curt Swan to good effect on a number of Superman family stories at DC.

And, yes, on pretty much every other John Forte penciling job that I can think of he inked himself. But here we are. I don't know if this is a tag team of a couple of inkers or just one getting more rushed as the pages pile up, but by the later pages the inking doesn't look much like it does on these two. Those later pages in particular make me think of Frank McLaughlin as a possible suspect.
And the writer is unknown. It may just be because I'm so familiar with the movie of The Music Man, but this strikes me as the one Movie Classic that uses just as much as possible from the movie script verbatim (apart from necessarily condensing and bridging). The other Dell movie adaptations of the period, by Ken Fitch, Don Segall, and yet more unknowns, take a freer hand with the source material.

Candy to Felix to Tippy

I've posted some of Jack Mendelsohn's Tippy Teen scripts at Tower recycled from his own Candy ones at Quality. A closer look at his Felix the Cat work at Dell showed me some of those were recycled from Quality—not only Candy but the funny animals. Then I saw that he redid some Felixes for Tippy and her friend Go-Go. (Let me repeat that, from the style, he scripted all these stories—he didn't plagiarize anyone else's.)

A Venn diagram would overlap with one story used at all three publishers:

Jack Mendelsohn Felix the Cat
scripts reworked from his Quality ones

Apr-June/63	3	Frozen Assets
		from "Asleep in the Deep-Freeze"
		CANDY 44 (Nov/53)
July-Sep/	4	The Vicious Cycle
		from "Nervous Repair Service"
		BUSTER BEAR 6 (Oct/55)
		Tale of a Fish
		from "Fish Story"
		MARMADUKE MOUSE 48 (Sep/54)
		A Sample Assignment
		from "Buster Gets the Goods"
		BUSTER BEAR 6 (Oct/55)

reworked from Felix in Tippy Teen

Apr/67	12	Beaux & Arrows
		from "Beaux and Arrows"
		FELIX 2 (Jan-Mar/63)
Oct/	16	Foul Weather Friends
		from "Fair Weather Enemies"
		FELIX 3 (Apr-June/63)

in Go-Go and Animal

Dec/ 67	7	The Ice-Cream Man Cometh
		from "Asleep in the Deep-Freeze"
		CANDY 44 (Nov/53)
		via "Frozen Assets"
		FELIX 3 (Apr-June/63)

Phil Evans on the Flying A

On most other features that the Who's Who lists Phil Evans as writing at Western/Dell, his scripts appear much more frequently than on Gene Autry--to the point that sheer guesswork as to his scripts on the Grand Comics Database gives a correct credit a number of times. On Autry's long-running book, though, there are just a handful of Evans credits. Likewise he wrote only one story for the TV title The Flying A's Range Rider--fitting in here inasmuch the Flying A is Gene Autry's production company, named for his ranch.

This partial page from "Gene Autry and the Ghost Prison" sets off Evans alarm twice: his putting a comma after "Haw" and "Huh" instead of an exclamation point. "Wal," of course, is more likely to take a comma to begin with, and you will find it in Autry scripts by other hands.

Written by Phil Evans:
Gene Autry

Sep/50	43	GA and Owlhoots of Deadwood Mesa
Nov/	45	GA and the Ghost Prison
Dec/52	70	GA and the Combination
Mar/53	73	The Wrong Hireling
Apr/	74	Treetop Trickery
		Murder Map
May/54	87	GA and the Haunted Spiderweb

Misc. Western Gene Autry back-up

Mar/53

73

Ghost Town Girl

Range Rider in Four Color

Apr/52

404

RR and the Monster of the Desert

Charles Nicholas Helps Out...Someone Other Than Sal Trapani

Jon D'Agostino signed the covers of Charlton's Archie type, Freddy, and you can follow his style into the stories themselves--most of them, but not all. This tier is from the last story in Freddy 46 (Dec/64): "Bargain Buck Daze." D'Agostino's art is reminiscent of early Stan Goldberg.

This page is from that issue's first story, "The Winner." First compare the flagmen in the two stories, but the policeman's straight-at-the-camera pose in both of his panels is the obvious giveaway for Charles Nicholas' pencils under D'Agostino's inks.

I haven't the full Freddy collection, but I think other issues bear a look too for some penciling help.