The Fawcett Movie Adaptation Writers

Otto Binder wrote three of Fawcett's 35 movie comics issues; the series started off written by Joe Millard and then became Leo Dorfman's most notable assignment there.

Here's a page from "Code of the Silver Sage" with Rocky Lane (Motion Picture Comics 102). The clues to lead to Leo Dorfman are "As" and "Just then" in the captions, but the clincher is the use of periods--all of these not exclusive to Dorfman, but used by him much more often than the other writers at Fawcett at the time. "Ivanhoe" and "The Red Badge of Courage" are, as I never tire of pointing out, the "classics in comics" mentioned in an early 70s Superboy text page and taken by fandom at the time as meaning Classics Illustrated.

 

Writers--
Fawcett movie one-shots

1949		Dakota Lil	Joe Millard
1950		Copper Canyon	Millard
		Destination Moon	Otto Binder
		Montana	Millard
		Pioneer Marshal	Millard
		Powder River Rustlers	Millard
		Singing Guns	Millard

Fawcett Movie Comic

1950	7	Gunmen of Abilene	Binder
Dec/	8	King of the Bull Whip	Leo Dorfman
Feb/51	9	The Old Frontier	Dorfman
Apr/	10	The Missourians	Dorfman
May/	11	The Thundering Trail	Dorfman
Aug/	12	Rustlers on Horseback	Dorfman
Oct/	13	Warpath	Dorfman
Dec/	14	The Last Oupost	Dorfman
Feb/52	15	The Man from Planet X	Binder
Apr/	16	Ten Tall Men	Dorfman
June/	17	Rose of Cimarron	Dorfman
Aug/	18	The Brigand	Dorfman
Oct/	19	Carbine Williams	Dorfman
Dec/	20	Ivanhoe	Dorfman

Motion Picture Comics

1950	101	The Vanishing Westerner	Millard
Jan/51	102	Code of the Silver Sage	Dorfman
Mar/	103	Covered Wagon Raid	Dorfman
May/	104	Vigilante Hideout	Dorfman
July/	105	The Red Badge of Courage	Dorfman
Sep/	106	The Texas Rangers	Dorfman
Nov/	107	Frisco Tornado	Dorfman
Jan/52	108	Mask of the Avenger	Dorfman
Mar/	109	Rough Riders of Durango	Dorfman
May/	110	When Worlds Collide	Dorfman
July/	111	The Vanishing Outpost	Dorfman
Sep/	112	Brave Warrior	Dorfman
Nov/	113	Walk East on Beacon	Dorfman
Jan/53	114	Cripple Creek	Dorfman

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

Future Man to Karzz to Jorzz

Three Otto Binder pieces bear some resemblances. The later ones certainly weren't rewrites, but when Binder sat down to write anew, evidently he was inspired by his earlier work. The resemblance of the first two is old news, but I just read the third and had to compare it to the second to reassure myself that it is indeed a new novel.

In "Menace from the Future World" in All Winners 21 (Winter, 1947), Future Man, who has mental powers, fights the All Winners Squad, who are led by Captain America. To clear 20th Century Earth for his people of 1,000,000 A.D. Earth to inhabit, Future Man intends to use super-science weapons of extermination on five continents.

In The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker (1967), Karzz, an alien from the future, fights the Avengers, who are led by Captain America. He's hidden world-wrecking super weapons in four corners of the globe, as he wants to create an alternate time-line where 70th Century Earth never stands in the way of his galactic conquests.

In The Mind from Outer Space (1972), the alien Jorzz, a free mind with mental powers,is after segments of a super-science secret hidden 35,000 years earlier in four corners of the globe, one that will enable him to conquer the galaxy as he had planned to before he was disembodied back then. The heroes from a scientific think tank fight him with technological super-powers.

The heroes jokingly refer to Jorzz a number of times as "Mister Mind."

Joe Orlando's Girls' Love Stories' Creators

I chose a DC romance comic's run edited by Joe Orlando because he used one writer I can recognize at a glance paging through the comics: Jack Oleck. Another writer surprised me, although he's known to have worked for Orlando in 1969 on House of Mystery—see GLS 146 on the list.

As far as artists go—with the inkers striving to make everything look alike, you could ask ten people and get ten opinions, but here are mine. I will point out that "Laura" in #152 has been attributed to Art Saaf by his son, Steve Saaf per the CGD, but the evidence of the art itself shows that, under Jack Abel's inks, the pencils are by Werner Roth (above). On the other hand, Art Saaf's pencils under Colletta on "The Cheat" in #153 (below) have gone unattributed. "He Loves Me...He Loves Me Not" in #144 mostly looks like Roth, but on page five I see one panel with a close-up I'd otherwise credit to Saaf.

With the new stories hard enough to ID, I've left out the reprints with their slapdash updating obscuring things even further.

Note that the name in the #144 story is not Margaret but Margret; it took me a while to actually see that. I haven't seen issues 148, 154, or 156—romance comics not having been collected as assiduously as superhero ones, there aren't any uninterrupted runs of the DC titles that I can find.

UPDATE: I've added corrections (in bold) from Robin Snyder and SangorShop taken from Joe Orlando's payment records. See the new post for the additions of features like the text pages. Nothing more than the surname Scruggs is known about the artist in #155; a possibility would be Wilson Scruggs of the syndicated strip "The Story of Martha Wayne" (1953-1962).

Girls' Love Stories edited by Joe Orlando

Apr/69	142	Thrill-Chick	w: ?  p: Jim Aparo  i: Bill Draut
		So Long in Love	w: ?  p: Win Mortimer   i: Nick Cardy
		What Should I Do?	w: ?  p: Mortimer  i: Cardy
May/	143	Love Today--Cry Tomorrow	w: Robert Kanigher   p: Mortimer  i: Wally Wood
		Only Love Can Create	w: ?  a: Ernie Colón
		Cindy	w: ?  p: Mortimer  i: Cardy
Jul/	144	Can Love Last Forever?	w: ?  a: John Rosenberger
		He Loves Me...He Loves Me Not	w: ?  a: Vince Colletta
		Memory of Margret	w: ?  p: Ric Estrada  i: Colletta
Aug/	145	Tears for Tomorrow	w: ?  p: Estrada   i: George Roussos
		My Secret	w: John Albano  p: Jay Scott   Pike  i: Colletta
Oct/	146	Abandoned	w: ?  p: Tony Abruzzo   i: Mike Peppe
		Which Love Is Mine?	w: Otto Binder  a: Rosenberger
Nov/	147	Confessions	w: Barbara Friedlander   a: Rosenberger
		The Ugliest Girl in the World	w: Friedlander  p: Mortimer   i: Jack Abel
		Will the Real Prince Charming Please Stand Up?	w: Jack Miller  p: Estrada   i: Colletta
Feb/70	149	Forbidden Love	w: Friedlander  p: Estrada  i: Abel
		For Better or Worse	w: Jack Oleck  p: Roth   i: Colletta
		...But Only in My Dreams	w: Kanigher  a: Liz Berube
		Confessions: Episode Three	w: Friedlander   a: Rosenberger
Apr/	150	Confessions: Episode #4	w: Friedlander   a: Rosenberger
		Her Secret Shame	w: ?  a: Abruzzo   i: Cardy
		Wallflower	w: Oleck  p: Roth  i: Wood   (some Murphy Anderson?)
May/	151	The Wrong Kind of Love	w: Miller  p: Pike  i: Colletta
		Love Thief	w: Miller  p: Roth  i: Abel
		Confessions: Episode 5	w: Friedlander   a: Rosenberger
July/	152	Laura	w: Friedlander   p: Roth  i: Abel
		Confessions: Episode Six	w: Friedlander   a: Rosenberger
		The Prettiest Girl in Town, Poor Thing	w: Miller  a: George Tuska
Aug/	153	For Love or Money	w: Oleck  a: Tony DeZuñiga
		The Engagement Ring	w: Oleck  a: Don Heck
		The Cheat	w: Oleck  p: Saaf  i: Colletta
		The 3 Faces of Love	w: Miller  p: Mike Sekowsky   i: Dick Giordano
Nov/	155	Will No One Trust Me Again?	w: Miller  p: John Calnan   i: Joe Giella
		Scrapbook of Tears	w: Friedlander  p: Scruggs  i: Colletta
Feb/71	157	One Husband, Two Loves	w: George Kashdan  p: Roth  i: Calnan?
		Love Thy Neighbor	w: Oleck  a: Saaf
		Uptight (cheaters)	w: Henry Boltinoff  a: Lee Elias
		Uptight (wolf)	w: Boltinoff  p: Mortimer  i: Abel
		Anatomy of a Romance	w: Friedlander  p: Estrada   i: DeZuñiga

Otto Binder on The Westerner

Although Jerry Bails and Hames Ware in the Who's Who had Otto Binder writing Wild Bill Pecos for Orbit (giving his tenure as 1950-51), it seems there are no records of which particular stories he wrote. I've mentioned a number of times that at least some of Binder's records were compiled after the fact; as I understand it, Jerry went through his comic book collection with Otto and asked, "Is this story yours? Is this?" (After which he wrote in the credit on the stories' first pages.) But I suspect Jerry hadn't collected The Westerner.

Mostly Binder's stories here fill in around those noted in William Woolfolk's records; the question is where Binder comes aboard. I don't find any Binder stories on the title before issue 34 in 1951—although the tenure is correct in that he wrote the first of these in 1950. There are stories in 35, 36, and 37 by neither Binder nor Woolfolk.

Otto Binder's style is pretty obvious: "Ulps," "Omigosh," "Yayyy." In the Lobo stories, with only American Indian characters, he doesn't use these informalities, so there I'm going by his style of exclamatory and explanatory captions. The cowboy expressions "Jumping horned toads" and "Howling coyotes" he uses also on a Fawcett story, "Ken Maynard and the Pied Piper of the West" (Ken Maynard Western 3, Apr/51)—again, Bails and Ware had this feature listed for Binder, but individual stories evidently were never singled out (#3 is the only issue I've seen so far). Binder shows a prediliction for alliterative names: Bronco Baily, Blazes Barns, Bushwhack Barton, Bruce Bates, Diablo Dan, Owlhoot Orton, Pete Piper.

The Westerner scripts by Otto Binder:
Wild Bill Pecos (except as noted)

Mar/51	34	The Two-Gun Grandpappies
		Death Hunt
Apr/	35	The Riddle of the Petrified Forest
May/	36	Wild Bill Pecos and the Tombstone Bugle
		Tombstone City Goes Loco
June/	37	Gun Trouble
July/	38	The Kidnapped Cayuses
Aug/	39	Wild Bill Pecos and the Substitute Marshal
Sept/	40	Hostage for Death [LOBO THE WOLF BOY]
		The Swirling Peril
		The Greatest Hero or Hair-o of the West?
Dec/	41	The Three Great Tasks [LOBO THE WOLF BOY]
		Nuggets Nugent and the Twin Terrors [NUGGETS NUGENT]
		Wild Bill Pecos Guns for Nuggets

Recycling Text into Comics--Otto Binder

Here are an excerpt below from the text story "Fiend of Fire" in Fawcett's Beware! Terror Tales 2 (July/52), and a page above from the comics story "Flame Fiend" (illustrated by Gray Morrow) in Warren's Eerie 2 (Mar/66). Both are credited to Eando (i.e. Otto) Binder. The endings are the same too, but I didn't want to present a spoiler. A few posts hence on my William Woolfolk records transcriptions, I'll have an instance of his expanding a text for one company into a comics story at another.

Eando Binder started as a joint pseudonym for Otto and his brother Earl in the science fiction magazines, but out of about 135 prose magazine stories published under that name, only 27 early ones were by both brothers. According to the MIT Science Fiction Society's mid-Sixties index to the SF magazines, the final Eando Binder story by Earl and Otto was published in 1941, and it had probably been in the trunk since the mid-Thirties. Out of the Eando Binder novels, only two—Lords of Creation and Enslaved Brains—use material cowritten, quite a bit earlier, by Earl. In all his comics work, it should be safe to say that Eando was solely Otto.

Dial H for Hero and G for Ghosts

It seems Jack Schiff, some time after the Sixties, recalled that Jack Miller had written Dial H for Hero. But then, Julius Schwartz remembered that he himself had used Gardner Fox as one of his writers on Superman. The credits on the Superman stories he edited (and the timing of Fox's being let go from DC) show Schwartz was mistaken. The writing style of the uncredited Dial H stories suggest that Schiff was equally mistaken. Schiff also noted, if I remember correctly, that Bob Kane actually did all the Batman artwork he supplied DC; I hate to think how many attributions on the Grand Comics Database would have to be changed if Schiff's recollections are taken for gospel on all subjects.

Jack Miller certainly did write for House of Mystery when it carried Dial H, but he wrote the Martian Manhunter stories. He and Dave Wood share some ways of writing—both use "Great ghosts" and Tense moments later..., but they differ in other ways. Where Wood uses "O-oh," Miller makes use of "Oh-h-h-h." The first Dial H story, among others, has a couple of instances of Wood's pausing after a first word: "I'm...back to normal again!" and "He's...entering an escape hatch of some kind!"

The two Otto Binder stories contain his old standby "Ulps." The Bill Finger story uses "Wha-aat." The Dick Wood stories boast "Great suffering cats" and "Howling horrors." Since these are the only stories of his I've seen for DC at this time—he had moved over to Gold Key, King, and Harvey—I wonder if he ghosted them for his brother Dave.

And I believe the final Dial H for Hero story is another example of Charles Nicholas' ghost pencilling for Sal Trapani. The pose of the policeman in the middle panel is typical Nicholas.

Dial H for Hero in House of Mystery

Jan/66	#156	Dial H for Hero	w: Dave Wood  a: Jim Mooney
Mar/	#157	The Marauders from Thunderbolt Island	w: Dave Wood  a: Mooney
Apr/	#158	Dial V for Villain	w: Dave Wood  a: Mooney
June/	#159	The Clay-Creep Clan	w: Dave Wood  a: Mooney
July/	#160	The Wizard of Light	w: Dave Wood  a: Mooney
Sept/	#161	The Mummy with Six Heads	w: Dave Wood  a: Mooney
Oct/	#162	The Monster-Maker of Littleville	w: Bill Finger  a: Mooney
Dec/	#163	Baron Bug and His Insect Army	w: Dave Wood  a: Mooney
Jan/67	#164	Dr. Cyclops—the Villain with the Doomsday Stare	w: Dave Wood  a: Mooney
Mar/	#165	The Freak Super-Heroes	w: Dave Wood  p: Mooney i: George Roussos
Apr/	#166	The King of the Curses	w: Dave Wood  p: Mooney i: Roussos
June/	#167	The Fantastic Rainbow Raider	w: Otto Binder  p: Mooney i: Roussos
July/	#168	The Marauding Moon Man	w: Dave Wood  p: Mooney i: Roussos
Sept/	#169	The Terrible Toymaster	w: Binder  a: Mooney
Oct/	#170	Thunderbolt's Secret Weapon	w: Dave Wood  a: Mooney
Dec/	#171	The Micro-Monsters	w: Dick Wood  a: Frank Springer
Feb/68	#172	The Monsters from the H-Dial	w: Dick Wood  a: Springer
Apr/	#173	Revolt of the H-Dial	w: Dave Wood  p: Charles Nicholas  i: Sal Trapani

Covers by Jim Mooney except #163: Carmine Infantino/Joe Giella; 171: Nick Cardy; 172: Frank Springer; and 173: Jack Sparling.

A Forgotten Phantom Stranger Writer

The Phantom Stranger was revived in the late Sixties with, at first, new frame stories around Fifties reprints of that character and of Dr. Thirteen, the Ghost-Breaker.

The scripts of those frame stories in the first three issues (Showcase 80 and PS 1-2) have for some time been attributed to Mike Friedrich, but I remember reading a fanzine piece some twenty or thirty years ago that gave the credit for #2's script to Otto Binder while confirming Friedrich as writer of Showcase 80 and the first PS issue.

"The Man Who Died Three Times" (PS 2, Aug/69) is indeed a Binder script—Binder is known to have written for editor Joe Orlando at the time, with a handful of stories in House of Mystery. This Phantom Stranger script is in the style of the main writer of Captain Marvel, as seen in the "Ukkkk" and "Ulps" used also in Marvel Family 88 (Oct/53) and 89 (Jan/54)—among many, many scripts over the course of Binder's career.

I wish I could give the source of that fanzine article or letter, because if I recall it correctly, the writer had no agenda in denying Friedrich the credit—that writer was Mike Friedrich.