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

Weisbecker and Riss at the Movies

Note the distinctive long, square faces in Fawcett's adaptation of the movie "The Missourians."

Somewhere along the line, Clem Weisbecker and Bob Butts have had some work conflated at early Fifties Fawcett, making it difficult to sort out their stories going by their credits in the Who's Who. I finally took a long look at their credited Forties stories at other companies. I believe I can follow the progression of Clem Weisbecker's style on the Black Hood and such to the Fawcett artist with those distinctive faces.

Butts is given "Copper Canyon" in the Who's Who, which is the main point of confusion here, but the actual penciller is Weisbecker. The style matches that on Jackie Robinson at Fawcett at the same time, which the WW gives to Weisbecker and not Butts.

The other problem with "Copper Canyon" is that it's also been attributed entirely to Sheldon Moldoff. I can accept that Moldoff inked it. "Pioneer Marshall" and "The Missourians" are also supposedly entirely by Moldoff, but the inking on those two doesn't overwhelm the Weisbecker pencils.

In many cases on the Fawcett movie adaptations the inker did a lot of the heavy lifting on likenesses. Some didn't. Thus, Pete Riss's issues vary wildly as far as that "overwhelming the pencils" goes; on "Dakota Lil" you have to look twice to find Riss, but on "The Thundering Trail," as seen here, he's easier to spot (although it's been attributed to Stan Campbell).

movie one-shots at Fawcett

1949	nn	Dakota Lil	w: Joe Millard p: Pete Riss
1950	nn	Copper Canyon	w: Millard  p: Clem Weisbecker
			i: Sheldon Moldoff
1950	nn	Pioneer Marshall	w: Millard  p: Weisbecker
			i: Moldoff?
1950	nn	Powder River Rustlers	w: Millard  p: Riss

Fawcett Movie Comic

Apr/51	#10	The Missourians	w: Leo Dorfman  p: Weisbecker
			i: Moldoff?
May/	#11	The Thundering Trail	w: Dorfman  p: Riss

Motion Picture Comics

Nov/51

#107

Frisco Tornado

w: Dorfman  p: Riss

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

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

Leo Dorfman, Total Warlord of M.A.R.S.

Leo Dorfman wrote the entire run of Gold Key's Total War/M.A.R.S. Patrol Total War. (M.A.R.S. is the Marine Attack Rescue Service, a four-man team vital in the fight against invaders on America soil).

Wally Wood has gotten the attribution for writing the first three issues, just as Jack Cole has for all his Plastic Man stories, but with no better reason than that he wrote some of his own work elsewhere. Could Wood have brought the concept and plots to Gold Key? Very possible, but who can say? The "new writer" finally identifies the invaders as extraterrestrials, which supposedly proves a point, but he doesn't do it in issue 4, the first with the new artists; he works his way up to confirming the fact in #5.

Here are tiers from issues 3, 4, and 9. Do you notice a similarity in writing style? There's also Dorfman's use of captions beginning with "As" quite a bit, and at least one siren going "Howeee."

I'm not sure exactly how the Wood/Adkins art was broken down: if one did layouts, one complete pencils, one complete inks; or more likely nothing so clearcut. And of course others may have helped. The inks on the remaining issues seem to me to match up with Mike Peppe's on, say, Mike Sekowsky's pencils on Man from U.N.C.L.E. Most often Roy and Peppe worked as a team, like Andru and Esposito—but the only signature in the series, on the splash page of #10, is Roy's alone.

Total War written by Leo Dorfman

July/65	1	Target: America	a: Wally Wood & Dan Adkins
Oct/	2	Sneak Attack	a: Wood & Adkins
		Breakthrough	a: Wood & Adkins

M.A.R.S. Patrol Total War written by Dorfman

Sept/66	3	Operation Copperhead	a: Wood & Adkins
Oct/67	4	Operation Deep-Freeze	p: Mike Roy  i: Mike Peppe
May/68	5	Mystery Beachhead	p: Roy  i: Peppe
Aug/	6	Operation Snake-in-the-Brass	p: Roy  i: Peppe
Nov/	7	The Death Wind	p: Roy  i: Peppe
Feb/69	8	Tomorrow Is Doomsday	p: Roy  i: Peppe
May/	9	City under Fire	p: Roy  i: Peppe
Aug/	10	The Dragon's Teeth	p: Roy  i: Peppe?

What's He Doing at Fawcett?

Fawcett's Motion Picture Comics 109 (March/52) presents "Rough Riders of Durango," a Rocky Lane movie. (The comic's numbering began with 101.) A number of these movie adaptations featured the Western stars who already had ongoing series in Fawcett comic books, but the movie tie-ins didn't often (if at all) use the creative teams from the stars' own books. In fact, on "Rough Riders of Durango" I see an artist not known to have worked at Fawcett at all.

On the full page, I can discern this artist's style most easily in the first and last panels. I find another couple of panels with close-ups (from different pages), even more recognizable.

At Atlas, Werner Roth drew the Apache Kid series from 1950 to 1956, and returned to the genre with a few stories of Kid Colt and Gunhawk around 1970.

The full page above also gives a few clues to the writer, with "Anxious moments later" and "Just then" in captions. It's Leo Dorfman. When Dorfman returned to writing Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen in the early Seventies, editor Murray Boltinoff confused indexers by mentioning that Dorfman had written, among others, the "classics in comics" Ivanhoe and The Red Badge of Courage. He meant nothing more than what he put down, uncapitalized, but fans assumed he meant "Classics Comics" and for many years attributed the Gilberton adaptations of those novels to Dorfman (see the paper first edition of the Who's Who). Ivanhoe and Red Badge were Fawcett Movie Comic and Motion Picture Comics issues by Dorfman, as we know now; two other "classics" mentioned by Boltinoff were Dell Movie Classics written by Dorfman later in the Fifties.

Twilight Zone 16-20 Writers

These are my IDs of the writers of most of the stories in the next five issues of Gold Key's Twilight Zone. "TZ 2" and "TZ 3" did earlier stories ("TZ 1" didn't write any more stories that I've seen, after the earliest issues); I can't put names to them.

I defer to the Grand Comics Database for the art attributions—except for the Jerry Grandenetti pencils credited to ghost-employer Joe Orlando. "Nightmare for an Astronaut," "The Man Who Mastered Yoga" (one of its panels is shown here), and "The Plague" were pencilled by Grandenetti. Orlando merely inked them. Orlando did pencil "The Masquerader."

The Twilight Zone 16-20 Writers

July/66	#16	Nightmare for an Astronaut	Dick Wood
		The Ghost Gunner	"TZ 3"
		The Wisdom of the Beast *	"TZ 2"
		The Perfect Criminal	Leo Dorfman
		When the Ball Is Over	Paul S. Newman
Sept/66	#17	The Masquerader	Dorfman
		Once upon a Dream	"TZ 3"
		He Walked on Water *	"TZ 2"
		The Ship That Knew *	"TZ 3"
		Crystal Clear	"TZ 3"
		Mars: Dead or Alive	Wood
Nov/66	#18	Second-Hand Clothes	Dorfman?
		When the Lights Go Out	Dorfman
		Dead Man's Train *	"TZ 3"?
		The Man in the Green Coat *	"TZ 3"?
		Programmed Vacation	Wood
		The Impressionist	Wood?
		Strange Reunion *	Dorfman
Jan/67	#19	The Crime-a-Day Town	Wood
		Into Worlds Beyond	"TZ 3"
		Big-Foot *	"TZ 3"?
		The Man Who Mastered Yoga	?
		Our Man on Planet Ergo	Wood
Mar/67	#20	The Plague	Dorfman
		The Prodigy	Dorfman
		The Day That Couldn't Get Lost	?
		The Portal	Dorfman
		* (single-page stories)

Twilight Zone 11-15 Writers

"Way Out West—On Mars" in Gold Key's Twilight Zone 13 lifts the plot of Ray Bradbury's short story "Mars Is Heaven!"

The art attributions are on the Grand Comics Database. I don't see myself how Reed Crandall's art looks any different on "Way Out West" than on any other story he inked himself; naming Alden McWilliams as inker strikes me as way out of left field. And "Moment of Decision," as I said last week, is pencilled by Jerry Grandenetti, inked by Bill Draut and Joe Orlando.

"TZ 3" is a writer who will show up in later TZ issues and in Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery on more four-page "strange but true" stories.

The Twilight Zone 11-15 Writers

May/65	#11	The Gremlins	Dick Wood
		The Island Vision	Wood
		The Wanted One *	Wood
		(Wanted...Alive!) Doomsday in Dusterville	Wood
		Ghost Ship of the Skies	Wood
		The Vision *	Wood
Aug/65	#12	The Shadow with Claws	Leo Dorfman
		The Revolt of the Machines	Dorfman
		The Voice in the Mist *	Dorfman
		They Dwell among Us	Dorfman
Nov/65	#13	The Man Who Could Read the Future	Wood
		The Man with My Face	Wood
		Way Out West—On Mars	Wood
Feb/66	#14	The Day That Vanished	Wood
		The Death Car	"TZ 3"
		The Lost Genius	Wood
		The Lost Oasis	Dorfman
		A Nightmare Tale *	?
May/66	#15	Moment of Decision	Wood
		Wipe Out the Future	Paul S. Newman
		The Wheel of Light *	Dorfman
		Perfect Preservation	Wood
		The Vision of Mystir	Dorfman
		The Prophet *	?
		(* single-page stories)

Leo Dorfman names a character Mystir at least one more time: in "The Voodoo Doom of Superman" in Action Comics 413 (June/72)--a story for which he was credited only in the letter column in 417.

Twilight Zone (Dell) Writer

Since darkmark got me a look at these issues, I'll backtrack and fill in the pre-Gold Key Twilight Zone. They're published by Dell but produced, like the Gold Key run, by Western Publishing.

They're numbered 1173, 1288 (those two in the Four-Color numbering), then 01-860-207, and 12-860-210. The fourth issue is misnumbered 01-860-210 in the indicia. 01 stands for fifteen cents and 12 for twelve cents; the price on Dells had just dropped back to the industry standard at this point.

George Evans has said that he and Reed Crandall sometimes swapped some pencilling and inking on a story, but here I'm listing the artist I see doing the most on pencils or inks. Hearing that Frank Frazetta inked Evans on the fourth issue, I give him the credit on the stories that look least like Evans' own inks. On "Hard-Luck Harvey," Joe Giella, not known to have worked at Western, is a wild guess on my part; but does this give anyone a feeling of Fifties Strange Adventures/Mystery in Space déjà vu?

The second issue cover painting is by George Wilson. Someone else did the first; and another artist did, I believe, both the third and fourth issue paintings.

The Twilight Zone at Dell—Written by Leo Dorfman

Mar-May/61	(#1)	Specter of Youth	p: Reed Crandall  i: George Evans
		The Phantom Lighthouse	a: Crandall
		Doom by Prediction	a: Crandall
Feb-Apr/62	(#2)	The Bridegroom	a: Evans
		Secret Weapon	a: Evans
		The Joiner	p: Crandall  i: Evans
May-July/62	(#3)	The Man from Nowhere	p: Mike Sekowsky  i: Frank Giacoia
		Beyond the Window	p:  Sekowsky  i: Giacoia
		Hard-Luck Harvey	p: Joe Giella  i: Giacoia
Aug-Oct/62	(#4)	The Ring	p: Evans  i: Frank Frazetta
		The Collector	p: Evans  i: Frazetta
		The Time Machine	a: Evans

Just possibly the fillers (1-pagers except for "Voices" in the second issue, a 2-pager), are by Dorfman, but they're more illustrated text than comics (no dialogue), which makes the style harder to pin down. I believe some issues here, on variants I haven't seen, have additional filler pages in place of back-cover ads.

The Twilight Zone Fillers at Dell—By an Unknown Writer

Mar-May/61	(#1)	Journey into the Twilight Zone	a: Evans
Feb-Apr/62	(#2)	Voices from the Twilight Zone	a: Evans
		Voyage into the Twilight Zone	a: Evans
		Calling the Twilight Zone	a: Evans
May-July/62	(#3)	Luck in the Twilight Zone	p Sekowsky  i: Giacoia?
		Lost in the Twilight Zone	p Sekowsky  i: Giacoia?
Aug-Oct/62	(#4)	Creatures from the Twilight Zone	a: Evans

Twilight Zone 1-10 writers

This list indexes the writers of the first ten Gold Key issues of The Twilight Zone. There were four earlier issues, which I've yet to see, published by Dell in 1961-62; Gold Key restarted the numbering with #1.

Those cited by the Who's Who as writing mystery stories in the early Sixties for Western (which would include the Dell TZs, then Boris Karloff as well as TZ, at Gold Key) include Leo Cheney, Royal Cole, and Marshall McClintock. There are no specific stories they're known to have done, so I can't match up the unknown writers' styles with particular authors.

Technically one story in each issue is not a Twilight Zone; there's no logo, no appearance by Rod Serling, and the copyright owner is Western rather than the TV production company, Cayuga.

A stat of Rod Serling's head was used in any number of stories beginning with the third issue. Above, on the left, is the head's first appearance, in a Mike Sekowsky story—and I don't think the head itself is by Sekowsky—then, on the right, it's definitely a stat in an Alex Toth story. Below are two examples from Frank Thorne stories; in earlier ones, he got to draw Serling.

The art attributions are on the Grand Comics Database.

The Twilight Zone Writers

Nov/62	#1	Perilous Journey	"TZ 1"
		Do Not Touch Exhibit	"TZ 1"
		Voyage to Nowhere	Leo Dorfman
Feb/63	#2	The Lost Colonie	"TZ 2"
		Journey into Jeopardy	Dorfman
		The Ray of Phobos	Dorfman
May/63	#3	The Last Battle	"TZ 2"
		Birds of a Feather	"TZ 2"
		The Queen Is Dead—Long Live the Queen	"TZ 2"
Aug/63	#4	The Secret of the Key	"TZ 2"
		Experiment in Purple	"TZ 2"
		The Captive	"TZ 2"
		The Ordeal of Bluebird 3	"TZ 2"
Nov/63	#5	The Legacy of Hans Burkel	Dorfman
		Poor Little Sylvester	Dorfman
		The Shadow of Fate	Dorfman
		The Fortune Hunters	Dorfman
Feb/64	#6	Captives of the Mirage	Dick Wood
		The Night People of London	Wood
		The Last Sixty Seconds	Wood
May/64	#7	The Shield of Medusa	Wood
		The Menace from Out There	Wood
		The Man Who Haunted Himself	Wood
Aug/64	#8	Hamilton's Creature	Wood
		The Night Striker of Paris	Wood
		Iron Man No. 1	"TZ 2"
Nov/64	#9	The Street Where Evil Dwelt	Wood
		The Doom Days	?
		Creatures on Canvas	Wood
Feb/65	#10	The Bewitching Window	Wood
		Lost Acre	Wood
		The Patient Workers *	Wood
		The Demon Light	Wood
		The Mystic Book	Wood
		The Midas Wheel *	Wood
		(* single-page stories)