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.

Mo Marcus at DC: The Ding-a-Lings

Mo Marcus pencilled the first issue of The Monkees at Dell, and the Modkees series in Go-Go at Charlton, so he must have felt right at home with the foursome called The Ding-a-lings at DC. This musical group consisted of three guys and a girl, so of course it was a completely new concept (DC's earlier Maniaks in Showcase being two guys and a girl).

The connection that brought Marcus to Dell was freelancing artist Dick Giordano's asking him to ghost-pencil some full-art jobs assigned Giordano like Monkees 1 and Who's Minding the Mint?; at DC, on the Debbi titles, Giordano was the editor to begin with, so it was a more straightforward assignment.

Around this time Henry Boltinoff was writing teen humor stories longer than his ubiquitous DC cartoon pages, not only for the Ding-a-lings but for Debbi herself as well as Binky and Scooter.

The Ding-a-lings  w: Henry Boltinoff  p: Mo Marcus

in Debbi's Dates

Oct-Nov/69	4	Swing 'n Slay	i: Dick Giordano
Dec-Jan/70	5	The Record 1st Prize	i: Vince Colletta
Feb-Mar/	6	Fun in the Sun	i: Colletta
Apr-May/	7	Country Cousins	i: Colletta

in Date with Debbi

Oct-Nov/72

18

The Phone-ey Audition

i: Colletta?

Mo Marcus also pencilled the "Outasite" bottom-third-of the-page cartoons, two in Debbi's Dates 6, and one in Date with Debbi 8 (Mar-Apr/70).

More Mo Marcus at Dell

It took me three posts in a row (one, two, three) to come to a conclusion on the artist of Dell's The Monkees #1 (if by coming to a conclusion one means agreeing with Mark Evanier's identification of the artist.) It's Mo Marcus. Jerry Marcus later confirmed Mark's ID; Dick Giordano, the artist hired to do that issue, asked Jerry's father to pencil the job for him. José Delbo, of course, drew The Monkees from #2 on.

Who's Minding the Mint? (Aug/67) is Dell's Movie Classic one-shot adapting the film produced by comic book artist and Stooge-in-law Norm Maurer. Its art has been attributed to Delbo and then Henry Scapelli, but the pencils are by Mo Marcus; the skinny, angular limbs are the trademark seen in that first issue of The Monkees. (These are Jim Hutton and Walter Brennan, by the way; Marcus is able to capture their likenesses without the traced still-photo paste-ups that typefied Scarpelli's Dell tie-in work at this point).

The writer escapes me so far. The inker is a question, too. Giordano and company (Sal Trapani and Frank McLaughlin)? On some pages I wonder if I see John Tartaglione's inkwork, but at Dell he pencilled much more often than he inked. The Mo Marcus art that I've seen signed at Charlton was inked by Rocco Mastroserio, so maybe I'm not recognizing Marcus's own inks here.

Monkees #1 Penciller: Mo Marcus

Now that I've seen Mo Marcus's work (he signed the first story in this issue of Charlton's Go-Go—#6, Apr/67), I would agree with Mark Evanier that Marcus started off the story in Dell's Monkees 1, the subject of my last two posts. The no-name gimmick here makes sense given Mark's suggestion that this was meant for a Monkees story at one point.

In his comment on the first of these posts, Mark posited that Dick Giordano and company stepped in to salvage Marcus's work on Monkees 1. I still think that Ross Andru was one of that company. I see Marcus's figures in the Dell story (and will admit that the Andru style resemblance there is a coincidence) but just don't see Marcus's style in the faces.

But it sure wasn't José Delbo!