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

And He Drew the Blonde Phantom, Too

In the Blonde Phantom's first issue at Timely (All Select 11, Sid Shores pencilled the first BP story. I guess the inks (by someone I won't try to ID) made the art in the second story look superficially like that of the first. But it's pencilled by Pete Riss, artist on (to name only other female protagonists) Millie the Model, Mary Marvel, Toni Gayle, and ACG romance stories. He also pencilled the second story in the next issue (keeping the numbering with a title change, Blonde Phantom 12).

Pete Riss Pencils on
Blonde Phantom

Fall/46	AS 11	The Scarlet Scorpion
Win/47	BP 12	Death After Dinner

The writer who created the Blonde Phantom in the two stories in AS 11 is one of those frustrating comic book mysteries, as I can follow the style from story to story without being able to name him (or her)—he also worked on Sub-Mariner and Human Torch, and the first of the crime anthologies, in 1946-48. He uses "crimester" for "gangster" and adjectivizes time in the captions: In lightning seconds, In split seconds, In speedy seconds, Swift moments later, and even A splash second later! The one name I can put to him is "not Stan Lee."

UPDATE: In reference to the preceding paragraph, Jake Oster has brought to my attention Alan Sulman's words in Alter Ego #104: "I created a new character called The Blonde Phantom, and I wrote those strips myself. I wrote a few Sub-Mariner and Captain America stories. I did not write The Human Torch." If he wrote the first BP stories, (recall that William Woolfolk was on board by the second issue) I can't reconcile that with his writing no Torch stories. Sulman's story "I Hate Me" in BP 15, credited in Stan Lee's Secrets Behind the Comics, is a four-pager with only three captions, and doesn't give much upon which to build an idea of his style.

Pete Riss Draws Mike Barnett and/or Mike Danger

I noticed at separate times that these Fawcett stories were by Pete Riss and that the first two Mike Danger stories in Charlton's Danger and Adventure (#24 and 25) were by him too. Since the earlier issues of the Charlton title contained Fawcett inventory material, I figured the Mike Danger stories were from that company, but off the top of my head couldn't figure where.

When they bought material from Fawcett, of course Charlton didn't get the rights to TV character Mike Barnett. They pulled a Windy and Willy on him in these reprints. When I finally connected the stories, I saw that the Grand Comuics database IDed the retitled Charlton story "The Racing Stable Mystery" (D & A 24, June/55) as reprinting "Death Goes to the Races" but didn't give the source of "The Mint of Dr. Dionysus" (D & A 25, Aug/55), which wasn't retitled.

The first two Johnny Adventure stories, in those same issues, look like they were lifted from Alex Raymond's Jungle Jim, and I have no idea whatsoever if it was directly, or from where.

Pete Riss Art
on Mike Barnett, Man Against Crime

Dec/51	1	Kill the Umpire!
		The Mint of Dr. Dionysus
Feb/52	2	Mike Barnett, Man Against Crime and the Mystery   of the Blue Madonna
		The Lead Poison Cure
Apr/	3	Death Goes to the Races
Jun/	4	The Case of the Old Hobo

Riss on Gayle and Gayle

The Who's Who credits Pete Riss with Toni Gayle, the fashion model/amateur sleuth, at Premium. Since there are different indexers on different issues in the Grand Comics Database, some of Riss's Toni Gayle stories are IDed (those in Young King Cole and the fifth issue of Guns against Gangsters) and some aren't. The indexer who does ID those stories, citing the Who's Who for Riss, posits Janice Valleau as inker (I have no useful opinion there).

The Who's Who neglects to credit Riss for the spin-off strip, The Gunmaster—Gregory Gayle (Toni's police detective father). For each of Riss's Gunmaster stories in Guns against Gangsters, there's a Toni Gayle story by him in the same issue for comparison.

Pete Riss pencils
on THE GUNMASTER—GREGORY GAYLE
in Guns against Gangsters

Sept-Oct/48	v1 #1	The Green-Suit Murders
Nov-Dec/	v1 #2	The Sugar Bowl Murder
Jan-Feb/49	v1 #3	The Mystery of the Million-Dollar Carbine

on TONI GAYLE
in Young King Cole

May/48	v3 #10	She Scores Quite a Hit
June/	v3 #11	Mighty Thunder Falls
July/	v3 #12	Redstone Park

in Guns against Gangsters

Sept-Oct/48	v1 #1	Case of the Sacred Cobra
Nov-Dec/	v1 #2	The Case of the Fortunate Fiddle
Jan-Feb/49	v1 #3	The Case of the Fat Thin Man
Mar-Apr/	v1 #4	The Case of the Parisian Strangler
May-June/	v1 #5	She Gets in Dutch

in 4Most

Jan-Feb/49

v8 #1

More Than One Way to Win a Football Game

Pete Riss Candy

Pete Riss does a few Candy stories at Quality when there are suddenly more needed—she gets her own book in addition to her feature in Police Comics. (Riss doesn't have any Candys in Police that I can see.)

I'd say the feature's main artist, Harry Sahle, is inking at least the faces of Candy and her boyfriend Ted on these stories. On the archery story in #10 and the love in the stars one in #11 it looks more as if he's doing full inks over Riss pencils, but one or two minor characters like a soda jerk are distinctively Riss's, and in a few long shots Candy's arms look like hinged sticks. Sahle signs many of his solo stories, but he signs none of these—they're not being ghosted per se.

There are other stories in this run that strike me as not penciled by Sahle (one between these two in #11, for instance), but I have no idea who the pencillers other than Riss might be.

Pete Riss
Candy Pencils

Autumn/47	1	[The Firebug] "Gee, Ted..."
		[The Book Shop] "Isn't it wonderful..."
Feb/49	8	[Babysitting Caspar] "I'm glad..."
June/	10	[Archery] "Tina, why..."
Aug/	11	[Phineas Burnham, the Circus Man] "Candy! That tiger..."
		[True Love in the Stars] "They say..."
Oct/	12	[Buying Herman a Car] "Candy, when I..."

Wait Fifteen Years for Johnny Craig

At one point I thought I saw some Jack Kirby pencils at ACG when he never actually had anything published there. Seeing Johnny Craig pencils there in a 1949 story might make more sense, since he certainly worked for them a decade and a half later. The story in question (see the first tier excerpted) is "The Mummy's Cloth" in Adventures into the Unknown 7 (Oct-Nov/49), attributed in the Grand Comics Database to Craig with inks by Harry Lazarus.

Actually the penciller (if not full artist) is Pete Riss.

Riss has a number of stories correctly attributed at ACG in this period—the first story in Romantic Adventures 1 (Mar-Apr/49) for one, but more to the point, ones in AITU 4, 8, 10, and 11 in 1949-50.

Oh, and one more (from which I take my example's second tier): the next comics story in AITU 7, "Drums of the Undead."

The Pete Riss Superman Stories

I posted the text earlier about Pete Riss actually drawing the Superman stories that have been attributed to Sam Citron for so long—here are the lists of his work on the character.

I see that in Citron's art for Warren, Gold Key, and DC in the Sixties, he has some poses reminiscent of Wayne Boring's as far as the tilt of a head here and there; I wonder if his Superman work was all with Boring and the Shuster studio, and thus particularly hard to pick out? Pete Riss is not at all hard to pick out when you compare these stories with his credited work at Timely.

On that earlier post I misremembered the "Killer Riss" sneak as from "The Quicksilver Kid," but it was from "The Great Godini."

Pete Riss art on Superman

Jan-Feb/44	26	The Quicksilver Kid
May-June/	28	The Golden Galleons
Nov-Dec/	31	Tune Up Time for Crime
		A Dog's Tale
		The Treasure House of History
May-June/45	34	The United States Navy
		The Canyon That Went Berserk
		When the World Got Tired
Jan-Feb/46	38	The Battle of the Atoms
		The Bad Old Knights
		The Man of Stone
July-Aug/	41	Too Many Pranksters
		Clark Kent's Bodyguard
		A Modern Alice in Wonderland

on Superman in Action Comics

Dec/43	67	Make Way for Fate
Mar/44	70	Superman Takes a Holiday
June/	73	The Hobby Robbers
May/46	96	Haircut--and a Close Shave

on Superman in World's Finest Comics

Spring/45

17

The Great Godini

on Lois Lane in Superman
(untitled stories)

May-June/45	34	[Dirty Dealings with a Dictaphone]
Sep-Oct/	36	[Burying Treasure]
Nov-Dec/	37	[A Blowtorch for Big Larkin]
Jan-Feb/46	38	[The Brazil Nut]
Mar-Apr/	39	[The Twice-Stolen Pendant]
May-June/	40	[Go Fly a Kite]
Sep-Oct/	42	[The Bowling Brawl]

Mary Marvel's Final Artist at Fawcett

In 1948 Mary Marvel loses her strip in Wow Comics to Tom Mix and even has her own book retitled and taken over by another screen cowboy, Monte Hale. She remains a member of the Marvel Family, of course, and her solo strip continues as a backup in Marvel Family into 1951.

Her final penciller there is Pete Riss. There seem to be a number of inkers—or finishers—some obscuring his style more than others. On this page from "Mary Marvel Fights the Likeness Peril" the woman in green, especially in the middle tier (note her arms), is the best example of Riss's pencils.

There are no Mary Marvel strips in 52, 56, and 59, as those issues' Marvel Family stories are full-length. The Mary story in 51, like the Marvel Family lead, seems to be out of inventory from a number of years earlier.

Mary Marvel in Marvel Family
Penciled by Pete Riss

Jul/50	49	MM and the Adult Children
Aug/	50	MM Battles the Melody of Crime
Nov/	53	MM Battles the Evil Exterminator
Dec/	54	MM Battles the Predatory Plants
Jan/51	55	MM and the Miser of Resources
Mar/	57	MM Battles the Collector of Hate
Apr/	58	MM Fights the Likeness Peril
Jun/	60	MM and the Man Who Killed with Kindness

Not the Two-Gun Kid

At Quality, Chuck Winter had a four-issue run in Buccaneers, as I posted here. He had twice that in Crack Western on Two-Gun Lil.

On the first four stories I'm taking the Grand Comics Database artist attributions as a start. I think I see three artists among the first four stories (the same one on #64 and 65). Leo Morey is known to have worked on the series, but I can't match him up from his signed stories at ACG a decade later; it may be that he's being inked by other hands here.

Two-Gun Lil in Crack Western

Nov/49	63	She Was Ready	w: Joe Millard  a: Charles    Sultan?
Jan/50	64	The Forbidden Star	w: ?  a: Leo Morey?
Mar/	65	The Dance Hall of Death	w: ?  a: Morey?
May/	66	Even Frontier Terrorists Can Learn	w: ?  a: ?
Jul/	67	Two-Gun Lil Votes against Lynch Law	w: ?  a: Pete Riss
Sep/	68	Two-Gun Lil Conquers Western Crime	w: ?  a: Riss
Nov/	69	Hot-Lead Two-Step	w: Millard  a: Chuck Winter
Jan/51	70	The Taming of Big Bat McGrew	w: Millard  a: Winter
Mar/	71	A Bargain in Bullets	w: Millard  a: Winter
May/	72	The Ghost of Grim Gulch	w: Millard  a: Winter
Jul/	73	Six-Guns from the Sky	w: Millard  a: Winter
Sep/	74	Gun Trouble in Paradise	w: Millard  a: Winter
Nov/	75	The Vultures of Goldhill	w: Millard  a: Winter
Jan/52	76	The End of the Owlhoot Trail	w: Millard  a: Winter
Mar/	77	A Heart as Big as a House	w: ?  a: Pete Morisi
May/	78	Once upon a Time There Were Three Bassett Brothers	w: Robert Bernstein  a:   Morisi
Sep/	80	The Murder on Stage	w: Bernstein  a: Morisi
Nov/	81	The Target Is Two-Gun Lil	w: Bernstein  a: Morisi
Jan/53	82	Target of Hot Lead	w: Bernstein  a: Morisi
Mar/	83	The Fiend in Knee Pants	w: Bernstein  p: John Forte     i: ?
May/	84	The Kissing Monster	w: Bernstein  a: Edmond    Good

Millie the Model by Ken Bald and Pete Riss

The run of early Timely-era Millie the Model available nowadays to consult is incomplete; issue 1 is reportedly by other hands than these (Ruth Atkinson, for one). As of the next issue I've seen after this run, #20 (Oct/49), Stan Lee has a credit line on each story and the art is obviously by Dan DeCarlo; DeCarlo will continue on the feature close to the end of the Fifties, and Lee beyond that. Lee may well have written some of the stories in these earlier issues.

Not only is Ken Bald credited for script and art on the first story page of Millie 9, but the credit is amplified in Stan Lee's book Secrets behind the Comics: Bald wrote and drew all four of the connected stories about a Paris trip, and did so while in Paris.

On Millie 7 you could take the frontispiece crediting Millie art to Ken Bald and Pete Riss as meaning that Bald pencilled and Riss inked. Or, as I have, you could ID the stories drawn in Bald's style as by Bald and the ones in Riss's style as by Riss. The fact that Bald wrote the two drawn in his art style ("Yoicks!" in both of them, the same as in Millie 9) would back up that decision. Bald might have written more stories in #2 than the one I can identify at this time.

Riss gets the sole frontispiece credit for Millie art in #8. His early issues are, in my opinion, some of his best work; obviously he's being influenced by Bald. Compare the Bald page from "Millie's Little Leopard" in Millie 7 with the Riss one from "Seeing Spots" in 12. By the end of 1948 some of Riss's people are back to the skinny scarecrows such as are seen in "A Modern Alice in Wonderland" (Superman 41, July-Aug/46).

I've left off this list backup stories such as Willie, Rusty, and Hedy De Vine, all by other artists.

Millie the Model 2, 7-15

Oct/46	2	[The Blonde Phantom Perfume]	a: Ken Bald
		[Millie the French Model]	a: Bald
		[The New Outfit]	w: Bald  a: Bald
		[Millie on Televison]	a: Bald
		[Millie Goes to Hollywood]	a: Bald
Aug/47	7	Millie's Music Maker	a: Pete Riss
		Millie's Little Leopard	w: Bald  a: Bald
		Millie's Millionaire	a: Riss
		The Perilous Picnic	w: Bald  a: Bald
Oct/	8	Millie Stops the Presses	a: Riss
		The Model of the Golden West	a: Riss
		Millie, the College Cut-Up	a: Riss
		Bathing Suit Blues	a: Riss
Dec/	9	Off to Paris	w: Bald  a: Bald
		Fun in France	w: Bald  a: Bald
		The Contest	w: Bald  a: Bald
		Millie's Mad Whirl	w: Bald  a: Bald
Feb/48	10	She Who Laughs Last	a: Riss
		Hat Box Havoc	a: Riss
		Millie for President	a: Riss
		The Riddle of the Rival	a: Riss
Apr/	11	Just the Type	a: Riss
		College Knowledge	a: Riss
		Babes in the Woods	a: Riss
		Under the Weather	a: Riss
Jun/	12	Millie's Fan Male	a: Riss
		Millie's London Landing	a: Riss
		Flicker, Flicker, Who'll Get Flicker?	a: Riss
		Seeing Spots	a: Riss
Aug/	13	A Peach Makes a Speech	a: Riss
		A Whale of a Sail	a: Riss
		A Look at the Cook	a: Riss
		Her Rent Romance	a: Riss
		Breaking Her Back at the Track	a: Riss
Oct/	14	Oh, You Kid—Nappers!	a: Riss
		Chili Misses the Bus	a: Riss
		Millie Helps Out	a: Riss
		Clothes Conscious	a: Riss
		The Footlight Phony	a: Riss
Dec/	15	Bear Scare	a: Riss
		College Cover Girl	a: Riss
		Scavenger Hunt	a: Riss
		Pretty as a Picture	a: Riss
		Chili Gets Chilled	a: Riss

On this tier by Pete Riss from "She Who Laughs Last" in Millie 10, he indulges in an in-joke diluted by, probably, the use of different inkers at Timely and Quality.

Pete Riss Manhunter

This list's Manhunter stories in Quality's Police Comics are pencilled by the Superman artist I identified as Pete Riss in my previous post. The same "actor" appears in both the Action 92 Superman story ("Haircut—and a Close Shave," May/46) and the Police 49 Manhunter one: the bullet-headed and emaciated type who plays the barber in one and Allard in the other.

None of these Manhunter stories' pencils are by Al Bryant, to whom they've been attributed. Other artists worked on the feature before #37 and after #59; Riss may have done some stories in years other than this mid-Forties run. Note that Riss did not draw the story in Police 55.
"MH" is a writer whose style I can follow from story to story but whom I can't name. I see more than one inker on this run of stories; penciller Pete Riss may well be one of them. Perhaps John Forte is another.

I'm using my own standards as to which words on a splash page constitute a title, and I've made up the titles in brackets for this list.

Manhunter Pencilled by Pete Riss in Mid-1940s Police Comics

Dec/44	#37	The Match	w: Joe Millard
Jan/45	#38	[Blind Justice Will Kill Manhunter]	w: Millard
Feb/45	#39	[A Picture Kills]	w: Millard
Mar/45	#40	Music Hath Charms	w: "MH"
Apr/45	#41	Port of Missing Goods	w: ?
May/45	#42	Two Tracks	w: Millard
June/45	#43	Tramp Club Death	w: Millard
July/45	#44	The Most Dangerous Game Ever Hunted—Man	w: "MH"
Aug/45	#45	The Tailor's Dummy	w: ?
Sept/45	#46	[Torch Tigue]	w: Millard
Oct/45	#47	I'm Guilty	w: "MH"
Nov/45	#48	[The Corpse behind the Catsup Bottle]	w: Millard
Dec/45	#49	Archer without a Bow	w: Millard
Jan/46	#50	Disgrace	w: "MH"
Feb/46	#51	Crime Declares an Armistice	w: William Woolfolk
Mar/46	#52	[Mystery from the Morgue]	w: Woolfolk
Apr/46	#53	[A Houdini under Water]	w: Woolfolk
May/46	#54	[Target: Thor]	w: "MH"
July/46	#56	The Vengeance	w: Woolfolk
Aug/46	#57	Will Death Miss Twice?	w: "MH"
Sept/46	#58	Hatchet	w: "MH"
Oct/46	#59	[The Bonds of Cruel Captivity]	w: ?

Superman: Riss--or Citron?

Back in the Nineties, Rich Morrissey and I worked at identifying the Golden Age Superman artists for a guide he intended distributing though the Amateur Press Associations he belonged to.

One artist we thought we could name immediately was the penciller of "The Quicksilver Kid" in Superman 26 (Jan-Feb/44). He sneaked his name in on a wanted poster as "Killer Riss"—and as we could see from the Who's Who, Pete Riss had indeed worked on Superman in the Forties.

When Rich circulated his Superman Artists Guide, the feedback told us that we had mixed up Pete Riss with Sam Citron. Riss was a friend of Citron's, and that poster was an in-joke, not a signature sneak, we heard.

The credited work that Sam Citron did later for Gilberton, ACG, and Warren showed a hugely improved art style, but then, anyone can improve in ten or twenty years. In his revision of the Guide, Rich admitted our mistake, and we identified that artist as Sam Citron on similar Superman stories.

From the evidence I've seen since, we were right the first time. Mid-1940s work with an actual Riss credit line is closest to the style of this Superman artist than to any other.

Riss is credited with the Millie art on the intro page of Timely's Millie the Model 8 (Oct/47)—the artists of the Willie and Rusty back-ups go uncredited, as do the issue's writer or writers.

The Superman art and Millie art share a stiffness in the figures. I'm showing panels from the Superman story "Haircut—and a Close Shave" in Action 96 (May/46), attributed nowadays to Sam Citron (not credited to anyone other than Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in the creators' byline, of course). The artist of both stories notably treats arms as sticks and elbows mostly as hinges that work only on the plane of the page. The Millie panels are from #8's story "The Model of the Golden West"; compare the arm of the cowboy in the lower left Millie corner with that of the mustached man in the panel from "Haircut."

On Millie 7 (Aug/47) Pete Riss shares the credit for Millie art with Ken Bald; I'd say Riss pencilled the first and third stories in #7 and Bald pencilled the second and fourth. I believe one uncredited inker worked on every Millie story in both issues. (On other Timely comics' intro pages, the two artists listed, such as Mike Sekowsky and Joe Giella, were indeed penciller and inker. Was Stan Lee being inconsistent? Yes.) Bald, like the later Citron, has a better grasp of anatomy than Riss; and he gives some of his walk-on characters faces in a style unlike those in Riss's limited repertoire.

Comparing elbows again, this time from #7's "Millie's Music Maker," note the similarity of the Superman emcee's and the Millie band-leader's (in the center of the panel):

The strong Millie inker certainly submerges the penciller, but the only similarities I can find at all to any Superman artist are to the one presently IDed as "Sam Citron."

I feel Pete Riss did in fact sneak his own name on that wanted poster, and drew quite a few Superman stories (and Lois Lane back-ups) in the style of "Haircut." Whether the few stories now attributed to Riss are actually by Citron is a good question!