Bill Draut's Overwhelming Inks

Here's a story where the inker's style overwhelmed the penciller's. "The Young Man Who Cried...Werewolf...Once Too Often" in DC's Secrets of Sinister House 8 (Dec/72) was published without credits. It's been indexed as drawn by Bill Draut. But just as his pencils were almost buried by Joe Orlando's inks at Warren...

The faces in close-up or medium shots certainly show Draut's clean lines. It's in the long shots that you can see the penciller's angular, somewhat awkward figures. See especially the man with the kerchief in the first panel and the policeman in the center of the second panel. The pencils are by Bernard Baily. He was most famous for the Spectre in the Forties, and continued with various publishers, doing mostly anthology work like this in the Fifties. Before returning for this story, he had worked on Prince Ra-Man in House of Secrets in the mid-Sixties. I believe "...Werewolf..." was his first Seventies comic book work (all of it at DC), and he returned to inking himself after this one story. He replaced Mike Kaluta on the Spawn of Frankenstein series in Phantom Stranger; his last comic book work appeared around 1975.

This panel from another page showcases Draut's inks again, more than Baily's pencils, but I chose it for its clue to the writer. On a number of his other mystery stories in the Seventies he uses the expression "Pshee!" from his signature series, but not on this story. However, the "Ahhhhrrr" leads me to ID this script as by Sugar & Spike's Sheldon Mayer.

Woolfolk Records 1946/09

These scripts noted in William Woolfolk's notebook sold to Timely and Fawcett; and one sold to the Lutheran Church.

The "Death Mask Dance" story not only sat on the shelf for some time, but the editors expanded it by two pages to fit the slot as the Timely superheroes' first run drew to a close in 1949.

September 1946 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

12 pg	Captain America	house that moves
		[unpublished]
8	Lutheran Church	[giveaway]
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	Jumbo the whale
		"Jumbo the Whale" CMJ 48, Apr/47
7	Captain America	masks of murder
9		"Death Mask Dance" Marvel Mystery 90, Feb/49
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	bluecoat's honor
		"A Bluecoat's Honor" CMJ 49, May/47
7	Captain America	house of cards
		"The Devil to Pay" Mar Mys 83, June/47

Bill Finger on Captain America Again

"Beware the Medicine Man" in Captain America 57 (July/46) is another Timely script by Bill Finger that I just found.

Something he uses here that so far I've seen from no other writer is "Arumph" for "Harrumph."

Other stylistic indicators in this Cap story that Finger has used elsewhere are:

"Atchoo"
"____, but fast!"
colorful figure
lash out
Later...in ____...
Meantime, in ____...
Nightfall...____...
"Ooh"
sturdy figure

And captions beginning with gerunds: Scanning the paper, ____...

The Cap artist here is Maurice del Bourgo, who did Green Arrow and Mike Gibbs: Guerrilla at DC; at Timely he also drew Mr. Wu in All Select 11 and Blonde Phantom 12.(The Batman art on "The Case of the Honest Crook" in Batman 5, Spr/41, is by Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson.)

Woolfolk Records 1946/08

This month Woolfolk sold stories to Fawcett, Parents, and Timely; and there are two more meant for OW but published by EC.

I couldn't find the issue number of the Dig Bailey story.

August 1946 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

9 pg	Lance O'Casey	leopard men of atoll
		"The Leopard Men of Bonge Atoll" LO'C 4, Sum/47
5	Hector the Inspector	[untitled] Animal Fables 5, Aug/47
11	Lance O'Casey	curse of age
		"The Curse of Age" LO'C 4, Sum/47
8	Danny Demon	[untitled] AF 6, Sep-Oct/47
6	Dig Bailey	Tugboat Susie
		Calling All Boys
8	Blonde Phantom	dust of doom
		[unpublished]
10	Captain America	Laughing Boy
		"Death Enters—Laughing" CA 61, Mar/47
7	Captain America	crime from prison
		"Prison Plunder" Marvel Mystery 81, Mar/47

Sal Trapani Metamorpho Swipes

In his comment on my first Sal Trapani post, Mark Evanier mentioned the artist's work on DC's Metamorpho containing many swipes from Ramona Fradon's earlier work on the title. The example that hit me when I then reread the series was the figure of Simon Stagg that Trapani swiped three times. The first detail here is from Fradon's cover to issue 5 (Mar-Apr/66). She stopped doing story art with issue 4, but continued with the covers, as far as I can tell, through 8. The next three details are from the stories in 11 (Mar-Apr/67) and 12 (May-June /67) and a contest page in 15 (Nov-Dec/67). The inker on the cover and story pages is Charles Paris; Trapani may have inked himself on the contest page.

Booksteve posted on his blog a Trapani Metamorpho swipe from a Jack Kirby Captain America panel. In my comment I cited swipes from Kirby's Fantastic Four. To illustrate with the correct FF story (my memory was off by a couple of issues), here are details from FF 65 (Aug/67) and a tier from that Nov-Dec/67 Metamorpho 15. The Metamorpho dialogue is by Bob Haney.

The Kirby swipes in this issue are limited to the sequence of Metamorpho and Element Girl in a sub-atomic world, including the page and a half before this one.

The rest of the issue you could take for Trapani actually pencilling for himself—I don't offhand see any more Fradon swipes—but I wonder if I don't see some of Bill Fraccio's style there, as in Dell's Super Heroes where he ghosted for Trapani. This bears further looking into!

Woolfolk Records 1946/07

To reiterate: in regular type is my transcription of William Woolfolk's comic book script-selling records (minus, for brevity, the payment sums). My additions of publication data are in bold type. I've seen the records through the auspices of Donna Woolfolk and Marc Svensson.

Woolfolk averaged 120 or so pages of scripts a month, I'd estimate, hitting 202 pages in November 1945. After this month's uncharacteristically low 44 pages he'll work his way back to over 120 a month.

These stories sold to Timely and Parents, and again one was meant for his short-lived own company OW—the eventual payment wasn't recorded this month—but published by EC.

And "Party Line" netted $15 a page, when the best price from the usual publishers was $10, so I suspect it was for a promotional giveaway comic.

July 1946 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

8 pg	Party Line
12	Freddy Firefly	ego exchanger
		"Freddy Firefly Meets Professor Mantis" Animal Fables 4, Sum/47
9	Blonde Phantom	rocket atom bombs
		"Skyride to Doom" [Chapter I] BP 12, Win/47
6	Dig Bailey	salvage of racing yacht
		"Salvage of the Santa Maria" Calling All Boys 10, Mar/47
9	Blonde Phantom	rocket atom bombs
		"Chapter II Skyride to Doom" BP 12, Win/47

"The Private Life of Captain America" Writer

The writer of "The Private Life of Captain America" in CA 59 (Nov/1946) is exactly the one you'd guess by that first caption.

Batman co-creator Bill Finger is known to have written, for Timely, the All Winners Squad story in All Winners 19 (Fall/46). In the Who's Who of American Comic Books, Captain America is listed as another feature he wrote for the company.

Two years later, Finger would write "The Origin of Batman" (Batman 47, June-July/48) and "The Origin of Superman" (Superman 53, July-Aug/48) at DC, each of which would recount the origin and add some new twist—in the first case, Batman's finding his parents' killer, Joe Chill; in the second, Superman's first encounter with Kryptonite and learning he's from Krypton. The Captain America story, after recounting the origin, sets up Steve Rogers as a teacher at the Lee School, with Bucky a student (they're already civilians before the story begins) and then gives them a new case. I don't know who the artist is; the entire origin section is swiped, and I would imagine with editorial approval, from Kirby & Simon in CA 1.

Some of Finger's stylistic tells that I've found in various of his stories, and that he uses in this Cap one, are:

action garb
"Big boy"
Bop
"H'ya"
"It seems ___"
"Jeepers"
Later...___...
"a look-see"
a melee ensues
Meantime, ___...
"Ooh"
A quick change of [costume] and...
sprint
swing into action
unleash a sledge-hammer blow
vital people
"We-ell"
"Yow"
"Y'see"

And there's a cutaway diagram.

You can see that the more indications of style match up, the better; otherwise you might assume John Stanley wrote this story. "Yow!"

Another Cap story that I can attribute to Bill Finger is "The Sportsman of Crime" in CA 58 (Sept/46). The flashback caption starting "So-and-so's story: '____'" is a Fingerism found in a number of Batman stories.