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.

UNCLE Act II

With Gold Key's comic of the spin-off UNCLE series, and the back-ups, there are no surprises among the writers.

I can see Bill Lignante's art on Girl from UNCLE 3-5, but I don't see the same art as on the Phantom. Since Sparky Moore says he ghost-pencilled for Lignante, on at least some of the Phantom and on Secret Agent 1, those don't make a good example of full art by Lignante. On these panels from Girl 3 I wonder if I see Mike Peppe inks—for want of a better guess—on at least some faces.

Girl from UNCLE Written by Paul S. Newman

Oct/66	#1	The Fatal Accidents Affair	a: Alden McWilliams
Apr/67	#2	The Kid Commandos' Caper	a: McWilliams
June/67	#3	The Captain Kidd Affair	a?: Bill Lignante
Aug/67	#4	The One-Way Tourist Affair	a?: Lignante
Oct/67	#5	The Harem-Scarem Affair	a?: Lignante

Leopold Swift—Courier in Girl from UNCLE Written by Newman

Oct/67

#5

Bubble-Trouble

a: Joe Certa

Jet Dream and Her Stunt Girl Counterspies in Man from UNCLE
Written by Dick Wood

July/66	#7	The Spy in the Sky	p: Mike Sekowsky  i: Mike Peppe
Sept/66	#8	The Spider and the Spy	p: Sekowsky  i: Peppe
Nov/66	#9	The Super-Tiger of Targan	p: Sekowsky  i: Peppe
Jan/67	#10	Ting-a-Ling—Enemy Agent	p: Sekowsky  i: ?
Mar/67	#11	Death Plunge	a: Jack Sparling
May/67	#12	The Powder-Puff Derby Caper	a: Certa
July/67	#13	The Achilles Heel	p: Sekowsky  i: Peppe
Sept/67	#14	Splash-Down to Death	a: Certa
Nov/67	#15	The Set-Up Sultan	a: Certa
Jan/68	#16	Day of Infamy	a: Certa
Mar/68	#17	The Farmer Brown Fiasco	a: Certa
May/68	#18	The Captive Jet	a: Certa
July/68	#19	Fall to Freedom	a: Certa
Oct/68	#20	Menace of the Feathered Warrriors	a: Certa
Apr/69	#22	The Demon Dogfight	a: Certa

Jet Dream Written by Wood

June/68

#1

D-Day for the Generalissimo

a: Certa

The Man from UNCLE Affair

Above is a panel from Gold Key's The Man from UNCLE 3, pencilled by George Tuska.

Following up on Mark Evanier's comment about likenesses: although in some cases the license holders insisted on extra work for that fidelity, in other cases the contracts forbade comic books from using likenesses. After the comic book's first two issues, the powers-that-were recognized the popularity of David McCallum's character Illya Kuryakin, and so he and Leo G. Carroll's Alexander Waverly became recognizable in the comics. In those first issues, only Napoleon Solo's face was reinked or redrawn, for the sake of Robert Vaughn's likeness—as in the Tuska panels below, from #2.

On the entire series, it looks to me as if Mike Peppe inked more than the Sekowsky issues attributed to him previously; I'm not sure if #1-2, apart from the Solo faces, were inked by someone other than pencillers Heck and Tuska respectively. (Update: read Mark's comment on this post.)

If Marshall McClintock wrote the Man from UNCLE for Gold Key as the Who's Who says, he didn't do final scripts; they're all by Paul S. Newman or Dick Wood. Wood's are filled with his trademark exclamations such as "Great suffering Hannah." Wood errs in his first script, as many have, by referring to UNCLE as the United Network Command for Law Enforcement—it's the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.

Man from UNCLE Written by Paul S. Newman

May/65	#1	The Explosive Affair	p: Don Heck  i: ?
Oct/65	#2	The Fortune Cookie Affair	p: George Tuska  i: ?

Written by Dick Wood, Inked by Mike Peppe

Nov/65	#3	The Deadly Devices Affair	p: pg. 1-26 Tuska, pg. 27-32 Heck
Jan/66	#4	The Rip Van Solo Affair	p: Werner Roth
Mar/66	#5	The Ten Little Uncles Affair	p: Heck
May/66	#6	The Three Blind Mice Affair	p: Mike Sekowsky
July/66	#7	The Pixilated Puzzle Affair	p: Sekowsky
Sept/66	#8	The Floating People Affair	p: Sekowsky
Nov/66	#9	The Spirit of St. Louis Affair	p: Sekowsky
Jan/67	#10	The Trojan Horse Affair	p: Sekowsky
Mar/67	#11	The Three-Story Giant Affair	p: Sekowsky
May/67	#12	The Dead Man's Diary Affair	p: Sekowsky
July/67	#13	The Flying Clowns Affair	p: Sekowsky
Sept/67	#14	The Brain Drain Affair	p: Sekowsky
Nov/67	#15	The Animal Agents Affair	p: Tom Gill
Jan/68	#16	The Instant Disaster Affair	p: Gill
Mar/68	#17	The Deadly Visions Affair	p: Mike Roy
May/68	#18	The Alien Affair	p: Roy
July/68	#19	The Knight in Shining Armor Affair	p: Roy
Oct/68	#20	The Deep Freeze Affair	p: Roy

The Man from UNCLE stories in #21 and 22 were reprints. #5-8 were reprinted in the British Man from UNCLE World Adventure Library in late 1966.

Lorna Artist

Werner Roth drew the Lorna the Jungle Girl stories in her title at Atlas from #1 (July/53) through the first two stories in #12 (Mar/55), without a signature. Her artist in #13 (May) was Jay Scott Pike, who signed his stories. The unsigned third story in #12, "Trial by Fire," has been attributed to Roth in the Grand Comics Database and to Pike in the Atlas Tales website.

The artist has been correctly attributed the Greg Knight solo story in #13. He's Bob Brown, who would pencil another Marvel jungle girl when Shanna the She-Devil guest-starred in Daredevil in 1974.

One writer did most of the Lorna stories I've seen so far. Don Rico is known to have written Jann of the Jungle for Atlas at some point, but whether he wrote the bulk of the company's jungle stories is a question I haven't answered to my own satisfaction yet.

F-Troop Faces

Issues 6 and 7 of Dell's TV tie-in F-Troop look at first as if they use the statted art process seen in I Dream of Jeannie. On second look, although the facial poses of each male lead are repeated over and over (in these illustrations from #6 it's Forrest Tucker as Sergeant O'Rourke), each is redrawn--traced?--anew in the inking. That the figures take the same pose and position in each panel suggests that penciller Bill Fraccio was told to facilitate this process.

All these panels appeared farther apart throughout the comic, although these two were on the same page:

This art is in the same style as the Dell monster superheroes and the Warren stories drawn by "Tony Williamsune," so I'm sure Bill Fraccio pencilled F-Troop. In fact, I don't know if I've seen Tony Tallarico's own pencils at all in Sixties comic books.

F-Troop
written: D. J. Arneson;  pencilled: Bill Fraccio;  inked, lettered: Tony Tallarico

Aug/66	#1	Don't Cross Your Bridges
		The Buffalo Hunter
Nov/66	#2	Frantic Fireworks
		What Goes Up...
Feb/67	#3	Off the Track
		The Devilish Divining Rod
		The Camel Corps
Apr/67	#4	The Wind Wagon
		The Nightmare Night March
May/67	#5	Hekawi Rent-a-Horse
		Happy Birthday Hekawis
		The Captives
June/67	#6	The Attack
		The Salt and Peppered Mine
		Survival Course
Aug/67	#7	The Clown Prince's Visit
		Camouflage Dodge
		Special Delivery

Another Manhunter Artist

Shoehorned into the bloc of Manhunter stories in Quality's Police Comics pencilled by Pete Riss around 1945-46 is one by another artist (and by a writer I can't ID). The penciller of "The Black Pirate," in #55 (June/46), had done a few stories for Quality a couple of years earlier. His work is pretty distinctive at other companies, but Quality's inkers imposed a certain house style. On the close shots of Patrolman Dan Richards, like the one in the circular panel here, the inker is trying very hard to make this artist's work match that of Riss.

The figures of the character Ricardo are the giveaway that this story was pencilled by 20-year-old Joe Kubert.

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: ?