Woolfolk Records 1951/03

Fawcett, Orbit, and Quality comics.

Since William Woolfolk didn't have any Pinhead & Foodini stories in issue 1, I'm assuming his gag pages for the title didn't start in that issue either. He writes three set of gags in this and later months, fitting into the final three of the four issues.

The Lobo story is another case where the editors have changed Woolfolk's title at the page top, with the logo, but let his version remain at the end of the blurb below.

March 1951 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

6 pg	Ibis	the pipes of Pan
		"The Pipes of Pan" Whiz 139, Nov/51
11	Wild Bill Pecos	secret of the lost caves
		"The Secret of the Lost Caves" The Westerner 39, Aug/51
4	Curtains for a Killer	theatre ticket alibi—but there was no show that night
		"Curtains for a Killer" Wanted 40, Aug/51
12	Broadway Bandit	gang specializing in night club robberies
		"The Broadway Bandit" Wanted 40, Aug/51
2	Private Piney & Miss Fitt	gag stuff
1	Private Piney	"Always Room for One More" Pinhead and Foodini 2, Sept/51
1	Little Miss Fitt	"Something to Bank On" P & F 2, Sept/51
7	Blackhawk	the invisible men
		"The Invisible Men" BH 45, Oct/51
8	Captain Marvel Jr.	the thing that grew
		"CMJ Battles the Thing That Grew" CMJ 103, Nov/51
8	Lobo, the Wolf Boy	wolf kingdom
		"Lobo the Wolf Boy Fights Fury the Terror Wolf" The Westerner 39, Aug/51
4	Wild Bill Pecos	last bullet
		"The Last Bullet" The Westerner 39, Aug/51
12	Goons with Guns	hired strikebreakers, inc.
		"Goons with Guns" Wanted 41, Sept/51
7	Monte Hale	killer's faith in his guns
		MH Western or Western Hero c. Dec/51
6	Captain Marvel Jr.	palace of lost ideas
		"CMJ and the Palace of Lost Ideas" CMJ 104, Dec/51

There's a Mistake You Don't See Every Day, Chauncey

I was going to post this page from Eerie Tales 1-and-only merely to showcase the howling error of a sort I can't recall seeing anywhere else (but then, I haven't read every comic book published). Then I realized I had an art attribution differing from one of the GCD's for this issue (in fact, for this story).

Eerie Tales predated Creepy by half a decade. Michael T. Gilbert unearthed it in Alter Ego, and later Joe Simon confirmed editing it. The magazine itself presented only joke editorial credits, just as a number of humor B&Ws did at the time, and was published by the otherwise unknown Hastings Associates (just as DC later published the two short-lived Kirby magazines as Hampshire House, for the sake, one supposes, of plausible deniability).

Gilbert, Hames Ware, James Vadeboncoeur Jr., and Dr. Michael J. Vassallos pored over the artwork for attribution; I pass along their credit of Ken Battefield on "Shroud Number Nine," who would never have occurred to me. They guessed at Bob Powell for the "The Suckspect" (pictured). Bob Powell's story later in the issue, "The Unbeliever," shows his style pretty unmistakably; "The Suckspect" doesn't, to me. Those gray washes don't help art-spotting! But look at the leftmost figure in the second panel, for instance; that's where Joe Orlando's work shows best on this page. The four art experts did suggest assistants helping on this story's art; I can't disagree with that.

Just before posting, I found a comment on Harry Mendryk's Jack Kirby Museum attributing every story in this and its the predecessor one-shot title Weird Mysteries to Carl Wessler; here's where I stood when I composed this post: "From the Greyble to the Grave" jumped out at me as a Carl Wessler script at the climax, when the protagonist screams "Nyaaaaa!" "The Stalker" ends up more or less in the same place as Wessler's "The Night I Watched Myself Die" (The Unexpected 105, Mar-Apr/68, DC), although otherwise they're two very different stories (and the later one moreover makes sense). He may have written "The Suckspect" and "Shroud Number Nine;" if he wrote "The Unbeliever," I'd say it was rewritten. (From the comment by Rick on Harry's blog, I take it that all of these stories are indeed in Wessler's records, although the CGD entry credits no writer at all.) UPDATE: Robin Snyder informs me that Carl Wessler's account book does not include those three stories. It also omits "Shocked to Death," so that argues against my thinking I see his style there; I've added question marks to that credit below. On the other hand, the records show that Wessler wrote the issue's text piece, "Frozen Stiff," which was meant to be continued in the never-published issue 2.

There was a question of whether the morgue keeper in Eerie Tales, unnamed in the stories, is technically Morgue'n from Weird Mysteries (which I'd love to see in total). He is; his name is on the morgue wagon in the cover painting.

Eerie Tales

July/59	1	The Stalker	w: Carl Wessler  a: Gray   Morrow
		Gunk	w: Wessler  a: George Tuska
		The Suckspect	w: ?  a: Joe Orlando
		Burn!	w: Wessler  a: Morrow
		Shroud Number Nine	w: ?  a: Ken Battefield
		The Unbeliever	w: ?  a: Bob Powell
		Shocked to Death	w: Wessler??  a: Paul Reinman
		From the Greyble to the Grave	w: Wessler  a: Angelo Torres
		Little Miss Gruesome	w: Wessler  a: Reinman
		Lower Than Hell	w: Wessler  a: Al Williamson

Woolfolk Records 1951/02

And now for something fairly different: the TV tie-in Pinhead and Foodini. (Not completely different; William Woolfolk wrote a few stories of the radio tie-in comic Land of the Lost.)

Fawcett, Orbit, and Quality are the publishers this month.

These three love stories were plotted for Dorothy Woolfolk in the shorter page lengths and were published at the longer lengths corresponding to her scripts.

The Wild Bill Pecos story "Draw with Death" expands upon the plot of Woolfolk's Arizona Raines text piece "Draw against Death" (Crack Western 68, Sept/50), written in April 1950.

February 1951 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

6 pg	Captain Marvel Jr.	the millionairedale
		"CMJ Meets the Millionairedale" CMJ 103, Nov/51
2	plot for Dorothy	girl loves an older man
12		"Betrayed" Love Diary 18, July/51
12	Mad Magician of Crime	ex-vaudevillian turns to crime to make headlines
		"The Mad Magician of Crime" Wanted 39, July/51
10	Foodini	machine to make decisions
		"Foodini's Think Tank" Pinhead and Foodini 2, Sept/51
2	plot for Dorothy	my reckless moment—should I tell?
10		"My Reckless Moment" L Diary 19, Aug/51
10	Blackhawk	BH Island becomes a trap for BHs
		"The Island of Death" BH 45, Oct/51
4	Wild Bill Pecos	crippled, must draw against a killer
		"Draw with Death" The Westerner 38, July/51
6	Lobo, the Wolf Boy	mysterious wolf kills people in village—is it Lobo?
		"Battles the Killer Wolf" The Westerner 38, July/51
2	plot for Dorothy	girl who stole my life
12		"The Cheat" L Diary 19, Aug/51
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	the money mad monarch
8		"CMJ and the Money-Mad Monarch" CMJ 103, Nov/51
13	Foodini	Pinhead goes wild
		"Pinhead Goes Wild" P & F 2, Sept/51
4	Murder Message	new typewriter holds a murder message on cylinder
		"Murder Message" Wanted 39, July/51
8	Blackhawk	atomic bomb on the loose
		"BH and the Unholy Three" BH 45, Oct/51
6	Ibis	curse of the fire king
		"The Curse of the Fire King" Whiz 138, Oct/51

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?

A Tsunami of Swill FREE through Tuesday! Who'd Turn Up Their Nose at That?

Tsunami of Swill: Secret of the Ebook Crapnado by Charles Deckins is my novelty ebook short, normally priced at $0.99 but F*R*E*E for the asking at Amazon's Kindle Store beginning now and lasting over the Labor Day weekend (and through Tuesday). This may be the only link I post; I don't expect to add one over in the right-hand column under my "real" books. The joke won't explain itself there!

^ ^ Amazon Link! ^ ^

Last week, thriller author Joe Konrath issued a challenge on his blog, A Newbie's Guide to Publishing. He confessed that he had put out a handful of very short humorous how-to ebooks under a pen name: he wrote jokes, edited, formatted, created a cover on Paint, and published on Amazon in a hour or so per book. (He's made a few dollars a month on them without any promotion.) His challenge to the writers reading his blog: do the same in eight hours.

Many of those accepting the challenge wrote stories over the weekend about their series characters, or otherwise took up ideas in their normal genre. They put together some impressive covers in a hurry, out of stock photos. Others went a little farther afield, into the dangerous morass of humor. I too took my influence from the books Konrath put out as Dr. Hans Uberass, most notably How to Stop Farting. My cover should prove it; I tried to create one as generic-looking as possible (embrace the Comic Sans!), one that says "I dare you to spend good money on this book."

The influence to publish something in less than a day came from Konrath, but my plot came out of a thread on the Kindle Boards' Writers Café. A self-styled industry insider in New York publishing had blogged a typo-laden rant about those crappy independent ebooks flooding the Internet, and within a day the entire blog was mysteriously deleted. That set me on the trail of the amazing facts: all those ebooks are part of a global conspiracy. My tagline: Tsunami of Swill is based on a 7% true story.

This is strictly an ebook, in part for the sake of the joke. In order to do free promotions, I had to sign it up exclusively with Kindle. As I've mentioned before, the Kindle Reading Apps for PC, Mac, Smartphone, Tablet, and even your browser are free downloads from Amazon at any time. My books come without Digital Rights Management, so you can use the Calibre ebook library management program (also a free download) to convert from Kindle's Mobi format into Epub or whatever your e-reader requires.

Writers: the Konrath challenge per se is over—he blogs the results today—but nothing's stopping you from trying it for yourself. 2500 words in a couple of days, and you can "cheat" and get editing or formatting help, of course; but one way or the other you can publish a short ebook for a lark before the week is out. How liberating is that?

Remember: Tsunami of Swill: Secret of the Ebook Crapnado by Charles Deckins is absolutely F*R*E*E through this Tuesday. And if time is money, it won't take up too much of that, either; it's short!

We now return to our regularly scheduled comic book blogging.

Woolfolk Records 1951/01

January 1951 stories go to Fawcett, Quality, and Orbit.

"Back Alley Girl" and "I Was a Slave to Tradition" were plotted at 2 pages each by William Woolfolk and published at 13 pages and 8, respectively, after Dorothy Woolfolk scripted from the plots.

"Story breakdown" is probably the same as Russell Carley's "script continuity" for Michael Fleisher at DC in the Seventies—helping a writer turn his or her plot into panel-by-panel scenes before the scripting. The scripter noted here, Miles K., would have to be the Miles Cahn with the byline on text fiction pieces in Love Diary 15-16 and The Westerner 35-36. Prescription for Happiness is the recurring short feature whose individual installments are untitled.

UPDATE: darkmark found the Monte Hale bandit stronghold story.

January 1951 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

7 pg	Monte Hale	the bandit stronghold
		"MH Invades the Bandit Stronghold" Western Hero 106, Sept/51
12	Arizona Raines	outlaw's land
		"Free Land!" Crack Western 73, July/51
11	Diamonds of Death	jewel smuggling racket
		"Diamonds of Death" Wanted 38, June/51
6	Ibis	Karnak & the termite men
		"Ibis and the Termite Men" Whiz 137, Sept/51
8	Captain Marvel Jr.	Sivana Jr. & glacial age Chapter I
		"CMJ and Sivana Jr.'s Cold War" [Chapter I] CMJ 100, Aug/51
3	story breakdown for Miles K	a gal whose boy is called by the draft
		[untitled Prescription for Happiness] Love Diary 17, June/51
2	plot for Dorothy	I was a slum girl
13		"Back Alley Girl" L Diary 17, June/51
6	Captain Marvel Jr.	Chapter II—death of Freddy Freeman
		"CMJ and Sivana Jr.'s Cold War" [Chapter II] CMJ 100, Aug/51
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	Chapter III—Sivana Jr., prince of universe
		"CMJ and Sivana Jr.'s Cold War" [Chapter III] CMJ 100, Aug/51
4	The Survivor	shipwrecked man kills for water—when there is fresh water all around him
		"The Survivor" Wanted 38, June/51
12	Blackhawk	battles the aerial circus
11		"Death Patrol" BH 46, Nov/51
2	plot for Dorothy	girl with old family traditions & modern guy
8		"I Was a Slave to Tradition" L Diary 17, June/51
7	Wild Bill Pecos	return of Lobo, the wolf boy
		"The Return of Lobo the Wolf Boy" The Westerner 37, June/51
7	Monte Hale	the lost homestead
		"The Mystery of the Lost Homestead" Western Hero 108, Nov/51
10	Wild Bill Pecos	curse of Ashtor
		"The Curse of Ashtor" The Westerner 38, July/51

Jim Aparo Wasn't There

Back in this post I posited Jim Aparo as the artist of "The Sinister Stone" in Worlds of Fantasy 11 (Apr/58) from Martin Goodman's company, once Atlas and later Marvel. It would have been his first work in comics before coming to Charlton in the later Sixties.

I was seeing something that wasn't there. I proved myself wrong when I found that the most Aparo-like panel (and that mostly in the inks) is a swipe from Ruben Moreira's story "The Glitter of Doom" in DC's House of Mystery 58 (Jan/57). I haven't seen Aparo swipe other comics. So I'll defer to Doc V.'s attribution of Ed Winiarski on "The Sinister Stone."