Spyman

How much Jim Steranko contributed to the published stories of the characters he created for the Harvey Thrillers begs two questions: how many scripts did he submit and how many were used? Steranko's scripts on Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD, are much more in the Marvel style than anything at Harvey, so although there isn't a lot that lets me say "The Birth of a Hero" is written by Steranko, there's nothing that leads to any other writer.

Look through France Edward Herron's credited work at DC on Blackhawk and Challengers and you'll find "Kwhamma" a lot.

Otto Binder's attributions for the back-up pieces in the Thrillers line seem to have morphed into credits for the main features, but I can't find him on Spyman, for one. I can't even find his style on the Eye Spy backup in #1.

Nick Caputo gives Mike Esposito as a possibility for the inks for the first part of Tuska's story. A CGD guess at the second part's inks is Carl Pfeufer.

I suspect the intro pages on the Thrillers are more likely written by editor Joe Simon than by the main-feature writers.

Spyman

Sept/66	#1	The Birth of a Hero	w: Jim Steranko?
			p: George Tuska
Dec/	#2	The Hand Is Quicker Than the Monster	w: Ed Herron
			a: Dick Ayers
Feb/67	#3	Death of Spyman	w: Herron  a: Bill Draut

Spyman backups

Sept/66	#1	Eye Spy and His Gal Friday...Jane Blond	w: Dick Wood??  a: ?
Dec/	#2	You Push a Button [ROBOLINK]	w: Otto Binder
			a: Carl Pfeufer
Feb/67	#3	Campy Champ: The Terrific Teen	w: Binder  a: Pfeufer

Stanley and His Monster under Joe Orlando

Stanley and His Monster was only one issue old (having displaced The Fox and the Crow in their own title after a couple of years as a front-of the-book "back-up" feature) when the editorship and the format changed. Issue 109, the last under Murray Boltinoff, contained a full-length story with credits for Arnold Drake (the feature's sole writer since the first episode in Fox and the Crow 95), Bob Oksner, and Tex Blaisdell. As of 110, under Joe Orlando there were no writers' credits, and signatures for the story artists only in 111. The format became three stories per issue.

Orlando kept Oksner and Blaisdell for some stories, but did not use Drake. He went to Howie Post for scripts. The credits pasted onto '80s reprints for Drake are very likely sheer guesswork rather than from the records.

The inker on the Sekowsky story could be Tex Blaisdell, but Stanley's face throughout looks to be by a different hand. Why is there a comma in the title? Ask the Rolling Stones.

Stanley and His Monster written by Howie Post

Jun-Jul/68	110	Carnival Caper	p: Bob Oksner   i: Tex Blaisdell
		Camp Cru-m-bee's Pet Dog...Spot	a: Henry Scarpelli
		Music, Monster, Please	p: Win Mortimer  i: Blaisdell
Aug-Sep/	111	Film Flam Man	p: Oksner  i: Blaisdell
		Badtime Story	a: Scarpelli
		Superhulk	p: Oksner  i: Blaisdell
Oct-Nov/	112	Like Father, Like Son?	a: Scarpelli
		Painting the Town, Red	p: Mike Sekowsky   i: Blaisdell?
		All Kinds of Spot	a: Scarpelli

In The Best of DC, out of inventory; written by Post

Oct/82

29

[Piñatas]

a: Oksner

George Roussos Inks DR. STRANGE But Not Dr. Strange

George Roussos is credited in the Grand Comics Database with anonymously inking the Dr. Strange story "The Return of the Omnipotent Baron Mordo" in Strange Tales 114 (Nov/63). The comment suggests that he may have been brought on board because Stan Lee wanted to rush the story into that issue (Dr. Strange stories appeared in 110 and 111 but not in 112 and 113).

Actually Steve Ditko had plenty of time to ink the story. And then Stan had the time to have Roussos do artwork corrections.

Roussos inked Victoria Bentley. I might have said he redrew her, but I see Ditko's poses still there. Dr. Strange himself, Mordo, and so on, are pretty much Steve Ditko's work, pencils and inks. Roussos may have contributed a bit more—on this page, the tree in panel 3 and Mordo's hands in panel 6 look like his brushstrokes—but to my eye the men's faces are more finely inked than Victoria's.

Trapani and Company on Flying Saucers

Sal Trapani had a signed story in each issue of Dell's Flying Saucers (#5 reprinted #1). Who ghosted the pencils for him? I'd say two artists we're familiar with.

I believe I see the generic Charlton style of Bill Molno under three stories; the tier from "Swamp Gas" uses the man-at-the-steering-wheel shot I compared in stories signed by Molno and those Molno ghosted for Joe Shuster.

In the fourth Trapani-signed story the penciling style changes and reminds me of the scratchy effect in mid-seventies Charlton work by Bill Fraccio and Tony Tallarico. The clouds from the flying saucer in "Space Spiders?" show it most obviously.

There are two FS stories which Trapani left unsigned because he had nothing to do with them, but the general Charlton feel seems to have connected him with them. They're both pencilled by Dick Giordano. I can't say who inked them; not only do I not see Trapani work, I can't say I see Giordano himself or Frank McLaughlin on the inks either.

Flying Saucers Trapani or Giordano art

Apr/67	1	Strange Shoot Out	p: Bill Molno  i: Sal Trapani
July/	2	Swamp Gas	p: Molno  i: Trapani
Oct/	3	The Fear of Death	p: Dick Giordano  i: ?
		A Nightmare in Broad Daylight	p: Molno  i: Trapani
Nov/	4	Trust Your Eyes	p: Giordano  i: ?
		Space Spiders?	p: Bill Fraccio  i: Trapani

Double Date with Candy and Tippy

Just as Stan Lee reused only his own scripts when he refried Millie the Model stories, when Jack Mendelsohn reused old scripts as a writer for Tippy Teen at Tower, he reused only his own—his own Candy stories from Quality in the Fifties. They are indeed rewrites, some more, some less; the gag climaxing "Chemical Warfare" is different from the one ending "Chemical Formula."

The Tippy character Ashley Hartburn (think Reggie Mantle) comes directly from Candy's cast with no name change.

The first story in Tippy 1, "Great Skate," is by Mendelsohn, as I've mentioned, but I don't see an earlier version of it. There are a lot more Quality/Tower refries, but since I have a gap in Tippi issues on hand after 3, I'll stop here for now.

Jack Mendelsohn Tippy Teen 1-3 scripts
reworking his Candy ones

Nov/65	1	Chemical Warfare
		from "Chemical Formula" CANDY 42 (Sep/53)
Jan/66	2	Hearts and Flowers
		from "Hearts and Flowers" CANDY 33 (Dec/52)
		Muscle Tussle
		from "Muscle Tussle" CANDY 32 (Nov/52)
		Inferior Decorating
		from 2nd Candy story CANDY 37 (Apr/53)
		Volley Folly
		from 4th Candy story CANDY 37 (Apr/53)
		A Sight for Sore Eyes [GO-GO AND ANIMAL]
		from "A Sight for Sore Eyes" CANDY 49 (July/54)
		Starlet Fever
		from "Is It a Cinema?" CANDY 33 (Dec/52)
Mar/	3	3rd Finger Right Hand
		from "3rd Finger Right Hand" CANDY 51 (Nov/54)
		Very Dear Diary
		from 1st Candy story CANDY 37 (Apr/53)
		Sweep No More My Lady
		from "Sweep No More, My Lady" CANDY 45 (Dec/53)
		A Stretch in Time
		from 2nd Candy story CANDY 36 (Mar/53)
		Odd Appreciation [GO-GO]
		from "Odd Appreciation" CANDY 33 (Dec/52)
		Keeping 'Em in Stitches
		from "Knot One, Purl Two" CANDY 35 (Feb/53)
		Good Deed Indeed-y
		from "One Good Turn Deserves Another" CANDY 51 (Nov/54)
		Axe Me No Questions
		from 5th Candy story CANDY 36 (Mar/53)

Dick Dillin on (Who Would Have Thought?) Blackhawk

During Dick Dillin's long run across two companies in the Fifties and Sixties on Blackhawk, he had to be spelled only a couple of times. In Blackhawk 210 (July/65) under the usual inker Chuck Cuidera's work (note the close-up in Panel 1), Jim Mooney steps in to pencil, as indexers were quick to notice (see notably the young women in Panel 3, although the men's poses are evidence of Mooney's work too).

However...

Mooney didn't pencil all of "Danger--Blackhawk Bait." He did Part 2. Part 1 was pencilled by Dick Dillin:

The main Blackhawk writers at this point are Ed Herron and Bob Haney; "Aaaah" and, elsewhere in the story, "Uuuuh", drawn out on the "a" or "u" rather than the "h", pinpoint this script as Haney's.

Undercover Spy Writer in the MMMS

In rereading mid-sixties Marvels, occasionally you might look over the list of Merry Marvel Marching Society members in each issue to see if there are any names you recognize with hindsight. For instance, I see Will Meugniot in Strange Tales 143. And then I see a professional writer listed in Strange Tales 148—under his fandom pseudonym (he used his real name on his books).

Ted Johnstone, at the top of the rightmost column, is actually Man from U.N.C.L.E. tie-in writer David McDaniel. So it's appropriate that his listing appears in the book featuring Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. When ST 148 (Sept/66) went to press McDaniel's first novel, The Dagger Affair, had been on the stands for about half a year and his second, The Vampire Affair, was just coming out from Ace Books.  It was in his novels, not on the TV show, that the secret history of THRUSH was revealed and in fact its full name: the Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity.

(I didn't have to look that up any more than I would the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, The Higher United Nations Defense Enforcement Reserves, or Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage Law-Enforcement Division, but I can't get any further on SHIELD's gritty, with-it, "up-to-date" new name [twenty years now?] than Strategic Homeland blah blah blah blah.)

In the U.N.C.L.E. novel that McDaniel wrote to end the series but that Ace declined to publish in 1971, The Final Affair, one character, a motorcycle gang member, is nicknamed The Thing and shouts "It's clobberin' time!" And at one point Mr. Waverly refers to THRUSH as "that Hydra-headed bird."