Swipes Across the Water

It's not Roy Lichtenstein, but here are examples of comic book line art being swiped into paintings—artists Mehmet Gülergün (Nachts, wenn die Toten kommen, May 27, 1980) and Özcan Eralp (Das Geisterhaus von Lockwood Hill, Oct. 28, 1981) are not going for arch Pop Art camp as they use Nestor Redondo's and Jim Aparo's compositions from Swamp Thing 13 (Dec, 1974) and Weird Mystery Tales 4 (Jan-Feb, 1973).

Silber Grusel-Krimi ("Silver Horror-Thriller") is a heftroman series; the heftromane (roughly "notebook novels") have been called the German pulps (the original Perry Rhodan series was one of them) but I'd call them closer to the predecessors of the American pulps, the dime novels. Prose pamphlets, they're on average 64 pages long in comic-book-style stapled binding, and many titles have come out weekly. They cover the gamut of genres: horror, SF, romance, Western, crime. There was one fairly long-running superhero series, 1956-76: when the publisher finished translating (and no doubt abridging) most of the Black Bat pulp novels from the USA, they got German writers to continue with originals.

Jack Mendelsohn Art and Scripts on Terrytoons Comics

Above is a page from "The Corny Dream," the Gaston Le Crayon story in Mighty Mouse Fun Club Magazine #2 (Winter/57, Pines). Jack Mendelsohn previews the kid's drawing style he'll use on his syndicated strip Jacky's Diary, in this story of the old-time melodrama characters Gaston has drawn who escape his easel.

Mendelsohn was solely a writer on strips like Candy and Marmaduke Mouse at Quality, and Angel and Supermouse at Pines. When Pines acquired the Terrytoons titles, though, all his work that I've seen so far on those books was done as writer/artist. His writing style is a little different to match his art style—storybookish, mostly with captions in the past tense—but consistent throughout his Terrytoons work. For a sampling of his work I've listed issues I've seen so far that include his Tom Terrific scripts/art. He has only one story in Tom's own book. He's in later issues of MMFCM as well as in the other Terrytoon titles; in addition to the features here he also worked on Heckle and Jeckle, and Dinky Duck.

Below is the sure signal of Mendelsohn's art style: the freeform windows and the Platonic ideal of a lamppost in his cityscape backgrounds.

Jack Mendelsohn scripts/art in
MIGHTY MOUSE FUN CLUB MAGAZINE #1-2

Fall/57	1	How the Mighty Mouse Fun Club Was Organized... [MIGHTY MOUSE]
		Peculiar Picnic [TOM TERRIFIC]
		Monkey Business [GASTON LE CRAYON]
		The Elf's Money [CLINT CLOBBER]
		Strange Footprints [FLEBUS]
Win/	2	cover
		Guests from the Stars [MIGHTY MOUSE]
		The Corny Dream [GASTON LE CRAYON]
		Ancient China [TOM TERRIFIC]
		A Day in the Attic [CLINT CLOBBER]
		The Reluctant Pup [FLEBUS]

in TOM TERRIFIC #1-5

Spr/58

4

The Land of Strange Discoveries

A Yosemite Sam Artist: John Langton

Gold Key's Yosemite Sam starts in 1970 as a reprint title, with Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig stories relogoed. With issue 6 new stories begin by the usual crew like writer Don R. Christensen and artists Phil DeLara and Pete Alvarado.

With issue 14 it switches from the West Coast offices of Western Publishing to the East Coast. In the next years there are stories by Paul S. Newman, Arnold Drake, and Steve Skeates. One of the artists known to the Who's Who is John Langton. Since he did a lot of work for Cracked, his style is easy enough to pick out. (The signed tier is from "A Cracked Alphabet Book About Politicians" in #70, August 1968.)

I'm missing a few issues, but #14 through 47 does seem to be the range of Langton's original work on the title.

John Langton art on Yosemite Sam

June/73	14	Shore 'Nuff
		A Hair Raising Experience
Aug/	15	Sing a Song of  Pirates
		Steer Clear
Sep/	16	For Snoring Out Loud
		Oil's Well That Ends Well
Dec/	18	End of the Line
Feb/74	19	How the West Was Won
Apr/	20	Man Overboard
		Noah's Ark Is Sunk
June/	21	Sam's Slapjacks
Aug/	22	Friends to the End
		The Last of the Bad Men
Oct/	23	Rioting Rivals
		Wanted!
Dec/	25	The Secret Formuls
Feb/75	26	Keep Dreaming
Apr/	27	It's a Gas!
		Bum's Away
June/	28	Seaweed Sal
July/	30	The World's Greatest Mustache
Sep/	31	Lucky Day
		Sea Scout Rout
Dec/	33	If It Isn't Christopher Columbus
Feb/76	34	Mop Art
June/	36	Model Behavior
July/	37	High Seas
		The Old Shell Game
		Radioactive Rabbit
Aug/	38	Laboratory Retriever
Sep/	39	Wind Wagon Sam
Oct/	40	Take Pity on a Pioneer
June/77	44	Fat's the Way It Goes
Aug/	46	Wanted
Sep/	47	Policeman's Brawl

Robert Bernstein Found at Toby

I haven't looked at much of Toby's output, but one point similar to what I'd seen at Quality jumped out at me: "Ikkkkk" in "The White Octopus" (art by Fred Kida). From there I knew to look for Robert Bernstein, and found a few stories of his so far at a company where, like Quality, he hadn't been known to write. The untitled stories in Black Knight 1 seem to be written by someone else.

The two Sands of the South Pacific stories could be Bernstein's first teaming with John Rosenberger, artist on so many of his Fly and Jaguar scripts at Archie in the early 60s.

The Black Knight

May/53

1

Human Sacrifice

Sands of the South Pacific

Jan/53	1	Death Dive
		The Crocodile Killers
		The White Octopus [FIJI JOE]

Bill Williams Draws Tippy Teen

The Who's Who has Bill Williams at Tower drawing Tippy Teen in 1965 and her boyfriend Tommy in 1968--but wait, there's more. And this is not necessarily a complete list.

I found it easier to figure out Williams' style from his Fifties features like Henry Aldrich than from his Sixties work like Dunc and Loo, Kookie, Millie the Model, and Debbi. On the latter two, for instance, the editors have him emulating the styles set by the main artists at the time: respectively Stan Goldberg in serious mode, and Henry Scarpelli. And at Marvel and DC the inkers like Giacoia, Colletta, and McLaughlin further set him off from this work at Tower, where he has any number of inkers (possibly himself among them).

On the Tippy strips his work stands out from the other artists' by his characters' habit of throwing their heads back. The page above is from "On with the Show" in Tippy #1.

Bill Williams Pencils on Tippy Teen

Nov/65	1	Better Date Than Never
		On with the Show	inks: Rudy Lapick
Jan/66	2	A Sight for Sore Eyes
Apr/	4	Potions of Love	splash art: Samm Schwartz
Mar/67	11	Kissin' Cousins
June/	13	It's a Mod, Mod World
Nov/68	21	Whatever Lulu Wants [TOMMY]
Sept/69	24	3rd Degree Burns [TOMMY gag]
		Higher Education [GO-GO gag]
Oct/	25	What's Cookin? [TOMMY]
		Wheeling and Dealing [TOMMY]
		Peddle Meddle

On Go-Go and Animal

Sept/67	5	Thrown for a Loss [ANIMAL]
Sept/68	10	Painful Lesson [GO-GO]

Dorothy Woolfolk on Love Diary #11-20--"Oh, glory!"

These are the stories in Love Diary #11-20 that I'm sure are written by Dorothy Woolfolk; there are others I still have down with a question mark. All three panels here with her trademark "Oh, glory" come from different points in the same story: "Prisoner of Love."

The stories plotted by William Woolfolk I already included on my transcriptions of his records, working them out from his descriptions. There were four more stories he plotted for Dorothy mentioned in the record book but with no descriptions; those would fall somewhere around #10-16.

Love Diary scripts by
Dorothy Woolfolk included in #11-20

Dec/50	#11	Wedding Dress for Sale
		Mama's Girl
Jan/51	#12	John's Other Love
		Poor Little Rich Girl
		Someday I'll Find You
		Big City Girl
Feb/	#13	Prisoner of Love
		I Was a Fat Girl
		Not Meant for Love
Mar/	#14	I Was a Pick-Up
Apr/	#15	I Loved a No-Good Guy
		Jilted!
June/	#17	Back Alley Girl [plotted by William Woolfolk]
		I Was a Slave to Tradition [plotted by William]
July/	#18	Betrayed  [plotted by William]
		They Called Me Spitfire
		Lonely for Love
Aug/	#19	The Cheat [plotted by William]
		My Reckless Moment [plotted by William]
Sep/	#20	Sailor's Sweetheart
		Ladies Man

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