Joe Gill--After the Human Torch, What?

This is one of the features Joe Gill wrote at Timely/Atlas after the Human Torch revival. The only story in Spy Thillers that I can't make out as his is the backup in #4, which is actually a war story--it may have been brought over from one of the battle mags.

"This is" in captions is one of  the clues to Joe Gill--here you see it in "The Double Identities" and "Oil!" In the same tier in the latter you see it in the past tense too, as you're more likely to see it in Gill's Charlton scripts.

Rick Davis in Spy Thrillers—Written by Joe Gill

Nov/54	#1	The Double Identities
		The Purple Pyramid
		The Eyes of Death [MISC SPY]
		The Ticking Death
Jan/55	#2	The Whirl of Death
		The Unseen Killers
		Incident [MISC SPY]
		The Telltale Machines
Mar/	#3	Safari of Death
		The Moon Rocket
		Oil! [MISC SPY]
		The Hatchet Man
May/	#4	The China Doll
		The Tiger's Claws
		The Deadly Dutch Plates

A One-Shot Wonder at Dell Penciling The Music Man

This penciler did only one comic for Dell: the Movie Classic The Music Man (January 1963). His style is rather overwhelmed under the inking, so IDing him calls for the thought experiment of unseeing the inks. It might be easier to imagine someone else's inks here. Try John Forte's; he inked Curt Swan to good effect on a number of Superman family stories at DC.

And, yes, on pretty much every other John Forte penciling job that I can think of he inked himself. But here we are. I don't know if this is a tag team of a couple of inkers or just one getting more rushed as the pages pile up, but by the later pages the inking doesn't look much like it does on these two. Those later pages in particular make me think of Frank McLaughlin as a possible suspect.
And the writer is unknown. It may just be because I'm so familiar with the movie of The Music Man, but this strikes me as the one Movie Classic that uses just as much as possible from the movie script verbatim (apart from necessarily condensing and bridging). The other Dell movie adaptations of the period, by Ken Fitch, Don Segall, and yet more unknowns, take a freer hand with the source material.

Candy to Felix to Tippy

I've posted some of Jack Mendelsohn's Tippy Teen scripts at Tower recycled from his own Candy ones at Quality. A closer look at his Felix the Cat work at Dell showed me some of those were recycled from Quality—not only Candy but the funny animals. Then I saw that he redid some Felixes for Tippy and her friend Go-Go. (Let me repeat that, from the style, he scripted all these stories—he didn't plagiarize anyone else's.)

A Venn diagram would overlap with one story used at all three publishers:

Jack Mendelsohn Felix the Cat
scripts reworked from his Quality ones

Apr-June/63	3	Frozen Assets
		from "Asleep in the Deep-Freeze"
		CANDY 44 (Nov/53)
July-Sep/	4	The Vicious Cycle
		from "Nervous Repair Service"
		BUSTER BEAR 6 (Oct/55)
		Tale of a Fish
		from "Fish Story"
		MARMADUKE MOUSE 48 (Sep/54)
		A Sample Assignment
		from "Buster Gets the Goods"
		BUSTER BEAR 6 (Oct/55)

reworked from Felix in Tippy Teen

Apr/67	12	Beaux & Arrows
		from "Beaux and Arrows"
		FELIX 2 (Jan-Mar/63)
Oct/	16	Foul Weather Friends
		from "Fair Weather Enemies"
		FELIX 3 (Apr-June/63)

in Go-Go and Animal

Dec/ 67	7	The Ice-Cream Man Cometh
		from "Asleep in the Deep-Freeze"
		CANDY 44 (Nov/53)
		via "Frozen Assets"
		FELIX 3 (Apr-June/63)

Phil Evans on the Flying A

On most other features that the Who's Who lists Phil Evans as writing at Western/Dell, his scripts appear much more frequently than on Gene Autry--to the point that sheer guesswork as to his scripts on the Grand Comics Database gives a correct credit a number of times. On Autry's long-running book, though, there are just a handful of Evans credits. Likewise he wrote only one story for the TV title The Flying A's Range Rider--fitting in here inasmuch the Flying A is Gene Autry's production company, named for his ranch.

This partial page from "Gene Autry and the Ghost Prison" sets off Evans alarm twice: his putting a comma after "Haw" and "Huh" instead of an exclamation point. "Wal," of course, is more likely to take a comma to begin with, and you will find it in Autry scripts by other hands.

Written by Phil Evans:
Gene Autry

Sep/50	43	GA and Owlhoots of Deadwood Mesa
Nov/	45	GA and the Ghost Prison
Dec/52	70	GA and the Combination
Mar/53	73	The Wrong Hireling
Apr/	74	Treetop Trickery
		Murder Map
May/54	87	GA and the Haunted Spiderweb

Misc. Western Gene Autry back-up

Mar/53

73

Ghost Town Girl

Range Rider in Four Color

Apr/52

404

RR and the Monster of the Desert

Charles Nicholas Helps Out...Someone Other Than Sal Trapani

Jon D'Agostino signed the covers of Charlton's Archie type, Freddy, and you can follow his style into the stories themselves--most of them, but not all. This tier is from the last story in Freddy 46 (Dec/64): "Bargain Buck Daze." D'Agostino's art is reminiscent of early Stan Goldberg.

This page is from that issue's first story, "The Winner." First compare the flagmen in the two stories, but the policeman's straight-at-the-camera pose in both of his panels is the obvious giveaway for Charles Nicholas' pencils under D'Agostino's inks.

I haven't the full Freddy collection, but I think other issues bear a look too for some penciling help.

The Two 1950s Human Torch Writers

For completeness' sake I've listed all the Human Torch 1950s revival stories, but most of the Hank Chapman IDs are not new; I identified him on Young Men 24 and 25, and then Lou Mougin did on Human Torch 38's three stories, Sub-Mariner 35, and Captain America 78. When Chapman returns to the feature after the first YM stories, all of his scripts use Toro as narrator.

Joe Gill often sets up his story in the blurb, or fills in information in a caption, with the past participle: "They had defeated him." His use of past or present tense is inconsistent—a few times within a single script—but I found some of the stories in the different tenses tied together by references to the Torch's and Toro's "unique body chemistry." In his first two stories in YM 26 and 27 he uses "Up, flame!" and then "On flame!" before settling on the standard "Flame on!"

Human Torch scripts
in YOUNG MEN

Dec/53	24	The Return of...the Human Torch	Hank Chapman
Feb/54	25	[The Young Old Men]	Chapman
Mar/	26	[The Vulture]	Joe Gill
Apr/	27	The Face of Death	Gill
June/	28	[The Prize Was...the Moon]	Gill

in MEN'S ADVENTURES

May/54	27	[The Jet]	Gill
July/	28	[The Flying Saucer]	Gill

in HUMAN TORCH

Apr/54	36	[The Atomic Blaster]	Gill
		[Tyrannosaurus Rex]	Gill
		[The Monk]	Gill
June/	37	Vampire Tale	Gill
		A Spy There Was...	Gill
		The Menace of the Unhuman	Gill
Aug/	38	The World's End	Chapman
		In Korea	Chapman
		Flame On	Chapman

in SUB-MARINER

Apr/54	33	[The Flying Saucers]	Gill
Jun/	34	[Virus X]	Gill
Aug/	35	Human Torch--Fugitive at Large	Chapman

in CAPTAIN AMERICA

May/54	76	[The Vulture Returns]	Gill
July/	77	[The Thing]	Gill
Sept/	78	Playing with Fire	Chapman

out of inventory
in MARVEL SUPER-HEROES

Sept/68

16

The Un-Human

Chapman

...and a Sub-Mariner ID
There are a couple of exceptions to Bill Everett's run in Sub-Mariner's 1950s revival: two stories drawn by Bob Powell. It isn't a stretch to find Joe Gill on the Devil Octopus story when you know he's writing the Torch in the same issue. The Black Shark story in Men's Adventures 27 (May/54), though, is still a poser. "Aaeeeeegh" in two spellings and a "Walloping halibuts" suggest someone else yet to be determined.

Sub-Mariner script
in HUMAN TORCH

Apr/54

36

[The Devil Octopus]

Joe Gill

Mort Meskin at Dell/Western

Mort Meskin and Jerry Robinson collaborated on signed stories elsewhere, like The Black Terror at Standard, so Meskin's helping out Robinson at Western/Dell is not coming out of left field. This one issue is the only instance of Meskin's work there that I've seen so far.

This would be the "other hands" on Silvertip that I mentioned in my post about Kubert and Kinstler at Western/Dell.

Silvertip in Four Color
Pencils by Mort Meskin
Inks by Jerry Robinson

Sept/57	835	The False Rider ifc intro
		The False Rider