Molno's Other Dell Heroes--and This Time a Writer

Continuing on from my ID a few posts ago of Bill Molno as one of Sal Trapani's ghost pencillers on Dell's Super Heroes, here he is on two issues of Hogan's Heroes. This time I have a writer, too--Alan Riefe, who took over after Paul S. Newman wrote #1.

The thing that set me on to Alan Riefe at Dell earlier (on <i>Get Smart</i>)--he wasn't previously known to have been there--was Kerblam, Kerblamo, and Kerbammo on a number of stories, which I recalled from the final run of Jerry Lewis at DC a little later. When I compared I found more matches like "Heyyyy" and "Halllp" and so on.

Speaking of Super Heroes, Riefe is yet another writer at late-'60s Dell who I'm pretty sure has nothing to do with that feature.

Hogan's Heroes

Sep/66	2	Operation Double Klink	w: Alan Riefe
Dec/	3	Operation Goat	w: Riefe
Mar/67	4	Operation Flick Flack	w: Riefe
Apr/	5	Fly Now...Crash Later	w: Riefe
		Cheese It	w: Riefe
May/	6	Klink Must Go	w: Riefe  p: Bill Molno
		Driving Klink Koo Koo	w: Riefe  p: Molno
		Secret Weapon	w: Riefe  p: Molno
July/	7	Klink, Klank, Klunk	w: Riefe  p: Molno
		General Nuisance	w: Riefe  p: Molno
		Klink's Office Party	w: Riefe  p: Molno
Sep/	8	The Great Stone Klink	w: Riefe
		Klink's Housewarming	w: Riefe
		General Klink	w: Riefe

The Man of Brandon

These pulp/paperback hero swipes are not trying to hide; I'd call them out-and-out homages. The New Ebook Library didn't last more than a few months in 2019; it folded due to lack of sales. The Rex Brandon books reprinted a series from Curtis Warren, a pulpish British paperback house of the 1950s. 

From the memory of a look online in 2019, I'm pretty sure the artist on these is Tony Masero, who painted British paperback covers in the 60s and is today doing ebook covers for Piccadilly Publishing, the parent of New Ebook Library. He's also a Western novel writer, a reminder of comic book artist Lou Cameron's later prose output.

Beck & Costanza Bring Mickey Marks to Canada

In the inventory of comic book writer Mickey Klar Marks' papers at the University of Southern Mississippi there are stories noted as sold to "Bech and Cortaza" and "Bill and Cortazar" (with the collection's transcriber putting a "(?)" after those names). To comics fans, as SangorShop has pointed out, this is obviously "Beck and Costanza" written in the records themselves.

The C.C. Beck-Pete Costanza Studio supplied scripts to Canadian publisher Anglo-American in the mid-40s (importing American artwork wasn't allowed). Otto Binder's scripts for AA may or may not have gone through the studio. But per her records, Mickey Marks' text pieces certainly did. They were published anonymously. Three formed a series about private detective Britt Nielson.

There's a text piece called "The Gold Seal" sold to Beck & Costanza in 1946 that I can't track down. Marks also sold two untitled comics stories to them in 1945 for a series called Dink, but if these ever came out (under a different series title, perhaps?), who can tell? Just to confuse things, there was a Dink series by Milt Hammer at the U.S. publisher Novelty, cheek by jowl at times with Marks' credited text pieces there.

Britt Nielson text pieces by Mickey Klar Marks
published at Anglo-American
(all anonymously)

THREE ACES	Feb/46	51	Hear No Evil
THREE ACES	Sep-Oct/46	54	The Plastic Madonna
ROBIN HOOD AND CO.	Oct-Nov/46	33	In the Groove

Miscellaneous text pieces 

FREELANCE	Apr/46	31	Vermont Comes to Texas
ROBIN HOOD AND CO.	Jun-Jul/46	31	The Wrong Signal
GRAND SLAM	Aug-Sep/46	54	"Daisy" Rafferty

Molno on Dell's Superheroes

I'd IDed Bill Ely ghosting pencils for Sal Trapani on Dell's Superheroes #1-2, and my best guess at the time at #3-4 was Bill Fraccio.  In his blog, though, Lee Hartsfeld was tracking down Bill Molno ghosting Trapani, and suggested him as the penciller for Superheroes #3. Lee didn't get to pursue that on his blog before he discontinued it, so I'll back him up with this post and say that Molno ghosted #4 too.

I've repeated my IDs of Ely so these lists cover all the data not on the Grand Comics Database. #3's cover is the only one I 'd commit to Molno on, but I wouldn't be surprised if he and Ely pencilled their respective covers on 1, 2, and 4 too.

The writer looks the same for all four issues. But is it someone whose sole credit is this series or is it one of the usual suspects going for a more "with-it," caption-heavy style (and more in the manner of Bob Haney than Stan Lee)?

Superheroes

Jan/67	1	The Origin of the Fab Four (3 pts)	p: Bill Ely
Apr/	2	The Clowns	p: Ely
		Nutt's Revenge	p: Ely
		Enslaved	p: Ely
May/	3	(cover)	p: Bill Molno
		Meet Coalman	p: Molno
		The Mad Magician	p: Molno
		Nepto of the Reef	p: Molno
June/	4	The Hypno-Trap	p: Molno
		Metamorphosis	p: Molno
		Meet Mr. Mod	p: Molno
		Endsville	p: Molno

8 or 9 Carl Memling Stories on Cowboy Western

This was going to be merely a writer's list post, and yet what should appear but another refry--a script reused with new art. This one may hold a record--the refry appeared a mere two issues after the original, and under the same title. "Cry for Revenge" is slightly rewritten from a standalone in Charton's Cowboy Western 47 to a Golden Arrow series story in #49.

But speaking of the writer's list, there were a few Western comics at Charlton during Carl Memling's tenure, alongside the more numerous weird and crime titles he wrote for. I was reminded of him when I flipped through Cowboy Western 48 and saw a character in the Rip Ryan story say he was "practicin' triggernometry"--a line used ten years later in the first three isssues of Dell's Idaho, one of Memling's credits in the Who's Who. Another sign in "Trigger Bait" of the writer of Idaho is calling guns "smokepoles"--a term Golden Arrow uses, too, in his "Cry for Revenge" story.

Written by Carl Memling:
Cowboy Western

Dec/53	47	Sentence of Death [RIP RYAN]
		The Way of a Killer
		Trail's End
		Cry for Revenge
Spr/54	48	Trigger Bait [RIP RYAN]
		One Horsepower
May/	49	Triple-Test
		The Deadly Wolf-Pack [BLACK JACK]
		Cry for Revenge [GOLDEN ARROW]

Inspiration Before the Giant Turtle Man

Mort Weisinger's reuse of cover images from the Standard pulps, where he had been an editor in the 1940s, has been pointed out often, but I don't know if this one has been. The iconic such swipe is "The Giant Turtle Man" in Jimmy Olsen 52 (June/61), from a Thrilling Wonder Stories cover. Here, from the previous year, is a JO cover (#43, March/60) not using the original pulp cover's design but borrowing a monster design from it. The artist of Startling Stories March 1940 is uncredited. Curt Swan pencilled the JO cover as well as the story, and did the follow-up cover and story in JO 47 (Sep/60) and used the monster as the centerpiece of the cover of 80 Pg. Giant 6 (1965), Superman featuring Fantastic Things and Creatures.

Open the Door Six Times, Then Two More

In my skimming the 1950s DC funny animal titles, a couple of stories with reused scripts jumped out at me, because the originals were so distinctive--they were part of a comic book with a running gag throughout the different strips in the issue.

All the strips in Funny Stuff 25 (Sept/47) are untitled stories. At the end of the first Dodo and the Frog story, the Frog is stuck in the Dodo's closet yelling "Open de door, Dodo!"

("Open the Door, Richard" was a vaudeville routine whose song verion was released as a record in 1946 and got on the Billboard charts in 1947.)

Then in the 3 Mouseketeers story a house is seen in one panel's background with "Open da door, Dodo" coming from it; likewise in the Henry the Laffing Hyena story a similar balloon is making its way under a door. (These could be editorial emendations.) Blackie Bear in his story interacts with the Frog in the closet; so does J. Rufus Lion in his. There's a Dodo and the Frog half-pager with the Frog still in there, and finally the second D&F story gives the situation a punchline.

In Animal Antics 49 (Mar-Apr/54) the Nip and Chip story refries the first of FS 25's D&F stories--never getting to the actual punchline of the entire Frog-in-the-closet saga. Interestingly enough, there's a cameo at Nip's home: the Dodo. The Raccoon Kids story "Boom!" refries the earlier Blackie Bear story, but the house in this version remains the Dodo's--and he's the one in the closet this time. The Professor from the Nutsy Squirrel strip plays the same role in both the Blackie and Raccoon Kids versions.

I don't know who wrote the Funny Stuff stories, and the refries are pretty much that person's work transcribed, but from the tales about editor Larry Nadle, he may well have vouchered DC checks for himself for the "new" scripts.

stories in HOLLYWOOD'S ANIMAL ANTICS 49
reworking earlier scripts

Mar-Apr/54	49	(NIP AND CHIP)
		from FUNNY STUFF 25 1st Dodo and the Frog story
		Boom! (RACCOON KIDS)
		from FUNNY STUFF 25 Blackie Bear story