Another Trapani Ghost; Collect Them All

The Dell TV tie-in Hogan's Heroes, like Get Smart, has Steve Ditko on a couple of issues, ghosting for inker Sal Trapani. Ditko's style is so distinctive that any young reader at the time could recognize his work. After his issues, though, Trapani's ghosts are more harder to spot—and at some point, who knows? Trapani may even pencil for himself.

Hogan's Heroes 4 (Mar/67), "Operation Flick Flack,"  comes after a first issue pencilled by Dick Giordano and then Ditko's two issues. The place to expect Trapani to find his ghosts is at Charlton, and the artist I see pencilling here did work there in the later Sixties, although he's best known for his series work at Marvel in the Seventies.

The likenesses called for by a TV comic can stifle the artist's style; every time Colonel Hogan smiles throughout the issue, it's the same smile, as if only one photo were available of Bob Crane using that expression. In the panels here, the effort at making Lebeau look like Robert Clary seem strained (and not fully successful).

For some reason, there's no attempt (or a failed one) at using Richard Dawson's likeness as Newkirk, and that's where I see distinctive faces very much in penciller Don Perlin's style. UPDATE: It's not Perlin.

Woolfolk Records 1948/02

The publisher roll call this month: Fawcett, Quality, and Timely.

As usual, some Timely stories were published longer than William Woolfolk recorded the submissions in his notebook—the information in bold, such as those new page counts, forms my additions to the records.

My Tom Mix story identification is an educated guess from seeing the issue indexed, but not seeing the issue itself. UPDATE: It wasn't "The Tale of the Lonesome Cowboy" in Tom Mix 9, as I'd thought possible--it's this one. Now that I've seen "Bullets Can't Spell," I can see that the blurb uses the phrase "tale of the desert rats."

Speaking of descriptions vs. published titles, I had to flip through a number of Timely stories in this timeframe to track down all four of this month's; the Arizona Annie was the only one where the editors' title came anywhere near the notebook description.

February 1948 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

9 pg	Captain Marvel	meets Fear
		"CM Faces Fear" CM Advs 89, Oct/48
13	Kid Eternity	meets the Brute
		"The Brute" Hit 55, Nov/48
8	Captain Marvel	Neptune's freak show
		"Neptune's Freak Show" Marvel Family 27, Sept/48
9	Human Torch	man framed for murder, escapes
		"Double-Cross in Death" HT 32, Sept/48
7	Ibis	legion of walking dead
		"The Legion of the Walking Dead" Whiz 102, Dec/48
5	Sub-Mariner	Houseboat Row
6		"My Son Is a Thief" Captain America 68, Sept/48
15	Plastic Man	Lucky Seven
		"Lucky Seven" Police 84, Nov/48
7	Captain Marvel Jr.	horse that can't be ridden
		"The World's Greatest Horse" Master 96, Oct/48
5	Arizona Annie	the "lady" outlaws
6		"Annie Rides the Owl Hoot Trail" Wild Western 3, Sept/48
7	Captain Marvel	hero's melancholia
		"CM's Melancholia" CM Advs 89, Oct/48
12	Plastic Man	criminal who uses words
		"Words" PM 14, Nov/48
5	Human Torch	old time gangster returns
		"Bargain of Death" Captain America 69, Nov/48
8	Woozy	becomes a walking atomic bomb
		[untitled Woozy story] PM 14, Nov/48
8	Tom Mix	desert rat's story
		"Bullets Can't Spell" Real Western Hero 71, Oct/48

Doug Roea: The Cover Artist Who Never Existed

I'll be blogging with fewer resources for awhile—I've moved and my Mac, with Photoshop, will take time to follow me. My PC laptop doesn't even want to unzip files. So, with a couple of images I already had on the PC:

Ever since fandom has been indexing, the Classics Illustrated and World Around Us covers by this artist have been credited to Doug Roea. It certainly looks as if he signed his name that way; the E would be a stylized one without a downstroke. (Click to ensmallen; thanks, Blogger.)

However, there was a paperback cover artist at the same time who didn't sign his covers, that I've seen; he did a few early Doc Savages at Bantam: The Land of Terror and The Lost Oasis. But he was credited on the copyright pages at Avon on the Tros series and the A. Merritt fantasy novels, and on the back cover of Lancer's Magnum imprint publication of H.G. Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau. His name was given as Doug Rosa.

Occam's Razor—the simplest solution is the best—would suggest that instead of two Sixties cover artists, Doug Roea and Doug Rosa, there's only one: Rosa, whose name the paperback publishers didn't have to decipher from the signature. The supposed stylized E without a downstroke on the left could be a stylized S without downstrokes on the upper left and lower right.

UPDATE: Jake Oster sent me a link to a painting by Doug Rosa, done for the Marine Corps, with this signature. Case closed!

That would make two D. Rosas in comic books.

Woolfolk Records 1948/01

Another month from William Woolfolk's records book of scripts sold; the companies who bought them were Timely, Quality, Fawcett, and Orbit.

Woolfolk's true crime stories in this period were paid at a number of page rates. Two that I can track down to Orbit's Wanted ("Jay Jostyn" in April 1947 and "The Black Hand" upcoming in March 1948) were paid at $7 and $8 the page. Of the stories I couldn't find, October's "Seeress of Murder" was $6, and November's two undescribed stories were $9 (the 7-pager) and $7 (the 13-pager). This month's was $8 per page. I'll note that Timely consistently paid Woolfolk $9 a page for the superhero and western stories; Fawcett and Quality's rates shifted with the feature or total number of story pages. I don't know if conclusions can be drawn.

UPDATE: SangorShop found the Pontiac story that I couldn't before I posted. My most likely suspect, in this paragraph before updating, was Orbit's The Westerner (the story was paid at $8); I believe this issue's details have only just made it to the Grand Comics Database.

As usual at this point, some Timely stories had pages added or subtracted by the time the script got to the artist. That may mean nothing more than that the number of panels per page was shifted about.

FURTHER UPDATE: I found the society gal Tom Mix story when I finally examined the issue; the title wasn't a help in IDing it!

January 1948 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

5 pg	Human Torch	medium brings back past
6		"The Man Who Could Foresee Doom" HT 31, July/48
15	Western Outlaw	conspiracy of Pontiac
12		"The Fighting Westerner" The Westerner 15, Aug/48
13	Blackhawk	Madame Butterfly
		"Madame Butterfly" Modern 78, Oct/48
5	Arizona Annie	cardboard town
		"The Town That Wasn't There" Wild West 2, July/48
9	Two-Gun Kid	the peace loving marshal
10		"No Guns for a Killer" Wild West 2, July/48
6	Ibis	the vampire twins
		"The Vampire Twins" Whiz 101,  Sept/48
7	Sub-Mariner	phantom troubadour
8		"Troubadour of Terror" HT 31, July/48
9	Captain Marvel	Captain Marvel's funeral
		"Captain Marvel's Funeral" CM Advs 88, Sept/48
7	Captain Marvel	Billy Batson's boyhood
		"Billy Batson's Boyhood" CM Advs 88, Sept/48
11	Doll Man	Tom Thumb grows up
		"Tom's Thumb" Feature 128, Nov/48
7	True Crime	Wanted?
9	Captain Marvel Jr.	the Sky Hawk
		"Meets the Sky Hawk" Master 95, Sept/48
9	Sub-Mariner	a statue of mariner
8		"Monument to Murder" S-M 27, Aug/48
14	Doll Man	secret identity exposed
		"The Noose" DM 19, Nov/48
9	Tom Mix	society gal goes west
11		"Gunfire Decision" Real Western Hero 70, Sept/48

J'onn J'onzz Writers: House of Mystery 143-158

J'onn J'onzz' name at this point in his career is pronounced John Jones, not a French-style Jean Jeans as per the animated Justice League. Not only that, he's an actual Martian, rather than a member of an extra-solar race residing on Mars, as later "realism" demanded.

Previously the series was titled John Jones, Manhunter from Mars, but Manhunter had to abandon his secret identity of Detective John Jones in his last story in Detective (#326, Apr/64), the introduction of the Idol-Head of Diabolu. The story-line of new menaces spawned from the Idol-Head with each full moon continued through HOM 158. (A few issues like #153 and 154 took a break from the ongoing Diabolu storyline.)

A new arc (vs. crime organization Vulture) began in #160 and ran for the remainder of the feature, through HOM 173.

So far the only two writers I've seen on Manhunter from Mars are Miller and Wood, although that's from only a sampling of the Detective run. If, as sheer rumor has it, Joseph Samachson had anything to do with the first story (in Detective 225, Nov/55), it was not in scripting it—Jack Miller did that, to judge by the style.

The artist on every story in the Manhunter from Mars series in the Fifties and Sixties was Joe Certa.

J'onn J'onzz, Manhunter from Mars in House of Mystery 143-158—Writers

June/64	#143	The Giant-Maker	Jack Miller
July/	#144	The Weird World of Gilgana	Miller
Sept/	#145	Secret of the Purple People	Miller
Oct/	#146	The Doom Shadow	Dave Wood
Dec/	#147	The Orchestra of Doom	Miller
Jan/65	#148	The Beings in the Color Rings	Wood
Mar/	#149	The Man-Thing That Unearthed Secrets	Wood
Apr/	#150	The Supernatural Masterpieces	Wood
June/	#151	The Doom from Two Worlds	Miller
July/	#152	Iwangis—Creature King	Miller
Sept/	#153	The Giants Who Slept 1,000,000 Years	Miller
Oct/	#154	The Mirror Martian Manhunter	Miller
Dec/	#155	The Giant Genie of Gensu	Miller
Jan/66	#156	Look What Happened to J'onn J'onzz!	Miller
Mar/	#157	Manhunter, World's Greatest Clown	Miller
Apr/	#158	Origin of the Diabolu Idol-Head	Miller

A Mort Leav Captain America Story

A while ago in one of his Four-Color Shadows posts, Booksteve presented the Captain America story "Double Identity" from All Winners 1 (Aug/48—the only issue in volume 2) and noted that the Grand Comics Database attributed the art to Syd Shores, but it didn't look much like Shores' art. I was certain the Shores ID was wrong, but had no better guess to offer at the time. Now I do.

Mort Leav is supposed to have done a handful of Captain America stories around 1946-48. This looks like one of them. Leav's work at Orbit (where he went in 1948) looks very much like the art on "Double Identity." This Wanted story, signed over the open "S" in the first page's blurb (click the final scan below to decipher at larger size), is "International Enemy No. 1" from #13 (May/48). The amoeba-bordered vignette panels opening both my examples, where the figures end at the edges of the neckties, present a very obvious similarity, and are a choice I don't recall Shores using.

At Timely, the editors couldn't help "fixing" artwork with work by other hands. The Cap and Bucky figures on the splash page could be Shores' sole contribution to this 10-page story; see the first Captain America story in the Fifties revival (Young Men 24, Dec/53), where John Romita's splash has been famously jettisoned for Mort Lawrence's work.

So IDing this one story leaves a handful (minus one) of Mort Leav Caps to track down.

Woolfolk Records 1947/12

Quality, Fawcett, Timely, and EC bought William Woolfolk's comics stories this month.

Note that the Two-Gun Kid scripts were expanded by a page apiece for publication. The four Moon Girl pages in a story published at twelve must have been Woolfolk's beginning or finishing someone else's (most likely Gardner Fox's) script.

Woolfolk recorded two Christmas bonuses this month, showing how valuable a couple of companies (not named) considered a superior freelancer.

December 1947 Comic Book Scripts by William Woolfolk

14 pg	Kid Eternity	Keeper's evil twin brother
		[untitled 3rd KE story] KE 11, Sept/48
7	Ibis	the forbidden pool
		"The Forbidden Pool" Whiz 100, Aug/48
8	Captain Marvel	the volcano men
		"The Volcano Men" Marvel Family 26, Aug/48
8	Tom Mix	stagecoach ride
		"Death Rides the Stagecoach" Wow 69, Aug/48
8	Captain Marvel	the iron horse
		"The Wonderful Iron Horse" CM Advs 87, Aug/48
14	Doll Man	versus Stunt Man
		"Stunt Man" DM 18, Sept/48
11	Doll Man	versus Gloves, hand of death
		"Gloves" DM 18, Sept/48
4	Two-Gun Kid	vanishing railroad
5		"The Train That Wasn't There" TGK 2, June/48
6	Two-Gun Kid	outlaw city
7		"Trapped in Outlaw City" TGK 2, June/48
7	Captain Marvel	the stolen city
		"The Stolen City" CM Advs 87, Aug/48
11	Captain Marvel Jr.	meets the outlaw
		"CMJ Duels with the Outlaw" CMJ 64, Aug/48
12	Plastic Man	Mr. Hazard, crime gambler
		"Mr. Hazard" PM 13, Sept/48
8	Tex Taylor	girl ranch owner
		"Blazing Six-Shooters and the Thundering Herd" Wild West 2, July/48
4	Moon Girl	most daring man in the world
12		"The Most Daring Man in the World" MG 2, Win/47-48