The Final Siegel & Shuster Story

ME's Funnyman in 1948 was bylined Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster; I myself can't see any Shuster work there. If he did, for instance, any layouts, they're overwhelmed by finishes that look like full art by the likes of John Sikela.

The GCD inexplicably attributes "You Can't Escape" in Atlas's Adventures into Terror 6 (Oct/51) to Joe Shuster when it isn't by him. His signed work at Charlton in the mid-Fifties is ghosted by Bill Molno. Attributions to Shuster on crime at St. John in the same time period are back-formations from the Charlton work; those St. John stories are drawn by Molno.

Shuster did have work at St. John, though. Their Approved Comics reprinted Ziff-Davis features, but issue 2 (March/54), Invisible Boy, is evidently inventory. The Who's Who puts Jerry Siegel's Invisible Boy scripting at Z-D, where he was an editor, and attributes the feature at St. John to Paul S. Newman. As far as I can tell, the scripter on the book is indeed Siegel.

I have no idea who drew the issue's three other stories, although the style feels familiar. But the art on the first one, "The Secret Formula," is by Joe Shuster; his style hasn't morphed into something dramatically different from the early Superboy stories. This, not those Charlton stories, would be his final work in comic books, and unlike the Superboy feature, teamed him one last time with Jerry Siegel.

Schaffenberger Romance at DC

I'm surprised Kurt Schaffenberger didn't do much more romance at DC than these stories (there are issues I haven't seen yet, so maybe there are a few). He does have a credited story later, in Young Love 124 (Mar/77).

Evidently others aren't expecting him there either, because his pencils on these two stories have gone unidentified. Nobody's made a guess on "Look before You Love;" and "Where the Action Is" (as seen above) has been attributed to Jay Scott Pike on pencils. Up to a point you can say "Vince Colletta" to explain it, but there's plenty of credited Schaffenberger/Colletta art on the superhero books in the Seventies for comparison; also for comparison, the story before "Where the Action Is" in GLS 178, "Play with Fire," is indeed (as attributed) Pike/Colletta.

Kurt Schaffenberger pencils on DC romance:

Falling in Love

Oct/72

137

Look before You Love

w: Jack Oleck  i: Vince Colletta

Girl's Love Stories

Jul-Aug/73

178

Where the Action Is

i: Colletta

Pete Riss Candy

Pete Riss does a few Candy stories at Quality when there are suddenly more needed—she gets her own book in addition to her feature in Police Comics. (Riss doesn't have any Candys in Police that I can see.)

I'd say the feature's main artist, Harry Sahle, is inking at least the faces of Candy and her boyfriend Ted on these stories. On the archery story in #10 and the love in the stars one in #11 it looks more as if he's doing full inks over Riss pencils, but one or two minor characters like a soda jerk are distinctively Riss's, and in a few long shots Candy's arms look like hinged sticks. Sahle signs many of his solo stories, but he signs none of these—they're not being ghosted per se.

There are other stories in this run that strike me as not penciled by Sahle (one between these two in #11, for instance), but I have no idea who the pencillers other than Riss might be.

Pete Riss
Candy Pencils

Autumn/47	1	[The Firebug] "Gee, Ted..."
		[The Book Shop] "Isn't it wonderful..."
Feb/49	8	[Babysitting Caspar] "I'm glad..."
June/	10	[Archery] "Tina, why..."
Aug/	11	[Phineas Burnham, the Circus Man] "Candy! That tiger..."
		[True Love in the Stars] "They say..."
Oct/	12	[Buying Herman a Car] "Candy, when I..."

Wait Fifteen Years for Johnny Craig

At one point I thought I saw some Jack Kirby pencils at ACG when he never actually had anything published there. Seeing Johnny Craig pencils there in a 1949 story might make more sense, since he certainly worked for them a decade and a half later. The story in question (see the first tier excerpted) is "The Mummy's Cloth" in Adventures into the Unknown 7 (Oct-Nov/49), attributed in the Grand Comics Database to Craig with inks by Harry Lazarus.

Actually the penciller (if not full artist) is Pete Riss.

Riss has a number of stories correctly attributed at ACG in this period—the first story in Romantic Adventures 1 (Mar-Apr/49) for one, but more to the point, ones in AITU 4, 8, 10, and 11 in 1949-50.

Oh, and one more (from which I take my example's second tier): the next comics story in AITU 7, "Drums of the Undead."

Double Date with Millie

The first tier above is the beginning of a one-page gag (in Millie the Model 32, Jan/52); the second tier comes from the top of a two-page piece ("What Makes Millie Mad?" in A Date with Millie 6, Aug/60). Stan Lee creates a splash page for the latter by—what do you think?—recycling again; in this case a cover gag from just the previous year (Millie 92, Sept/59). He adds a bit to connect them that may or may not be new.

Stan recycles Millie titles even more frequently than storylines; "A Peach at the Beach" turns up on three stories besides the one listed below. "Bedlam at the Beach" he uses twice within two issues: Life with Millie 12 and 13. "Beauty at the Beach" he uses twice within one issue: for a one-page gag and then a full story in Millie the Model 105.

A Date with Millie, the companion title to Millie the Model, changes its title to Life with Millie with #8.

Stories in A Date with Millie
reworking earlier scripts

Dec/59	2	[taking up a collection gag]
		from MILLIE 29 2nd 1-page gag
		[art museum gag]
		from MILLIE 32 3rd 1-page gag
		[the man in the tuxedo]
		from MILLIE 29 The Scheme
Jun/60	5	"The Burpi-Cola Beauts"
		from MILLIE 29 "Meet Miss Burpi-Cola"
Aug/	6	"A Peach at the Beach"
		from MILLIE 32 1st story
		"Millie's Merry Pin-Up" [soda gag]
		from MILLIE 21 cover
		"What Makes Millie Mad?"
		from MILLIE 92 cover for splash
		and MILLIE 32 5th 1-page gag for story
Oct/	7	"And That's No Bull"
		from MILLIE 39 Chili story
		"Millie's Secret Admirer"
		from MILLIE 42 2nd Millie story

in Life with Millie

Dec/	8	"The Restless Rassler"
		from MILLIE 39 2nd Millie story
		"Chili Dates a Star"
		from MILLIE 32 Chili story

A Quality Writer Comes to DC

When DC buys Blackhawk from Quality they take over publication without a pause; Quality's final issue, 107, is cover-dated December, 1956. Dick Dillin and Chuck Cuidera become DC artists when they come over with the book. Also coming along is Robert Bernstein, the sole writer on the final batch of Quality issues.

The writers already at DC assigned to the feature at this point include Jack Miller and Dave Wood; possibly Dick Wood too, who had worked on it into 1955 at Quality. I'm still working out the authorship of the individual non-Bernstein stories.

It would seem that the only completed story art done at Quality that DC received in the deal is "The Mutiny of the Red Sailors" in 108; the letterer is whoever worked on the title as of 107. "The Threat from the Abyss" may have been passed along to DC as a script; it too is an anti-Communist story of the sort that DC didn't much do on their own (and it's the final story in which the Blackhawk song appears at the end). My opinion is that Bernstein wrote most of the stories here directly for DC; he's moved to Aquaman, Green Arrow, and Congo Bill by the end of 1957.

Robert Bernstein
Blackhawk Scripts at DC

Jan/57	108	The Threat from the Abyss
		The Mutiny of the Red Sailors
Feb/	109	The Avalanche King
		Blackhawk the Sorcerer
Mar/	110	The Mystery of Tigress Island
Apr/	111	The Perils of Blackie, the Wonder Bird
		Trigger Craig's Magic Carpet
Aug/	115	The Tyrant's Return
		Blackie Goes Wild

Carl Pfeufer's DC Romance

One artist on a couple of romance stories at DC I felt I should be able to put a name to. It wasn't until I checked the Who's Who that the coin dropped and I got the name: Carl Pfeufer. I had seen some of his Sixties work on a few backups in the Harvey Thrillers—and on Super Green Beret at Lightning Comics. The tier below the "Two Hearts on a Tree" page is from Super Green Beret 2 (June/67).

The Who's Who has Pfeufer down for Secret Hearts but not for Falling in Love. It also credits him with work in Girl's Love Stories (likewise in 1967), but I haven't run across any of his stories there yet.

Carl Pfeufer at DC:
Falling in Love

Jan/67

88

Leave My Heart Alone

Secret Hearts

July/67

121

Two Hearts on a Tree