Golden Age America: Covers, part 4

Here's the final part in the pre-code covers of American comics scanned from my collection. I know opinion has been divided on this diversion from British comics but I'll be returning to UK comics again with the next post. 

Above is Captain 3-D No.1, December 1953. Harvey Comics. Produced by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby to capitalize on the 1950s 3-D craze. Interior strips printed in green and red for an effective 3-D effect when viewed through the free 'Magic Specs'. 

Web of Evil No.12, March 1954. Publisher: Comic Magazines. A typical anthology of four complete horror strips. 'Beware of the Univited Corpse'! Yes, corpses by invitation only please.

Whack No.3, May 1954. Jubilee Publications. One of the many Mad imitators of the period.

Police Action No.4, July 1954. Marvel Comics. Yet another of Marvel's many crime titles. 

Ringo Kid No.1, August 1954. Marvel Comics. Joe Maneely's cool cowboy. Some strips were later reprinted in TV21 in 1970/71. 

Cave Girl No.13, July-Sept 1954. Magazine Enterprises. Leggy lipstick-wearing jungle hero drawn by the brilliant Bob Powell. 

Wild Western No.38, November 1954. Marvel Comics. Another great Joe Maneely cover showing action from all four strips in the comic. 

Black Rider No.25, November 1954. Marvel Comics. Yet another excellent Joe Maneely cover. (Yes I'm a fan of his work.) Sadly Joe's life was cut short in a fatal accident in 1958.

Crimes by Women No.54. M.S. Dist. Actually a reprint of a 1940s comic, running strips about female criminals. More like crimes against women, judging by the cover.

Panic No.6, January 1955. EC Comics. The storm clouds against comics were gathering and the inevitable censorship was coming. EC spoofed the situation with this famous cover to their sister comic to Mad. 

...and that's yer lot. I hope you've enjoyed these last four posts looking at classic comics from across the Atlantic. If you're interested in seeing what sort of strips were published 60 plus years ago I can highly recommend the following two titles from Yoe Comics/IDW. Haunted Horror and Weird Love are published on alternating months. Each have 52 pages on quality paper, all in fill colour, scanned from the actual 1950s comics. (With a fantastic restoration job. No digital recoloring or redrawings/tracings by modern hands.) Priced at only $3.99 each, which works out at around £3 an issue depending on supplier. You'll find them in specialist comics shops.

Craig Yoe and his team who produce these reprint comics have also published numerous books on comics of the golden age and more. All of them are lovingly produced and superbly presented. Check out the website here:
http://www.yoebooks.com/

Golden Age America: Covers, part 3

The third journey back to America of the 1950s to look at pre-code comics from my collection. Kicking off with Suspense No.19, June 1952. One of Marvel's horror comics.

Wild Western No.22, also from June 1952 and published by Marvel. Anthology comic featuring Kid Colt, Apache Kid, and Gunhawk. Cover by the late great Joe Maneely.

Crime Exposed No.14, again from June 1952. Marvel Comics. Another of Marvel's many crime comics of the era. 

Weird Science No.14, July-August 1952. EC Comics. One of the great SF comics of the fifties. Cover by Wally Wood.

Jungle Comics No.152, August 1952. Publisher: Fiction House. Another popular genre of the golden age was the jungle adventure strip. Stories of women in fur bikinis aimed at adolescent Americans. We had Robot Archie, the Jungle Robot. America won that round I think. 

Crime and Punishment No.56, November 1952. Lev Gleason Publications. Torture covers such as these would later be banned by the Comics Code.

Terror Tales No.5, January 1953. Fawcett Publications. A horror comic from the same company that brought us the wholesome Captain Marvel.

Adventures Into Weird Worlds No.18, May 1953. Marvel Comics. More Marvel horror. Cover by Bill Everett.

Tales of Horror No.6, August 1953. Minoan Publishing. 'The Treacherous Genie'? More like the Lecherous Genie going by this cover, eh readers? Eh? 

Tomb of Terror No.11, September 1953. Harvey Publications. Classic horror comic, now back in print in the UK thanks to PS Publishing. 

Don't miss the final selection of golden age covers tomorrow! 
Previous parts in this series:
http://comiconline24h.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/golden-age-america-covers-part-1.html

http://comiconline24h.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/golden-age-america-covers-part-2.html

Golden Age America: Covers, part 2

More covers of pre-code American comics scanned from my collection. (See here for part 1.)

Above: Justice No.9, April 1949. Marvel Comics. It's very rare that American comics feature a cover strip but this one did, summarizing one of the longer strips inside. As you can see, it's a very brutal cover too, with panel 1 showing an old man having his head kicked in. While I don't believe comics can inspire kids to imitate scenes (unless they're already so inclined) this is still an unpleasant cover. 

Crime Fighters No.7, May 1949. Marvel experimented with this 'frame' design for some of the covers in 1949. It didn't last, but they'd do a similar trade dress for all their comics again in 1972. 

Kid Colt Outlaw No.10, July 1950. Marvel Comics. One of Marvel's most popular Western heroes. The comic continued well into the 1970s although he never became Old Man Colt.

Dotty Dripple No.15, December 1950. Harvey Comics. Reprinting the newspaper strip by Buford Tune.

All-True Crime No.43, March 1951. Marvel Comics. After the success of Lev Gleason's Crime Does Not Pay, Marvel published numerous rival crime comics. Excellent artwork though!

Western Outlaws and Sheriffs No.66, April 1951. Marvel Comics. Combining the popular crime and Western themes into one comic.

Crime Cases No.6, July 1951. Yet another Marvel crime title. The cover design of this, with its verbose dialogue, is clearly intended to imitate Charles Biro's Crime Does Not Pay covers.

Mighty Mouse No.28, September 1951. St.John Publishing. Lest we forget that 'funny animal' comics were still big sellers in America in the Fifties!

Patsy Walker No.37, November 1951. Marvel Comics. Yes, it's one of Marvel's contributions to the popular teen humour/glamour market. Cover by Al Jaffee, later to find fame on Mad Magazine. Patsy Walker remained a popular Marvel character for years, later brought into superhero continuity as Hellcat!

Crime Can't Win No.8, December 1951. Marvel Comics. Yep, another Marvel crime comic. They were certainly flooding the market with these titles. I really like the bold logos of these golden age comics.

Man Comics No.12, February 1952. Marvel Comics. War, including the then-current one in Korea, swiftly became another area for American comics to exploit in the Fifties.

Dark Mysteries No.5, Feb-March 1952. Master Comics. The thriving comics genres of the Fifties were crime, westerns, war, funny animals, teen humour... and horror.

Wanted No.47, May 1952. Orbit Publications. Crime Does Not Pay... but crime comics certainly brought in the dough for publishers!

Another set of Golden Age classics soon! I hope you're enjoying this temporary tangent into pre-code American comics. Let me know what you think.

Golden Age America: Covers, part 1

My Blimey! blog is primarily about British comics but for a change of pace I thought I'd show some of the older American comics from my collection. Some of these 'Golden Age' gems may be new to you so I hope you'll find them interesting. All of them are 'pre-code', ie: published before the anti-comics crusade that led to the formation of the Comics Code Authority in 1954.

Back when most British comics were mainly black and white or two tone, and still only had 8, 12, or 16 pages (or at most 28 pages), America's compact full colour 64 or 52 page comics were luxurious in comparison. Not that many of these comics made it to the UK, due to wartime restrictions on imports still being in place throughout the 1950s. (Although many British editions in black and white were published of course, but that's another topic.) 

Without further ado, here's the first part of an occasional cover gallery of Golden Age Pre-Code American comics. Click each image to see it supersize.

At the top is the cover to Terry Toons No.2, November 1942, published by Marvel. A humour anthology based on the popular short movie cartoons. Contains early scripts by Stan Lee.

Next, 4 Favourites No.25, September 1946. L.B. Fischer Publishing Corp. An anthology of crime, superheroes, humour, and adventure.

Silly Tunes No.6. Marvel Comics, January 1947. A humour comic in the 'funny animal' genre.

Official True Crime Cases No.24. Marvel Comics, Fall 1947. The first issue of the comic formerly known as Sub-Mariner Comics. Marvel begin to cash in on the growing trend for crime comics. 

Crime Does Not Pay No.56. Lev Gleason, October 1947. The notoriously violent crime anthology. (The claim of "5 million readers" is somewhat exaggerated I suspect.)

Super Rabbit No.11. Marvel, Spring 1948. Time he was revived I think. 

Daredevil No.47. Lev Gleason, March 1948. The original superhero to use that name. No relation to Marvel's 1960s character. 

Joe Palooka No.23. Harvey Publications, 1948. Ham Fisher's popular newspaper strip about a boxer reprinted in a monthly comic book. Hugely popular.

Another Crime Does Not Pay cover. This one for issue 66, August 1948. Covers sure became very wordy in the late 1940s.  

Crime and Punishment No.7. Lev Gleason, October 1948. A sister title to Crime Does Not Pay by the same publisher. Hey, if crime comics were being imitated by the competition, why not create your own imitation? 

All Western Winners No.3. Marvel Comics, 1949. A revived version of the famous All-Winners Comics, cashing in on the new craze for Western comics. Included strips featuring The Black Rider, Two-Gun Kid, and Kid Colt. 

I hope you've enjoyed this divergence from British comics. Let me know your thoughts by posting a comment below.