Vintage Marvel Comic Book Covers recreated by an Anonymous Artist. Avengers Number One and Tales of Suspense Number 39

An ardent fan hand draws two legendary Marvel comic book covers! Shown here are The Avengers issue one 1963 and Tales of Suspense number 39. Faithful but quirky! These were purchased at an auction in the 1970s and saved for nearly 50 years. Shown here with the now pricy original covers. This enthusiasm for the early Marvel characters certainly led to the billion dollar empire today. Pair of amateur comic book covers, anonymous. Circa 1965 - 1970. Each 6" x 9" Collection Jim Linderman Dull Tool Dim Bulb

Reefer Madness Comics by Craig Yoe and Steven Thompson A smoking good review!

Reefer Madness Comics is hilarious!  Craig Yoe and Steven Thompson have pulled together over 200 pages of rare comic book parables from the 1940s and 1950s in full color!  Plus a few later "public safety" comic book warnings to the nation's youth.  This in the era of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions the Third, our miniature porcine "law and order" top gun.  He won't get the joke, and he wouldn't understand the value or humor of these vintage "don't do it" publications.  Full of horror stories and comic book illustrator's attempts to show the effects of the first toke on Satan's Cigarettes. Dreamy!  That is, until they are hooked.   

I write this on 4/20 day.  Another year of celebration and mourning for the 1,522,579 who were arrested for stinkweed in the United States last year.  84% were arrested for possession only.  This while 22 states have lenient marijuana laws and others have medical licenses for those who need treatment.  How about this?  200,000 students have lost their federal financial aid eligibility because of drug convictions.  Local police budgets benefit, of course.

Want to set a kid out on his future in the job market with a drug conviction?  That is like recruiting for the cartels.  

Reefer Madness Comics includes an informed historical essay and some twenty full stories from the past for (currently) $13.59 on Amazon. You will not regret the purchase.  This book is hilarious, and your friends caught up in the dope menace will think so too.    

Craig Yoe is HERE.
 
Reefer Madness Comics on Amazon is HERE

Mexican Comic Book Fantasia Horror Mystery and Gore Which Knows No Border!

 



Fantasia Ad circa 1954 Scanned by Dull Tool Dim Bulb

Fantasia from Mexico!  Mexican Comic Book Graphic Novel Fantasia 

There was a Fantasia not produced by Disney, and it was a comic book which came from south of the Rio Grande.  This one had "all the imagination of the most extraordinary and rapporteurs of the fantastic real, poured in..." according to the pitch and my translator.  From the illustrations I can believe it.  A graphic novel or comic book from Mexico circa 1954.  I don't find a copy on my least favorite auction site, but I had to scroll through plenty of hits for the one in which Mickey runs from brooms.

Horror, Mystery, Fantasy and Reality you will find on the creepy pages of Fantasia!  It makes me want a time machine and a border pass to go find some issues. 60 years ago.  I don't know if the Mexican comic book industry had a "golden age" but it seems the illustrations are universal, as these resemble all those Dr. Wertham found offensive.  Gore knows no border! 

MAKE SURE TO BROWSE THE BOOKS AND EBOOKS BY JIM LINDERMAN BELOW.  ALL AVAILABLE FROM BLURB.COM HERE 

 

Women Outlaws Seduce the Innocent Ladies of the Lurid West!

Women Outlaws Seduce the Innocent.   Ladies of the Lurid West!

Women Outlaws.  A "golden age" comic book, which means before the government decided kids should read Casper the friendly ghost rather than lurid crime from the Wild West OR downtown.  Whatever.  None of these were as bad as what is found through a gaming console today, and kids are even lazier, more sullen and more surly now.   Kefauver's censorship worked for a time, as the comics learned how to "self-patrol" with the comics code logo…but the kids are just the same, only worse!  

Sure enough, one of Women Outlaws was used as an example for Fredric Wertheim's expose Seduction of the Innocent.  And no wonder…check out one of the woman outlaws being served justice.  Still, I was a juvenile delinquent, and all I read was the Hardy Boys!
Some kids are going to test the rules, Fredric.  No matter what they read.  Plus now that I recall, the boys were always bullying Chet, the fat kid.

 
One of these issues (the one with what seems to be Marshall Dillon's platonic girlfriend and implied whore Kitty from the Gunsmoke TV show)  is currently listed on eBay for $600, so these have to be pretty scarce.  One website puts the first issue at $900.

Who READ these?  Little sisters who wanted their own action tales?  Let's face it, "romance" comic books for the girls were horrible.  Every single story was the same.  Guy with a buzzy haircut meets a girl, there is some confusion (usually Buzzy has to fix his car and forgets to call) and the last panel has them swapping rings.  Happy ending.  It gets old, even to impressionable young readers being socialized into accepted forms of happy women consumers.  So maybe some  "branched" out into hanging branches?

I guess they do strike a blow for women somehow…and Annie Oakley was a role model for tough girls. 

I really think Dad read these.  Illiteracy  rates were reported as less than 4% back in the 1950s, but I think that was propaganda to show the Ruskies we were superior.  In fact,  I think it was many times that, and even higher today.  Imagine how many returned soldiers wanted books with pictures…and a little bright colored excitement from the wild west (with dames) would have been perfect.

Below is a great one…all smudged up with age and rotten acid pulp and more…yet still so great the seller is asking the price of dinner for it.  It looks like "Dot" signed her name on it, so maybe girls did read them!  

Comic Book guys are, by the way, WAY too hung up on condition.  All things age, especially cheap comic books.  Get over it.  Live with the wear guys…art is supposed to change over the years through use and appreciation.  Let your comic books breathe.

Women Outlaws was published by the Fox Feature Syndicate, who also published "Crimes by Women"  and for some ungodly reason,  a comic called "General Douglas MacArthur (which adds some support to my theory the consumers were slow readers from the Greatest Generation.)  There were only a handful of issues.

The best site (and most information) is found on the FANTASY INK website, a place which also links to many things comic book.  It is edited by Tom, who doesn't provide his full name but should.  Nice stuff.   Further information is available on WESTERN COMICS ADVENTURES.   More information on Dr. Wertham and his curious mission is found HERE on Seduction of the Innocent the website, which is devoted to finding every damn comic book the good doctor was shocked by.

Books and ($5.99) ebooks by Jim Linderman are available HERE

MARVILA ! La Mujer Maravilla Si! Wonder Woman Publicaciones!

Herramienta Dull Bulbo oscuro presenta a la mujer más caliente de superhéroes de la historia ... La Mujer Maravilla Marvila!
Libros y libros de Jim Linderman están disponibles AQUÍ

Lurid Magnificence of the Big Little Books and the Forgotten Drawings of Henry E. Vallely

For a "Big Little Book" this tiny volume amassed a pretty big body count.  If one wants to understand gun violence today, peer back to what Gramps was reading in 1937.  Maybe the Kefauver Commission who wanted to tone down comic books in the 1950s avoided the Big Little Books because no senator wanted his picture taken of him reading one.  They were for kids, and they were as violent as the most of violent, well… fairy tales.  And then some.

Big Little Books are cool, but I am interested here in one particular artist, Henry E. Vallely.  Before I go any further, check out THIS little gem in which scholar "DSK" seemingly proves Batman comic artist Bob Kane swiped from Vallely.  Holy smokes, Batman…our inventor is a CROOK! 

I swear.  No honor among thieves or comic cook Illustrators.

There are literally hundreds of fantastic illustrations by Mr. Vellely in books for children  There are nearly that many in one book alone, and all shown here came from just one.

The problem with Big Little Books is that they are brittle with acid pulp and literally disappearing while we twiddle our thumbs on smart phones.  They can be frozen or treated in other ways to preserve them, but like capitalism, I guess, they held within them the seeds of their own destruction.  (Marxist theory from my college days!)

The other problem is that no one can SEE the work of the artist anymore, as if you even touch the spine to read one, the entire little book cracks into a puff of brown paper dust.  Wear a mask.  Those collectors might as well be wrapping dead fish in their mylar bags…they're not going to last much longer and you can't stop it.

In order to illustrate my profile here of Henry Vallely,  I have solved the problem of opening a book to scan it by shelling out four dollars for a completely beat copy of "In The Name of the Law" copyright 1937 by Stephen Slesinger published by Whitman Publishing Co. of Racine, Wisconsin.  If they feel I have violated their copyright, I will gladly remove the images here (and ask vigorously what THEY are doing to preserve the work) but my initial check reveals they never renewed it.  I'll proceed to tear and scan.  Whitman gave up on Little Big Books and concentrated on those blue folders for coin collecting.

I am RIPPING IT APART and RUINING IT Comic book guy!  Physics, chemistry and time are going to do it anyway.  Someone better scan this work before it goes, and I don't think Google is including the little buggers in their massive book scanning program, deciding instead to concentrate on things no one is interested in while running rampant over copyright laws of their own. 

Vallely's work is simple, effective and astounding.  Vallely did more with a few black shadows than most artists do with full color.  Endlessly creative, not a thing repeated.   He did clothing ads, book covers and children's books mostly, but Vallely did Bible stories too.  Why doesn't that surprise me?  Big Little Books seem to have paid most of his bills.

Now for the biography!   THERE ISN'T ONE. Not only unfamiliar and unrecognized today, the ASK ART website indicates there are NO biographical sketches to speak of.  According to The Vallely Archives blog, he passed away in 1950…but even that source stopped seven years ago.  No Wiki entry.  Nothing.  It pisses me off, and here I am doing it for free.  What the hell ARE Phd. candidates in the arts writing about for their dissertations anyway?  Effing BANKSY? 

All illustrations by Henry E. Vallely from In The Name Of The Law 1937
 
Above Text by  Jim Linderman

Books and affordable Ebooks ($5.99 each) by Jim Linderman are available HERE

Candid Charlie Comic Books Paparazzi Photographica from B. Gordon Guth

Comic Book Photographica  and the first paparazzi Candid Charlie of Target Comics!

For the record, I do not collect comic books, and I do not own those shown above.  For this post, I defer to the experts Steven Thompson and My Comic Shop, though in this case even they don't know too much.  Both are linked below.  Let's call this a query.  Who the hell was B. Gordon Guth, the artist who conjured up "Candid Charlie" a red-headed kid with camera?
 
Every boy with a handheld is Candid Charlie now, but back when these came out, one had to lug it around their neck.  I guess the stereotype of Japanese tourists snapping photos is finally retired too…now that we all take too many pictures with our cellphones.  But back then, a shutterbug was nerdy and with thick glasses to go with his hobby.

By far the best place to find anything about Guth is Steven Thompson's blog Four Color Shadows.  Mr. Thompson is the expert (truly) but even he seems stumped. He does reproduce an entire story HERE. 

Candid Charlie appeared in Target Comics, sometimes as a cover model, and the rest of the time within.  Some of the covers of Target are so cool they almost make me wish I collected them…but not all were done by B. Gordon Guth.  In fact, it looks like once in a while (for "composite" covers) Candid Charlie was drawn by another artist…unless the ginger head bespeckled hero of B. Guth was a generic type.  Note no camera on Charlie on the cover of "4 Most Comics" as he, or his look-a-like is hurled to the sand.

In one issue, a three-headed Charlie has to decide between a dame and his Brownie.  Take the dame Charlie.

There is another Charlie looking dude slumped down after sniffing ether too, but it is drawn by Nina Albright.  Nina was super cool.  Check out this issue of Target with Kit Carter obfuscating the eyes of the bad guy with his sand wedge!

Another Guth cover shows a seemingly now grown-up Candid Charlie shooting a shark while the world's smallest one-man speedboat heads towards shore.

The census lists a B. Gordon Guth of the Bronx born 1910.  I reckon that would be him.

As I said, I'm no comic historian, but Guth seems to have been hooked up with L. B. Cole, who I wrote about HERE and Art Helfant, like Nina both far better known.

Steven Thompson's fantastic comic book site Four Color Shadows is HERE
My Comic Shop (which has a few of these in stock) is HERE



Books and affordable ebooks by Jim Linderman are available HERE

The Green Ghosts of American Comics Group Ghostbusters Logos Labels and the Rules of Green Death

There is a green ghost in Ghostbusters. Both the original, and presumably the next one. Hollywood has a clock hidden behind that sign on the hill telling when to cash in again.

A far more interesting green ghost to me is the one which appeared, in nearly every issue, shape and form, in the curious and highly entertaining series of comic books produced by almost-big publisher American Comics Group. Active during the Golden (and Silver) age of comic books, the publisher skirted Kefauver's censors but never really made the big time. They had a general line. Goofy characters, "funny" animals, romance for the girls... but the real stuff was their line of suspense and horror. Adventures into the Unknown. Forbidden Worlds. Unknown Worlds.

Virtually every issue had a transparent green ghost. It had to have been company policy. If it was alive once and dead now, it was green and you could see right through it.

I used to work near a news morgue. Files upon files of clippings about celebrities. Every archive has a system, and ours was when someone died, their file got a green tag. No one knew why, but it was the rule. So much so that we came to call any celeb who dropped like a dead weight "green." Every morning we would meet and say "A Gabor sister is green" or "Marlon Brando's kid is green'" then go to collecting credits for the obit.

It seems odd the color most associated with life could used for death. Even (literally) slime-covered conglomerate British Petroleum hijacked the color not long before ruining the Gulf Coast...a logo which bit them in the ass for a while, but I see they are using it still. Good for them. That logo will always mean "oil spill" to me, but if it works for them, fine. I'm not using their stations until they trick us with a "relaunch" and a new brand no matter how many times they run happy faces hiding desperation. I'll visit the Gulf, but I won't buy your gas OR your claims.

By the way Aflac? That's not Gilbert in there, and all the money you spend hoping I will forget you fired the funniest comic in America won't make me forget it. Drop the duck. The last ad they ran had THREE voices and they still didn't equal one Gilbert.

The other cute characteristic of American Comics Group was their little bylines with a tiny drawing of the writers and inkers. For example Lafcadio Lee, shown below as the proto-beatnik he probably was. Lafcadio didn't exist, but his secret identity was Richard E. Hughes, editor of the line for over 20 years. He wrote most of the stories too. He was so prolific he needed ten names: Pierre Alonzo, Ace Aquila, Brad Everson, Lafcadio, Lee Kermit Lundgren, Shane O'Shea, Bob Standish, Greg Olivetti, Kurato Osaki and Zev Zimmer.



Sadly, American Comic Group went green too...and it wasn't a pleasant death. Their last days were spent churning out industrial comic crap for Montomery Ward, Tupperware and the Air Force.