Here’s part two of my post on Books of All Comics. Although I have a natural preference for adventure strips over humor strips I believe it’s not prejudice that leads me to say (for the most part) the humor features in Victor Fox comics really, really sucked. Bad, unfunny and remarkably amateurish. But that isn’t always the case, a seen here in , The Joy Family, a not terrible rip-off of Blondie drawn by Hal George in an attractive style that’s all his own.

And here’s a story featuring the second incarnation of The Green Mask. I’ve always felt a strange affection for the first version of the character, Michael Selby, a wealthy private eye who was exposed to vita-rays which gave him 1939 Superman level powers . It’s especially strange seeing as how he’s essentially just a mashup of Superman and Batman (with, admittedly, a jaunty pirate looking outfit), a creation that almost certainly sprang from the desperate cynicism of an editor in his 50′s looking for the next big thing.

For reasons I won’t go into here after some time off The Green Mask returned, but this time he was teenager Johnny Green, who it was established had somehow taken over for the original Green Mask. In the Roy Thomas version it would have undoubtedly turned out that Michael Selby had been killed in action and that “Johnny Green” was an alias taken by Don Tracy, the secret identity of The Green Mask’s sidekick Domino the Miracle Boy. But sadly that wasn’t the case here; Johnny Green was just some kid who, for reasons unknown, when outraged by justice turned into The Green Mask, costume and all. This gave him the less than impressive battle cry/magic word “e-e-e-eow”.

Next in our Native American Heritage Month coverage, we have the October 1930-published Pictorial History of New Brunswick, reprinting twenty-five strips by George A. Bradshaw, which ran in the New Brunswick Sunday Times.

The first strip focuses on the natives, ending in panel four with Dutch troops suddenly entering the picture, to “demand satisfaction from the Indians for depredations committed upon white settlers on Staten Island”. As expected, this completely ignores the fact that Europeans were the invaders, and that “Staten Island” is the name given it, by those who took it.

The next three strips in the series, deal mostly in Europeans purchasing land from other Europeans, skipping over the details of just how that land became “owned” by those Europeans in the first place. Mention of Native Americans rapidly diminishes in these strips, with their complete disappearance after the fourth strip unexplained — as if the natives had just magically disappeared…

Pictorial History of New Brunswick is in line in its treatment of Native Americans with several other “cartoon histories” produced around this same time. Some of these, I’m certain we’ll see in future years, in this series.

Click on the below strips, to view them in more detail, and read them.

Doug Wheeler

NativeAmericanHistory

Comics to be thankful for on this day:

Here’s the first ever publishing collaboration between DC and Marvel, The Wizard of Oz.

http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2012/11/thanksgiving-feast-2012-marvelous.html

Pappy chooses his annual turkey comic but it just happens to have some nice art by Stanley Pitt.

http://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.com/2012/11/number-1267-yarmaks-yakety-yak-pappys.html

Here’s a nice big bunch of color Hi and Lois Sunday strips from the fifties.

http://allthingsger.blogspot.com/2012/11/hi-again-tuesday-comic-strip-day.html

Finally, here’s the delightful Little Lulu, doing her part for PETA by saving a turkey.

http://fourcolorshadows.blogspot.com/2012/11/little-lulu-john-stanleyirving-tripp.html

We continue our Native American Heritage Month coverage, with cartoons & comics by whites, revealing the attitude of white society towards the Americas’ original inhabitants.

Above, from the July 12th, 1890 issue of the Canadian comic weekly, Grip, comes Ab-Original Wit — A Brantford Fact. The strip plays on the stereotype of Indians as drunkards, though, at the same time, it shows the native out-smarting the Canadian cop. Brantford is a city in Canada, which apparently was known for supplying alcohol to native tribes.

The strip is also one of many, from numerous sources, pre-dating the Yellow Kid, which tells its story entirely via in-panel dialogue exchange, years before that supposedly being “invented” in R.F.O.’s famous strip.

Click on the above comic strip, to enlarge it, and read the characters’ dialogue.

Doug Wheeler

NativeAmericanHistory CanadianGrip PreYKStrips

Pop Culture Safari features a Bat-centric selection of the DC Comics Foldees from 1966.

http://popculturesafari.blogspot.com/2012/11/vintage-dc-comics-foldie-trading-cards.html

Pat Boyette is spotlighted with a black and white Psycho story from the seventies here-

http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2012/11/black-and-white-wednesday-vow-by-pat.html

And then more Boyette with the sixties 2 part debut of The Peacemaker here-

http://fourcolorshadows.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-peacemaker-pat-boyette-1966.html

Finally today, the ever-fascinating Tony Isabella weighs in on several things including Craig’s latest Ditko volume!

http://tonyisabella.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-secret-origin-of-green-lantern.html

With Thanksgiving approaching, we look again to the series of “scientific experiments” involving Old American Whiskey, as illustrated in the circa 1936-1937 giveaway promotional comic booklet, Professor Jim Crack’s Amazing Discoveries!

Click on the above & below pictures, to view the cartoons in detail, and read their captions.

To view prior episodes of Tigwissel Tuesdays, click here.

Doug Wheeler

AdvertisingStrips

Much has been made in the press about the closing of Hostess Bakeries and the death of our beloved, crème-filled Twinkies.

But only here on the I.T.C.H. blog do you get the comic book perspective on this tragic news.

How does this affect the comics industry? What does it mean to super-heroes and cupcake fans? Will comics fandom survive the death of Twinkies, Snowballs, fruit pies and other delicious staples of the American diet?

“But wait,” you might say. “This blog is about comic book and cartoon characters, not cupcakes and confections! Have you lost sight of your mission?” No, ye of little faith. The Twinkie and his baked brethren have been featured in comics many times – 234 to be exact!

Thanks to Tom Zjaba and Tomorrow’s Heroes, all 234 comic book ads for Hostess products are available for your perusal.

Naturally, this wouldn’t be Comics Tunes Tuesday if we didn’t include a song. And like Twinkies, today’s song comes two to a package. Enjoy this Hostess commercial followed by “Too Many Twinkies” by The Queers. (Warning: explicit content.)

Click the link to listen.

Twinkies

Here’s a gallery of some of the best-designed Marvel covers of the seventies, all by the returning Jim Steranko!

http://ripjaggerdojo.blogspot.com/2012/11/steranko-super-cover-artist.html

The seventies Shazam return gets a bad rap these days but if you take a look at some of the Beck issues, they’re quite wonderful.

http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2012/11/grooves-faves-astonishing-arch-enemy-by.html

Did you know that the DC/AA pilot character, Hop Harrigan, had his own daily strip? I didn’t.

http://strippersguide.blogspot.com/2012/11/obscurity-of-day-hop-harrigan.html

Finally today, here’s a Tom Mix comic book adventure from long after Tom MIx’s death.

http://capmarjr.blogspot.com/2012/11/master-comics-100-february-1949-tom-mix.html

From Victor Fox,the man who gave us such oversized, square bound Golden Age comics books such as All Good Comics and All Your Comics.…we have the Book of All-Comics. Which sounds incredibly awesome, right? Like it’s some kind of…I don’t know, ur comic, a mystic tome that will bestow upon it’s reader all manner of…stuff. But while it does offer 194 pages and 36 complete features, there’s unfortunately not a genuinely good story to be found in it. Which isn’t to say Book of All-Comics isn’t interesting; it’s a remarkable collection of utter, abject failures, to such a degree I’m devoting this entire Thanksgiving week to these spectacular turkey’s…

First up is the incredibly odd The Bouncer possibly written by Bob Kanigher and drawn by Louis Ferstadt, or so the Grand Comic Book Database suggests. OK, see if you can follow this; Adam Anteas Jr., descendant of the mythological Antaeus (“the son of the earth” who got his strength from contact with the earth), creates a statue of Anteas which springs to life when danger is near. Adam Anteas is an unlikely protagonist for the time, seeing as how he’s not what the 1940′s would consider a two-fisted he-man, let alone an ‘average’ joe or regular fellow, Seeing as how he dresses like a lazy cartoonist’s of the period’s idea of how a stereotypical artist dresses (smock, beret, the inexplicably large bow, etc.). And don’t even get me started on the statue wearing a skirt. In this “adventure” he faces The Bang, not so much a super villain as a gangster who liked smacking people around.

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And from our earlier reading we already know The Puppeteer, a.k.a. Captain V. In this outing we actually get to see his partner, the talking bald eagle Raven, who is one stone cold trip. It’s drawn by Louis Ferstadt.

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And finally, for today, is an adventure of One Round Hogan. It’s your standard issue Joe Palooka prize fighter type strip and I have no idea who drew this but I do kind of like his style. Plus you’ve got to admire the elevation on Hogan’s pompadour. .

Above, the centerspread cartoon from the November 26th, 1884 issue of Puck magazine, by artist Bernhard Gillam. Titled, Thanksgiving Day, 1884 — “Let Us Be Thankful!”, referring to the nation being thankful that former Speaker of the House, James G. Blaine, had failed in his bid for the Presidency.

We can also be thankful, that poly-faced liar Mitt Romney failed in his bid for the White House. His comments this week past — delivered to an audience of his rich donors, once again recorded without his knowledge — reiterated & reinforced his earlier “47%” diatribe. Romney’s remarks this time, in my opinion, are racist and sexist as well, and take his initial perverse analysis of America, even further. It makes crystal clear, to even those who denied he meant what he said when was recorded the first time, that he views most Americans as a worker chattel slave class, who, by asking for a second bowl of gruel, are stealing from the plutocratic elite that by right should own everything.

Click on the above cartoon, to view it in far greater detail, and to be able to read its captions.

Doug Wheeler

ElectionComics James Blaine