From a 1951 issue of PAUL TERRY'S MIGHTY MOUSE COMICS, here's Mighty Mouse himself--often imitated but probably the original and certainly the most famous anthropomorphic Superman spoof. It's a cute little one-off story in which Mighty may or may not be imaginary. We've seen it all before by now but back then this was undoubtedly exceedingly clever!
Some pretty nice art from an unknown artist here as the Spectre-like Duke of Darkness goes head to head with the Prince of Paupers in this 1945 story from TOP SPOT COMICS. Funny script, also. Oh, and like yesterday's hero, the Duke lives in a jail cell when not fighting crime!The Duke appeared in only a handful of stories in a handful of titles around that time. This was apparently his final outing.
711 debuted in POLICE COMICS # 1 with Plastic Man in 1941 and ran until issue 15 in 1943--this issue. 711 then became one of the few comics heroes to actually be killed in the Golden Age! Created by George Brenner, 711's unique premise is that he lived in a jail cell except at night when he went out in a vaguely Shadow-like outfit to fight crime!
Here's an interesting one. This story, in spite of its lack of a logo, features the Harvey hero, the Scarlet Sentry, and comes from the 2nd issue of HELLO, PAL! from 1943. The thing is, GCD says that the character's only appearance was in YANKEE COMICS. No idea who does the art chores here but whomever it is they seem to have done a thorough study on the pre-war style of Will Eisner! According to net sources, our hero is not actually Canadian but, in fact, an Ohio State football player who dons a mail-order bullet-proof mountie uniform in order to fight crime. Ummm....sure. Right. Impersonating an officer, anyone? Oh, Dudley!
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Yet another SPIRIT clone, here we have THE RAGMAN, complete with cool logo and politically incorrect African-American sidekick. The art here is credited to Allen Ulmer who went on to a number of newspaper strips (including a run on TARZAN) before turning exclusively to fine art..jpg)
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INTELLECTUAL AMOS was a cute but supposedly somewhat autobiographical strip that ran in comics but also, as here, in Will Eisner's SPIRIT Section. The creator was Andre LeBlanc, a talented cartoonist who assisted Eisner and much later became recognized for an illustrated version of the Bible that stayed in print for many years (and may in fact still be available).
Here, from an issue of MOVIE LOVE from 1951, is the story of actor William Holden's career up to that point...cleaned up just a tad. The attraction here, though, is the early collaboration by Al Williamson and Frank Frazetta, both of whom just passed in recent months and both of whom were eulogized as the very best in the business. As for Holden, in spite of a well-publicized drinking problem, he made the transition to a successful character actor as he got older and, perhaps more importantly, became a proactive advocate for wild animal preservation in Africa.
