The Trip of Fools-Jose Delbo-1969

For the final day of African-American history month, here's a fascinating tale of slaves and slave traders and...well...read it and see for yourself. Not what you might expect. Nice, smooth art from Jose Delbo who was all over the board at that time with often uncredited or low-profile work for various companies, all of it uniformly good!

Hoof Beats of the Devil's Horse-George Roussos-1952

Here's a confusing little semi-supernatural tale with pretty good art and a great splash by the oft-maligned George Roussos. Note also the odd layout of the final page and its weirdly placed acne soap ad!

Slap Happy-Boody Rogers (?)-1949

Sparky Watts's friend Slap Happy had giant feet. Never mind how he got them. It's a long story. He always had them. That said, this is some nice near pantomime by Boody Rogers...or perhaps not. Most of these backup stories were usually done by other hands even if signed by the main artist.

Li'l Leroy, Big Sonny and Ossie-Henry Boltinoff-1971

Veteran gag cartoonist Henry Boltinoff turned out this trio of African-American starring one-pagers for DC's DATE WITH DEBBI title in the early seventies. At least, he signed a couple of them. I'm assuming he did the others as well as most look like his simple, clean style. In spite of the characters, there doesn't seem to have been any real attempt to differentiate the humor from that of any of his normal gag strips.

Clue Club-Pat Boyette-1978

Based on a little-remembered animated seventies SCOOBY DOO clone, the attraction here is actually the art which is by, of all people, Pat Boyette. Pat, known for his unique serious style on strips such as THE PHANTOM, PEACEMAKER and a couple of BLACKHAWKS stories, did a lovely job along with his frequent collaborator Fred Himes.

Mr. Satan-Ed Ashe-1940

One of the few MLJ heroes not revived by Mighty Comics in the sixties, probably because Archie shied away from the hero's "satanic" monicker. 

Hazy Daisy-Abbott and Costello-1949

This ditzy St. John femme is reminiscent of radio's MY FRIEND IRMA, herself starring in her own series from Timely. It's in the familiar Al Hartley/Bob Montana/Dan DeCarlo style that most of these kinds of stories were drawn in but GCD doesn't even speculate on the artist.

Captain Midnight Meets Sergeant Twilight-Jack Binder-1942

On radio, CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT and his Secret Squadron were big. They ran for years and were revived as recently as the 1980's! At Fawcett, he was streamlined and super-heroized with only his sidekick Ikky Mudd really making the transition. And even then Ikky was super-heroized as well! At least here! GCD has a question mark after Binder's name but as I understand it, he had a studio. This was probbaly done at least by his studio,