I’m trying to bang through as many PS Artbooks as I can for entirely pedestrian reasons: I need to get the books that are in the bedroom where I generally read them out of the bedroom, because of some work being done on the house, and I need to get those bedroom books up in the Comics Cave with the other PS Artbooks, so I can see what I do and don’t have, to prevent duplication. I've already discovered two books I've bought more than once, simply because I didn't have them all in one place to check when ordering.
Besides, I didn’t want to read anything really good while I had COVID brain. The last three weeks have been the perfect time to plow through a bunch of reprints I have no intention of trying to remember! I’ll get to the Frankenstein stuff Jeff of Earth-J wants me to read as soon as the brain fog lifts.
PS ARTBOOKS PRESENTS: SEVEN SEAS COMICS
Collects Seven Seas Comics #1-2, 4-6 (Iger Shop, April 1946-1947)
The draw in this book, presumably, is the “South Sea Girl” strip, starring Alani of the Vanishing Isles, drawn by “Good Girl” artist Matt Baker in a sarong. (The girl's in a sarong, not Baker.) She takes the cover spot with issue #3 and doesn’t let go.
I can’t say it’s all that. The art is nice, but not particularly hubba-hubba, at least to these jaded eyes. As to story, Alani is apparently the queen of a South Pacific archipelago, and has various adventures protecting her tribe or helping handsome white men — but, again, nothing memorable. The pidgin English doesn’t help, especially with what is already a pretty racist strip.
It’s basically a Jungle Queen feature, with a few details changed (South Sea jungle instead of African jungle, pirates instead of poachers, a white girl with dusky coloring instead of a white girl with white coloring). Which isn’t bad, just not as exotic as you’d expect from the setting.
But while the lead strip isn’t as good as I expected, the backups aren’t as bad. Not all of them appear every issue — it was late 1940s. and I expect page count was already beginning to slip — but they include:
Tugboat Tessie: Tough Irish broad Tessie and her gorgeous grown daughter Melody ply their trade as tugboaters, angling to earn fees handling the big ships that come into an unnamed major harbor that looks an awful lot like New York. There’s a competitor, Bill Jetty, who’s actually quite taken with Tessie (who looks like she could snap him in two), so their competition is more rom-com than bad blood. This tugboat scenario is really a more exotic idea than South Sea Girl!
Harbor Patrol: Officers Steve Badger and Squeaky No-Last-Name patrol another unnamed harbor that looks like New York, where something sketchy is always afoot. Squeaky is a foul-up, but the kind of foul-up that leads the patrol to the bad guys. It’s not over-the-top comedy; Squeaky is competent when necessary and the crime angles are played straight. Not bad.
The Ol’ Skipper: I think the premise is supposed to be that the Ol’ Skipper tells far-fetched tales of his youth to an omnipresent kid named Tom, but the strip shifts to the present, where the Ol’ Skipper really is quite heroic. Kind of all over the place, but not bad.
Captain Cutlass: A clone of Errol Flynn’s Captain Blood, who is technically a pirate but has some sort of privateer license and basically battles other pirates. The most cliched and stagey strip in the book, and my least favorite.
Seven Seas was an Iger Shop production, under the names Universal Phoenix Features Syndicate and Lender Enterprises. It only lasted six issues, which could have been collected comprehensively in this volume, but instead PS Artbooks mysteriously left out issue #3. GCD tells me I’ve already read the South Sea Girl strip from Seven Seas #3 in Rulah Volume Three, but the other features haven’t been reprinted anywhere.
Another printing oddity is that PS only offered this book in “Softee.” That’s pretty disappointing too, but I won’t cry myself to sleep over it.
CLASSIC ADVENTURE COMICS VOLUME THREE
Collects Son of Sinbad #1 (one-shot, St. John, 1950), Secret Missions #1 (one-shot, St. John, 1950), The Mask of Dr. Fu Manchu (one-shot, Avon, 1951), High Adventure (one-shot, Decker, 1957), Great Exploits (one-shot, Decker, 1957)
Son of Sinbad leads the book, and is the best part of it. The 1951 one-shot contains four Sinbad stories, two of which are penciled and inked by Joe Kubert, and one of which is penciled by Carmine Infantino and inked by Kubert (so it looks enough like Kubert to pass). GCD doesn’t know who draws the fourth story, but it’s passable.
It’s straight-up Sinbad adventures during the Abbasid Caliphate, presumably inspired by Sinbad the Sailor (1947), with Errol Flynn. But the dialogue keeps reminding us that this is the son of Sinbad, so maybe they were worried about RKO’s lawyers. Or maybe they were worried readers would be disappointed that Sinbad didn’t look like Errol Flynn.
It’s breezy, upbeat reading — that Sinbad is such a clever scamp — and my only question is: What happens to all the girls? Sinbad gets the girl in every adventure, and in one he is competing for marriage. But he’s always single when the next story starts. Could Sinbad be … a cad?
Not far behind Sinbad is The Mask of Fu Manchu, by a pre-EC Wally Wood. Inked by Joe Orlando! So, you know, it’s pretty.
I assume it’s an adaptation of the 1932 movie of the same name, starring Boris Karloff as the Devil Doctor, but I can’t find confirmation of that. The cast in the book lines up pretty much with the cast in the movie (which I’ve never seen), so I’m going with “adaptation” until I hear otherwise. And as such, it’s a pretty complicated plot with way too many scenes for a 25-page comic book story. And, yes, racist as all get out.
But fun, if you overlook the Yellow Peril aspect. And it’s neat to see characters like Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie with entirely different visual interpretations than the movie or the later Master of Kung Fu.
A Flash Harper (ace crime photographer) reprint rounds out the book. I think it’s the third time I’ve read this particular story.
Secret Missions is three Cold War espionage stories with a Kubert cover. It’s the usual nonsense that passes for espionage, with femmes fatale, heavily accented Commies and, well, secret missions. But if I was a kid in 1950, I’d find this pretty exciting. Plus, they’re set in exotic locales: Shanghai, Bucharest, Prague.
High Adventure and Great Exploits are both post-Code, so they don’t set the world on fire. The former has several stories starring “Explorer Joe,” who does predictable explorer things like finding frozen Vikings who predictably thaw out and are alive. Joe has a story in the second book, too, which makes me think this is inventory material.
The lead stories in both books are drawn by Bernie Krigstein, but the rest is generic and it’s altogether forgettable stuff.
PRE-CODE CLASSICS: GHOST RIDER VOLUME ONE
Collects Ghost Rider #1-5 (Magazine Enterprises, Aug 50-1951)
I’ve read these specific five issues before in a different collection, so I basically skimmed this book. I can’t wait for future volumes, which will contain stories I haven’t read.
Longtime fans know the premise, which is a lawman (Marshal Rex Fury, aka The Calico Kid) uses various tricks to appear to be a spook in the old West. Surprising in an age of anthologies, these issues feature Ghost Rider in nearly every story, with only a few non-GR features (mostly text) to round out the books. A young Dick Ayers draws all the GR stories, which is educational for Sgt. Fury devotees, and some covers (#2-5) are by Frank Frazetta.
Just like with Thun’Da and Cave Girl, these five issues are dual-numbered as issues of A-1 Comics: #27, #29, #31, #37 and #44.
PS ARTBOOKS PRESENTS: CLASSIC HORROR COMICS VOLUME THREE
Collects Do You Believe in Nightmares #1-2 (St. John, Nov 57-Jan 58), Eerie #17 (Avon, Aug-Sep 54), Eerie #8-9 (I.W. Publishing, 1958)
Do You Believe in Nightmares only ran two issues, and this book has ‘em both. And both are worth looking at, just for the artwork.
DYBIN #1 has five post-Code suspense stories by Steve Ditko, and he clearly put in some effort. The last story of the book is by Dick Ayers. The second issue, believe it or not, is entirely by Ayers! You will be interested to note (probably) that all of the stock, stilted Dick Ayers poses that so annoyed the young Captain in Sgt. Fury are already in evidence.
The book is fleshed out by three issues of Eerie from two different publishers — all three of which are reprints of earlier books. That’s not eerie. That's irritating.
Eerie #17 is the final issue of the Avon series. The first three issues of this series have already been reprinted in Pre-Code Classics: Eerie Volume Three, and presumably we will get the rest at some point. That’s good, because there’s some Wally Wood in there. Eerie #17 reprints Avon’s Eerie #3 which — as noted — has already been reprinted. That’s annoying.
Eerie #8-9 are two of the three issues of Eerie published by I.W. Publishing, aka Super Comics, which IIRC specialized in reprinting other publishers’ comics it claimed were in the public domain — whether they were or weren’t. I.W.’s first issue of Eerie was, appropriately, #1, and reprinted Baily’s one-and-only issue of Spook Comics from 1945, which PS has already reprinted in Spook Volume Two. (It is not included here.) Then they skipped ahead for the last two issues to #8 and #9. The issues were consecutive, so I have no idea why the numbering skipped, and the GCD doesn’t say.
Eerie #8 reprints Fiction Houses’s Ghost Comics #10 (1954). Eerie #9 reprints Toby’s Tales of Terror #1 (1952). Since PS will presumably print those books in their respective series (if they haven’t already), I’m beginning to feel a little ripped off.
SILVER AGE CLASSICS: MIDNIGHT VOLUME ONE
Collects Midnight #1-5 (Farrell, Apr 57-Feb 58)
Midnight actually kills some of its protagonists, which is unusual for the post-Code era. That’s probably because a lot of this material is lifted from earlier, pre-Code Farrell books like Strange Fantasy, Fantastic Fears and Voodoo. They’ve been altered to fit Code standards, but nothing alters my annoyance at reading stories a second time. Especially given the generic art from the Iger studio.
The book is titled Volume One, but there’s only one issue left in Midnight, which was canceled after issue #6. I have no idea what a Volume Two might contain.
SILVER AGE CLASSICS: KONGA VOLUME THREE
Collects Konga #11-15 (Mar 63-Nov 63)
More Ditko goodness. Although I have to note that, while Ditko draws ape faces like nobody’s business, his ape bodies are often oddly not very simian. And gorillas don’t have hair on their chest, but Konga does. Oh, well, he’s a giant mutated ape, so I shouldn’t expect fidelity to ordinary apes. Still, the more Konga I read, the more noticeable his non-ape features get.
It will come as a surprise to no one that, like Godzilla, Konga saves the Earth often enough that he comes to be regarded benignly. (Except by the dirty Commies.)
This catches Konga up with Gorgo. (I let Konga Volume Two and Gorgo Vols. 2-3 go by without comment a few weeks ago.) Both series will probably finish with their fourth volumes.
SILVER AGE CLASSICS: MYSTERIES OF UNEXPLORED WORLDS VOLUME ONE, VOLUME THREE, VOLUME FOUR, VOLUME FIVE
Collects Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #1-5 (Aug 56-Oct 57), Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #11-25 (Jan 59-July 61)
I assume I have Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds Volume Two somewhere, in case anyone’s wondering. These books come up in the To-Read Pile without my conscious selection, and I probably read Volume Two some time ago. If not, filing these will alert me to its absence.
There’s not much to say about these books, which are mild stories with milquetoast endings. Most of the stories are drawn by Bill Molno, often with Sal Trapani inks, and it really doesn’t get any more generic than that. Even the lettering is mediocre, as it is machine-produced.
But every so often you hit a run of Ditko stories that makes it all worthwhile. The sometimes non-Ditko inking on these stories takes a lot of the ol’ Ditko zing out of ‘em, but they are always a welcome sight. There are fewer and fewer Ditko appearances as the title progresses into the ‘60s, and I assume they’ll soon disappear altogether.
But that’s OK, as when Mysteries hits it final few issues in 1965, we’ll be treated to “Son of Vulcan.” I think I’ve read all of those, but I’m not sure. That's enough to keep me going.
And then there are things like this, from “The Forbidden Formula” in Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds #18 (May 60): “I am a Watcher! I am one of 900 billions of Watchers, each of whom is assigned a planet of the Milky Way galaxy! My assignment is … Earth!” A fella sort of like that will show up in Fantastic Four three years later. You may have heard of him.
SILVER AGE CLASSICS: STRANGE SUSPENSE STORIES VOLUMES SIX-SEVEN
Collects Strange Suspense Stories #43-52 (Charlton, Sep 59-Mar 61)
See above. Boy, Molno drew a lot of pages!
Also, a solicitation somewhere told me that Ditko’s last contribution to this title will be in the next volume, in issue #53. I wonder what will fill the gap after that. Probably more Molno.
When this title hits 1965, it will start reprinting DItko’s Captain Atom from 1960-61 Space Adventures. I know I’ve read all those — not only do I own them, but I have DC’s Action Heroes Archives.
SILVER AGE CLASSICS: UNUSUAL TALES VOLUME ONE
Collects Unusual Tales #1-5 (Charlton, Nov 55-Sep 56)
See above. All that’s unusual about these tales is that anyone found them interesting.
Replies
Holy crikey that's a lot of comics! (65 by my count.) I've been working on my [2023] New Year's Resolution, to read all those Marvel and DC omnibuses I've bought over the years, but at the pace I've set for myself (only one issue per series per day) I'll never get through them all. I'm really going to need to up my game in 2024 and stop trying to do so many "discussions." I don't recall where I left this, but I did confirm that I some how missed Kona v2. Oddly, myc LCS's system says that they received one, but never sold one (not to me or anyone else), yet they are also showing zero in stock. They're investigating, but I suspect I'm going to have to order directly from PS Artbooks because my LCS has never been able to re-stock a past-date item before. I hate doing that because I have to pay full retail (plus overseas shipping). and yes, by all means, let the COVID brain fog lift before delving into the DB Frankenstein stuff.
Yes, it's a lot of books! And the above isn't all I read during my illness -- it's just where I decided to publish before I lost what I'd written. (I had written about Son of Sinbad at least twice before that I remember, but since I couldn't find a review on the site, I guess I lost those reviews in an overnight reboot, or otherwise failed to save them. Darn COVID!) There will be more words when I have time to write them.
I know what you mean about "discussions" slowing down the process. For that reason, I have on other occasions moved some PS Artbooks directly to the shelves without acknowledging them here, as well as some non-reprint books. (Refrigerator Full of Heads springs to mind.) But, weirdly, I felt like I had left the job half-done, a feeling I do not like. So I'm trying to acknowledge as many books as I can, even if it's a brief mention.
Worse, it's the tree-falling-in-a-forest thing: If I don't write a quick review, did I really read it? That is to say, it's hard to distinguish one mediocre, off-brand, pre-Code book from another by cover alone. Which is not a good thing when it comes to ordering books. (Yes, I'm eventually going to make a list of what I have.) Also, writing a quick review helps me distinguish those otherwise similar books later on.
That may not be your reaction, but it was mine. And the upshot of all this blither is: Despite the discussions slowing things down, isn't sharing the best part? Do what you must, but I'm letting you know what's on the other side of that decision.
As to COVID, I'm still suffering the lingering effects, including a dry, deep, painful cough; heavy congestion; sore throat; dehydration; fatigue; and brain fog. I only consider myself "better" because I no longer have daily fevers and chills. (It seems like Tim and I had a similar trajectory.) I may have been sicker sometime in my life (although I'd be hard-pressed to say when), but I've certainly never been sick longer than with COVID. If I'm still feeling this way Tuesday, that will be the beginning of Week Four. This $#!+ never ends. I have already "returned" to work -- I WFH -- which is exhausting. I can't wait for this to be over, and get my life back.
I've still got a pile of non-Frankenstein PS to read (mainly Blackhawk, Space War and Space Man) until the fog lifts. I don't know if I'll get through them all before I'm well. I am eager to get to Frankenstein, so the minute I can concentrate more than 15 minutes in a row without a headache I'll shove this bad sci-fi to the side and get to "work."
As to Kona, my blitzkrieg through PS Artbooks has already turned up one book I've missed as well. (There are doubtless more.) But I'll be ordering whatever I've missed that's not on Amazon from Bud's Art Books (aka Bud Plant's Incredible Catalog), rather than from PS Artbooks and paying for transatlantic shipping. That's my recommendation, if you're looking for faster and (slightly) cheaper.
Oh, thanks! I hadn't considered that. I haven't ordered from Bud Plant in years (not since he stopped sending paper catalogs, although I'm sure that wasn't cost effective in the long run). Whereas posting discussions does tend to slow me dowm it also keeps me focused and on target, and I tend to remember the stories better.
I don't recall where I left this, but I did confirm that I some how missed Kona v2.
I was able to get Kona v2 via my LCS (shipped today) and qualify for my per-order discount, so all is well.
(I didn't want you to lose any sleep over this worrying.)