STRANGE WORLDS! Wally Wood, Ray Kinstler, Joe Kubert and more.

The Digital Comic Museum is a treasure trove of public domain comics. Hundreds of pre-1959 comics have been scanned and are available there for free downloads. One gem in the bunch is the full run of Avon's Strange Worlds. Like most anthology comics of the period, some of the contents are not worth your time or trouble -- but the good stuff? Well, the scans below pretty much speak for themselves.

Highlights of the run include multiple stories by Wally Wood, Everett Raymond Kinstler and Joe Kubert. You'll also find Wood collaborating with Al Williamson, Frank Frazetta and Roy Krenkel in Invasion from the Abyss in #3.

Many of the scans posted at the DCM are unedited -- and as such, the blacks are washed out, the colors muted -- the tanning paper of the vintage comics making the pages too dark. I'm grateful for the work done by the original scanners, but I can't help but mess with the images a bit in Photoshop to make them more pleasing to look at. The cover of #4 is presented here as a "before and after." You might prefer the unaltered scan (shown first) -- but I like 'em cleaned up a bit. In either case, it's a great Wally Wood image. Most of the scans posted here have been reworked by me. You can get the original versions at the DCM.

More Wood covers!

Issue #9 sports a nifty cover, credited to Syd Shores by the DCM, though the Grand Comics Database has no credit listed.

Strangely enough, the title morphed into a war comic with issue #22! It sports a handsome Ray Kinstler cover, though!

The Flame Goddess from #3 has a particularly attractive splash page -- art by Sid Greene.

A selection of Wally Wood pages -- especially sweet are the black and white inside covers.

Wood's drawing here is still in the formative stage. It has all the "Wood-isms" one has come to expect, but he's not quite the mature artist he'd be just a few years later at EC.

Early Joe Kubert! Wood and Kinstler also drew Kenton of the Star Patrol stories.

Some examples of Everett Raymond Kinstler's contributions to Strange Worlds are shown below. Serious film fans ought to recognize the movie stills Ray used as reference for some of these images. Ray leans a little on Alex Raymond in his Kenton stories -- and dig that Hal Foster swipe in the bottom right corner of the first page shown here! No offense meant to Ray -- one of my favorite artists ever to draw comics. "Swiping" was a common thing in the early days of comics, and most artists had a file of movie stills as well as Raymond, Foster and Caniff strips to be used as "reference."

Comics in the movies: Crime in the Streets

Just had another comic book sighting in a feature film -- this time its Don Siegel's Crime in the Streets from 1956. In the first picture we have what looks like an issue of Red Ryder, a Modern Romances magazine, a Dell Roy Rogers comic and an issue of Straight Arrow.

Later in the film, this shot of James Whitmore at the newsstand gives us another look at the Straight Arrow comic, a sports magazine and another comic book that I can't identify. If anyone can make a positive ID on that one, please post a comment here.

Fiction House's GHOST Comics -- and Dr. Drew!

I'm taking a break from ACG's Forbidden Worlds to check out the eleven issue run of Fiction House's Ghost Comics. Downloads of this title, as well as many other public domain comics can be found at the Digital Comics Museum website.

It's no surprise to me that, like most Fiction House titles, the insides rarely live up to the promise of the covers. Now there are some good contents here -- there are a few Jack Kamen entries and one by George Evans -- but most of the interior art is just passable. Jack Abel, Bill Discount (yes, his name is Bill Discount!) and Johnny Bell (Belcastro) will sometimes surprise with a stylish splash page design -- but for the most part, the interiors fail to thrill. The best thing to be found inside any of these issues are the two Dr. Drew stories by Jerry Grandenetti in issue #10 and 11 -- and they are reprints from other titles! I've posted the story from #10 (cleaned up a bit) here. When I first saw Grandenetti's Dr. Drew comics some years back, I was quite surprised by them. I was used to the odd personal style he developed in the 1960's -- and had no idea he'd spent part of his career doing this rather astounding Will Eisner imitation.

But never mind the contents -- look at these covers! Maurice Whitman grabs your eye and won't let go, with a mix of sex and horror as lurid as the pulp magazine covers that these emulate. These definitely fall into the category of "headlight covers," with their well-endowed frightened females fleeing from phantoms. Had I been around in the early '50s, these covers would have certainly grabbed my attention -- and I can say with some certainty that Fiction House would have gotten my dime over any funny animal comic or super hero adventure title. So what if the insides didn't live up to the covers? The covers are worth the price of admission alone! Enjoy.

(Original scans by "The Cimmerian" -- from the Digital Comics Museum -- see link in first paragraph of this post)

Comics in the movies: The Exiles

From the 1961 film, The Exiles, here are a few shots of one of the characters reading some vintage comics. One seems to be an issue of DC's Adventure Comics (I think I see Superboy there) -- the other looks to be an Atlas comic. The Atlas Tales website lists two stories called The Terrible Toy. One is from Unknown Worlds #6 (1951), drawn by Gene Colan -- the other from Astonishing #6 (1957), drawn by Bob Forgione and Jack Abel. I'm not sure which one this is -- can anyone give a positive ID...?

Model kits on the tube: Leave it to Beaver

Yup, I'm a huge Leave it to Beaver fan. I've always liked the show, and was thrilled to finally get the whole series on DVD thanks to the folks at Shout Factory. And since I'm also a model kit geek, when this shot came on screen (at some point in season three), I immediately noticed the Revell model kit (a sailing ship -- though which one, I have no idea) on the shelf behind the Beav.

Somewhere in my collection I have a children's magazine (Jack and Jill, maybe?) with an article about Jerry Mathers being an avid model kit builder. If I happen to stumble across it, I'll scan and post it here.

Unknown cartoonist? The Corpse That Lived!

In zipping through old issues of Forbidden Worlds, I'm seeing a real mix of artists -- some great, some good, some downright bad. Some are lacking in technical skill, but have a certain rough charm nonetheless. Since most of the work is unsigned, I've been relying on the Grand Comics Database to identify many of the artists. I was particularly taken by the drawing in The Corpse That Lived -- and quite disappointed when I found the GCD listed the artist of this tale as "?"

I don't know how someone who drew this well and with such a strong (and sometimes weird!) style could go unidentified. Surely some comics historian out there knows who drew this. I've been looking at the drawing style and racking my brain, trying to figure it out. Some of the odd, ropey, linework in the drapery reminds me of Golden Age Wonder Woman artist H.G. Peter -- but I've never seen any example of his work that looks quite like this. I'm also reminded of newspaper strip cartoonist Pete Hoffman, who drew Jeff Cobb. Could this be his work? If anyone knows, please let me know -- as whoever drew this, I want to see more!

Forgotten cartoonist? Emil Gershwin

One of the major treats in looking through the early issues of ACG's Forbidden Worlds, is discovering artists I'd not known about previously. This may be considered heresy by some comics fans -- but as lovely as the Frazetta/Williamson story from 1951's FW #1 is, for me the real stunner in the issue is The Way of the Werewolf, drawn by Emil Gershwin. Just look at how strong the drawing, storytelling and composition are in this tale! Who else was drawing like this in 1951? This dramatic clean line look seems startlingly modern to me. It does have some visual elements in common with some of the newspaper strips of the day -- and I'm reminded a little of Alex Kotzky and William Overgard -- but this is more stylized than their work. The open panels, the great black spotting -- great character drawing -- all of this just knocks me out!

I've cleaned these scans up, as the color was as badly off register and the pages heavilly tanned as the Frazetta/Williamson piece originally was. There's still plenty of off register color -- but I fixed the worst of it. The faded lettering in one caption was there in the original.

According to his entry at lambiek.net, Gershwin worked for a number of publishers in the 1940's and 50's. Fox, Quality, National, Hillman, Fawcett and Atlas, as well as ACG, all published his work. Some of his work on Starman is in print in DC's Archives editions. I found a 1957 splash from Atlas' World of Suspense -- and have added it at the bottom of this post. The drawing is even better in this later piece -- and just look at those characters! I can't believe I never knew about Gershwin until now -- and seeing how good his work is, I'm surprised there isn't more fuss made about the man in comics circles. I hope this post will send some of you looking for more work by him. He passed away in 1999 -- and I have no idea what he did in the years between his last published comics work and his death. I do know I now have a "new" cartoonist to ad to my favorites list.

Recommended website: Atlas Tales -- great info and scans to be found there.