Friday, October 1, 2021

Halloween Hospital Horrors DOCTOR HORMONE "The Doctor is In!"

You may laugh at this physician's name, but this isn't a comedy strip...
...and, BTW, he's a good guy, not an evil mad scientist, though at times he may act like one!
Talk about a cliffhanger!
Keep in mind, back in the 1940s, there was very little public information about hormones and what they could (and more importantly) couldn't do, so the creators were free to play fast-and-loose with the concept!
This premiere entry in the Doctor Hormone saga from Dell's Popular Comics #54 (1940) has everything...secret origin of a superhero, super-science run amok, espionage, and a full-scale war!
You'll note the good doctor doesn't indulge in hand-to-hand combat.
That'll change before the strip ends six issues later in #60!
Also, though he calls it a "youth" hormone, the treatment has the same effect on young and old subjects alike...aging or de-aging them to roughly the physical age of 25!
Though the writer is unknown, the artist is Robert "Bob" Bugg, who became a comic book artist in 1940, fresh out of high school.
He was drafted in 1942 and saw front-line duty, experiencing in real-life what he had drawn in tales like this (minus the super-science).
When he returned from the war, the comic book industry was in decline, and he switched to illustrating "slick" magazines like Colliers, doing advertising art and ghost-illustrating existing syndicated newspaper strips.
He eventually got his own one-panel daily cartoon, The New Neighbors, which ran from 1973 to 1976.
Next Week:
Anther Halloween Hospital Horror!

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