Friday, April 29, 2022

SHADOW COMICS "NIck Carter in...The Doctor Meets Death!"

This week, it's a murder mystery starring a then-popular multi-media detective involving an accused doctor!
(Note the banner across the bottom of pages #2 & 3, which faced each other in the comic, promoting the Nick Carter radio series!)
This never-reprinted story from S&S's Shadow Comics V8N9 (1948) was illustrated (and likely written) by Golden and Silver Age comic creator Bob Powell, 
Beginning in 1886, he appeared as a scientific adventurer, then a private detective in dime novels, pulp magazines, and comic books, until the early 1950s.
After being dormant for a decade, he was rebooted as a government assassin/secret agent known as KillMaster in a paperback series from the 1960s to the late 1990s.
From the 1930s to the 1950s, he starred in a long-running radio series, two movie serials. several dozen b-movies, and a tv movie/pilot.
(Trivia: Though he never had his own American comic book, Nick had several different series, featuring locally-produced stories in France Germany, and Italy!)
Nick's adopted son, Chick Carter also had a comic strip, radio show, and movie serial, but didn't continue after the 1950s.

Friday, April 22, 2022

FROM HERE TO INSANITY "Mad Doc"

This never-reprinted story from Charlton's From Here to Insanity #9 (1955)...

...was apparently meant to satirize the idea of doing a medical TV series in the pseudo-realistic style of the classic police procedural show Dragnet!
Illustrated (and possibly written) by Fred Ottenheimer, a children's book creator who did humor comics stories for Timely (later Marvel) and Magazine Enterprises as well as Charlton.
This was Charlton's second attempt to jump on the MAD comic bandwagon (before MAD became a b/w magazine).
The first was titled "EH!" and had such a brief life that material prepared for it appeared in ...Insanity without even editing out or modifying in-panel references to EH!!
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Sincerest Form of Parody

Saturday, April 16, 2022

Young Love PRIVATE DIARY OF MARY ROBIN, R.N. "Fearful Heart!" Part 2

We Have Already Seen...

...Mary Robin is assigned a newly-transferred nurse, Anna, to instruct in the hospital's specific procedures and protocols.
Anna considers herself a "plain Jane", bemoaning that she has never had a beau, while watching Mary Robin constantly fending off advances from patients and doctors alike!
On their final day together, the nurses treat a patient brought in for eye damage due to an industrial accident.
As they prep him for surgery, he sees Mary, but hears Anna...which results in the situation shown above (and below)!
A guy in a romance comic tale (albeit one about nurses) who values something besides a pretty face?
Who'd believe it?
While this cover-featured tale from DC's Young Love #42 (1964) does have a happy ending, the reader might be concerned that Anna's low self-esteem (and potential emotional insecurity) will re-appear at some point down the road!
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Heart Throbs
Best of DC Romance Comics

Friday, April 15, 2022

Young Love PRIVATE DIARY OF MARY ROBIN, R.N. "Fearful Heart!" Part 1

Today, we'd diagnose the protagonist of this story (note, not Mary Robin)...
...as having low self-esteem and self-worth based on her looks, not her medical achievements!

Actually, it'll continue...
TOMORROW!

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Best of DC Romance Comics

Friday, April 8, 2022

M.D. "To Fill the Bill"

The embarrassing and humiliating inability to pay medical bills due to lack of income is nothing new...

...as this tale from over 75 years ago demonstrates!
This tale from EC's M.D. #1 (1955) is, sadly, as timely now as when it was created almost 80 years ago!
A union worker, who was making better than average money, still couldn't afford health insurance, likely since, in the context of the story, neither the company nor the union provided it.
This was common in post-World War II America, particularly in rural areas.
You can read more about it HERE.
With the decrease in both membership and influence of labor unions in the past couple of decades, the situation became even worse.
ObamaCare was intended to compensate for the lack of employer-provided care in these areas, but has been weakened by Republican Congressional legislation and Presidential executive orders.
It's slowly being restructured and revised to overcome these obstructions...hopefully before it's too late!
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M.D.
Volume 1
The First Newsstand Comic Dedicated to the Medical Profession!

Friday, April 1, 2022

ROMANTIC HEARTS "Experiment with Love!"

No, this isn't an April Fools Day tale...

...but it's so badly-done that it reads like a parody rather than a serious story!
(BTW, note that the characters on the cover by Walter Johnson don't look anything like the ones in the Al Fass-illustrated story!)
The writer of this never-reprinted tale from Story's Romantic Hearts V1N1 (1951) is unknown and, since the company has been out of business since 1954, untraceable/unverfiable!
Lucky for him/her.

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PICTURE STORIES FROM SCIENCE "Fighting Germs with Germs: the Story of Vaccination and Innoculation"

This comic tale from the 1940s explains the benefits of vaccination  in such a simple, graphic way... ...that even a regressive Reich-wing a...