CoronaVirus Comics SUE AND SALLY SMITH: FLYING NURSES "No Serum for Greed"

Though the title characters usually worked together...

...both Sue and Sally also had solo globe-trotting adventures!

The twin Smith sisters worked for "Emergency Corps", a Doctors Without Borders-type organization that sent medical personnel to hot spots all over the world.

From forest fires to typhus outbreaks, the Flying Nurses could handle it all, as this never-reprinted story by writer Joe Gill, penciler Joe Sinnott and inker Vince Colletta from Charlton's Sue and Sally Smith: Flying Nurses #48 (1962) proves!

Notes: #48 was the duo's first issue!
Before that, the comic was My Secret Life, but after the duo debuted in #47...

...the book was renamed for them!

No mention of a psychic link the two shared in this debut was ever made again — which is a shame, because it really would have come in handy for them in later stories...at least until the book was cancelled with #54!

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CoronaVirus Comics STAR TREK SPECIAL "Flesh and Stone" Conclusion

Who's the greatest doctor in TV history?

House?

Grey?

Welby?

Kildare?

Nope!

"Bones" McCoy!

Yeah, the "I'm a doctor not a (insert occupation here)!" and "He/She's Dead, Jim!" guy!
Even the Canadian Medical Association Journal has proclaimed him "TV's only true physician"!

Before you scream "NO WAY!", let's show why...

As we showed HERE, in the time of Star Trek the Next Generation/Voyager/Deep Space Nine, a strange disease, which turns organic to mineral affects all the attendees of a StarFleet medical convention.

A group of doctors running late for the get-together receive a distress call from the locale, and divert to a nearby world where a retired StarFleet doctor might hold a clue as to the nature of the epidemic!

They meet Dr Leonard McCoy, who tells them about a similar situation he encountered during his tour of duty aboard the Enterprise decades earlier...

The late DeForest Kelly often talked about how people would come up to him at Star Trek conventions and mention his portrayal of Dr Leonard McCoy inspired them to take up careers in medicine!

Trivia notes: Dr M'Benga appeared in the original series episodes "A Private Little War" and "That Which Survives", showing "Bones" wasn't the only doctor on the Enterprise (despite TV budget restrictions)!

The hazmat suits the landing party wears were shown in the episode "The Naked Time" and were fabricated by the costume designers...using shower curtain material!
The Trek production team sure knew how to stretch the budget in a show where almost everything had to be fabricated from scratch!

You may wonder why a one-shot comic like IDW's Star Trek Special (2014) about the various medicos of the Star Trek universe was even produced!

And, did you notice there's no price or UPC (Universal Price Code) shown on the cover?

There's a fascinating story behind it, which you'll see tomorrow at our "brother" RetroBlog, Atomic Kommie Comics!

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Doctor McCoy

12" Action Figure

CoronaVirus Comics REAL HEROES "Plague Vanquished"

Not all comic book heroes wear capes...

..as this tale of Edward Jenner, the doctor who saved us from smallpox, proves!

Who says comics ain't educational?

Not me, kiddo!

This never-reprinted story from Parent Magazines' Real Heroes #15 (1946) was one of several graphic dramatizations of Dr Jenner's achievement which has saved countless lives since its' introduction!

Depending on how long the Covid-19 lockdown continues, we may have time to run all of them!

Sadly, both writer and illustrator(s) are unknown!

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Rabbit and Cat's CoronaVirus Jokes for Such a Time as This
Volume One

CoronaVirus Comics CYNTHIA DOYLE: NURSE IN LOVE "Smash-Up"

We've presented both female and male doctors...

..now here's a typical 1950s-1970s nurse strip, starring, of course, a woman as the nurse! 

(The target audience for this strip was 'tween and teen girls!)

Without further adieu,  let's get to today's story about someone suffering from a debilitating disease...or is he?

This never-reprinted tale from Charlton's Cynthia Doyle: Nurse in Love #69 (1963) plays up the "...In Love" aspect of the title while providing some rather iffy medical concepts!

Remember, this is a soap opera in comic book form!

It's not meant to be even a semi-serious feature about a female medical professional, like Dr Pat!

This is, as most 1950s-1970s strips starring nurses were, a three-Kleenex romance comic!

Heck, before the book became Cynthia Doyle: Nurse in Love as of #66, it was Sweetheart Diaries, a romance anthology!

Cynthia appeared in a single story in the final issue, then the entire book was turned over to her!
Why?

As we pointed out in our previous entry about City Surgeon, in the early 1960s, one of the most-popular genres in pop culture was "medical drama"!

Spearheaded on TV by hunky prime-time physicians Dr Kildare and Ben Casey along with the related series The Nurses as well as daytime soap operas with hospital settings and paperback romance novels with covers featuring "studs in scrubs" with swooning nurses, comics hopped on the medical bandwagon!

Charlton , which couldn't afford the rights to comics based on any of the TV shows, launched numerous series featuring doctors and nurses including Dr Tom Brent: Young Intern, Nurse Betsy Crane, Young Interns, Sue & Sally Smith: Flying Nurses and, of course, this book!

(Oddly, there were never any cross-over stories between the various books!)

Written by Joe Gill, penciled by Dick Giordano and inked by Vince Colletta, this story came about halfway through the book's run.

BTW: the series ended with Nurse Doyle and Doctor Benson's love unconsummated!
Surprised?

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Night Nurse

CoronaVirus Comics GIANT-SIZED DOC SAVAGE "Master of the Red Death!" Conclusion

When Last We Left Our Heroes...

Art by Jim Steranko

(No you didn't miss a chapter.
The previous posts about this story appeared HERE, HERE, and HERE at our "brother" RetroBlogs Hero Histories and Atomic Kommie Comics!)
BTW, our hero, Doc Savage, is nicknamed that because he's a licensed MD...not that he has much time to practice while globetrotting and fighting evildoers!
He also holds doctorates in several other scientific disciplines, is the world's most physically-perfect human being, and an expert in every martial art and weapon (though he tries to avoid killing)!
Whatta guy!
As to the saga itself: Investigating the death of Doc's father in Hildago, the Man of Bronze and his five associates enter the Valley of the Vanished and encountered the Mayan residents of a hidden City of Gold.
Its' ruler, King Chaac and his daughter, Princess Monja, welcome the son of the late Professor Clark Savage (killed by an unknown disease) and those who accompanied him.
However, urged on by the costumed "Son of the Feathered Serpent", others are not so friendly towards the outsiders.
Under cover of darkness, they kidnap three of Doc's aides and throw them into a sacrificial well filled with snakes.
Monk, whom they'd left unconscious, follows them and...

While Doc's skills as a physician were not usually spotlighted (except in reference to his performing brain surgery on captive criminals), he has used his surgical talents to save his aides' lives on several occasions (and devised innovative techniques at the same time) as shown in these excerpts from Marvel's Doc Savage V2N7 (1977)...

In the course of this adventure, one of Doc's friends and aides, electronics expert Long Tom is ambushed...

Doc, of course, catches up with the ambushers...

...who are, in fact, reformed by Doc's brain surgery!

Those who followed the re-presentation of Man of Bronze/Master of the Red Death from the beginning will note that Ernie Chua/Chan took over the inking from Jim Mooney for the "Master of the Red Death!" section..
Personally, I preferred Mooney.

After this, instead of reviving the color comic, Marvel decided to do a b/w magazine featuring book-length original stories rather than adaptations of the pulp tales.
(Marvel's foray into a field previously-dominated by Warren Publishing had proven successful, with b/w magazines in horror, martial arts, and the Planet of the Apes movie/tv franchise proving to be solid sellers.)
The eight-issue magazine run is considered superior by many (including me) to the earlier comic run, with longer, more involved, tales, all written by Doug Moench, that followed the Doc spirit more than the Lester Dent-conceived story structure.
Not to say the color comic didn't have it's good points including a couple of Jim (The Shadow, Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.) Steranko covers and some of penciler Ross Andru's best artwork ever!

Trivia note: several other "doctor"-named superheroes were MDs in their secret identities, including Dr Mid-Nite and Dr Nemesis.
(The other "Doctor"-named heroes weren't MDs though they usually had a doctorate in another scientific discipline.)
Plus, there were some characters, like Thor and the Skull Killer, who were MDs in their alter-egos...but didn't use the title "Doctor" in their heroic identities!
One "doctor" in particular, Stephen Strange (better known as Doctor Strange), who lost his manual dexterity in a car crash and ended up journeying to Tibet to learn mysticism, recently regained full use of his hands, resulting in his book being retitled Doctor Strange: Surgeon Supreme!

...but that's a whole 'nother post!

Tomorrow...we travel to The Secret Sanctum of Captain Video to look at the 1960s (the era of Batman and James Bond), when a Doc Savage movie series was planned...and why it didn't occur!

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Doc Savage

His Apocalyptic Life
by Phillip Jose Farmer
(A "biography" of the Man of Bronze including his medical background)