Starr Spangled Gangsters

Friday Comic Book Day.

I am member of a Facebook group celebrating the life and work of Mary Perkins (and later Little Orphan Annie) artist Leonard Starr. In the late forties and early fifties he was a very prolific inker and penciller, who worked just about every company. When he landed at DC, he seems to have cut his lesser paying accounts. But in the mid fifties he must have found something else to do, because his work doesn't appear as much as it did before that. In an earlier series of posts I shared a whole run of his early fifties Nighthawk series from Western Comics and Ghost Breaker from Star Spangled) One of the last things he did for DC was a series of short stories for their crime anthology (all comics were anthologies back then) Gang Busters. I was scanning a few of those issue for the work by Mort Meskin, Joe Maneely and George Roussos, when I came across this one from Gang Busters #56.

Strangely Unbelieveable

Friday Comic Book Day.

DC comics from the early and midfifties hold many unseen gems. Most of them, because they do not involve superheroes. Here are two particulary well drawn stories by Leonard Starr. I like this type of ghost breaker stories a lot and he did more than a few. Unfortunately, they are hard to come by because they were done for Detective Comics, an exstremely expensive book. And I don't think I can hold my breath to wait for a collection from DC. Still, it'd be worth it. If you like these, follow the label to more Ghostbreaker stories.

Starr on Stage

Friday Comic Book Day.

Leonard Starr did a lot of work for the early issues of House of Mystery. He also did some western work for DC, which I will show someday. But one of the most satisfying series he did for DC, was Star Spangled's Ghostbreaker. For all (or mos) of it's run Star Spangled had been the home of Tomahawk en Robin, the Boy Wonder strips. And for most collectors, it is still remembered chiefly as that. But this little series took the front page and was promoted to lead story from the start. It was the early fifties and horror was what was selling. DC followed suit and appointed one of their newest and slickest artists to the job. He was even allowed to sign his work, whatever that may mean. Maybe he was the only one who wanted to?

Here is where DC's policy of only reprinting titles or characters backfires for them There are loads of interesting series that did not get a long run. They did do a Black Canary book, but there are still lots of gems to be found hidden in their books, such as the Mort Meskin dran Vigilante and Johnny Quick I have been showing on Sundays, Carmine Infantino's Ghost Patrol or Foley of the Fifth, with a couple of very impressive first stories by Joe Kubert. Well, at least you can see some of them here.

This is the sort of post that would get me a lot of visitors through Dirk Deppey's Journalista! newssite, which unfortunately has been closed down just before CHristmas. I was a great source of stuff and I miss it dailey. Not in the last place, bevcause he always linked to my best posts and generated a lot of traffic for me.

I woul be amiss not to mention the Classic Coomic Press reprint series of Leonard Starr's Mary Perkins on Stage. The best written soap opera strip of it's day. Volume 8 has just been published, with a new cover by Mr. Starr, who is still with us and capable of producing some very impressive work.