Hold That Panel!

Sunday Meskin Measures.

After a week of silence I have a double treat from Headline #73, dated September 1955. A complete and signed Mort Meskin story. Lots of great elements here, showing Mort Meskin's mastering of the form.

But first as a bonus a story from the same issue that is identified by Jim Vandeboncvoeur as probably having Paul Gustavson art - which has a two panel redo by Meskin halfway through. My guess is, the deleted panels were too violent and replaced with something more harmless to fit under the newly adapted comics code (which started around March/May that year.  Since the new art was in color, this was not a last minute job (I have seen comics, where images were blacked out or replaced by new ones that were in black and white because there was not time to redo the color plates. This seems to have been done before the color was done, so maybe even before the code people saw it.

Your Goverment Dollars At Work

Saturday Leftover Day.

In alter Ego #105 (the magazine about golden and silver age comics and it's creators) Richard Arnt wrote about the Comics Code, which policed the contents of American comic books from the mid-fifties. There were some samples of comics code ordered butchering, especially in the beginnening when everyone was still figuring out how this worked. I understand they are working on a follow-up article for which I have provided some samples. Here is another whopper - in Avon's Wild Bill Hickock #25 and #26 huge changed were apparently ordered. As was the case in several other changes I have seen from other companies, there was so little time that stuff had to be cut out of the art plates or in some cases replaced by new panels which didn't have the time to be colored. Here, from Wild Bill Hickock under a Raymond Kinstler cover) is a story that was changed so much, you can't even see what the original must have been like.

In the story, a ranger finds someone in trouble in a forrest fire. After saving the victim, he deduces it must have been made deliberately and finds the guy who did it. But everything about the victim has been changed, up to the splash page! So who was te original victim and was it even a girl? If she was too sexy, why not slap some ink over her (as I have seen done in other stories)? A weird an d probably unnecessary change.

Oddly, the panel where someone is shot i the belly and yells 'Oh, my hand!' seems to have been part of the original story.