Pow!, ZIng!, Zowie and Biff!

Saturday Leftover Day.

From last week I am following a new format for The Fabulous Fifties. On Sundays there will be new scans of strips I have shown and written about before. On Mondays there will be strips you have not seen before. And onSaturdays I will continue with oddities, rarities and other loose ends. Pick your day, come round often and feel free to comment. I have also started creating new superposts collecting series I have shown many times before in chronoligical order. But as you can imagnie that takes a bit of time.

So for today we have an oddity. At the hight of the Batman craze in the fifties, every one wanted in on the act. So Woolwroth's decided to include Batman and Superman in their Halloween costume line-up that year. At a full page it seems to me like the perfect collectable for any Batman collector who actually has one of those costumes. Identify yourself and we'll work out a way to get it to you.

The Batman in this drawing is similar to the Batman in the comic strips at that time, which was designed (though at that point no longer drawn) by Carmine Infantino. The rest of the poster isn't so I am guessing this is a swipe as well.

With that I have an article from the shortlived magazine '47/'48, a digest sized cultural magazine that was named after the year it was ublished (hence the chaning title). It features the first use of the Pow! Zowie! headline that was used on every article about comics until well into 2000, supposedly taken from the fight cards in the Batman tv show. Turns out it had been around a bit longer than anyone thinks. Fellow Comic Book Historian Bob hughes invormed me that he has seen it as early a 1927 on a cover of Life magazine (then still a Punchlike cartoon magazine) and that it came from The Katzanjammer Kids. Adjust your history books accordingly.

Hugo Is The Boss

Thurday Story Strip Day.

This week, some people at the Comic Book History Facebook page alerted me to this early precursor of Superman. A sttrip I must have seen before, but forgotten all about. I found all 17 sampoles (before noticing that someone at Barnacle Press had done the same) and cleaned them up for you. Not so much a story strip as a history strip.

Here He Comes To Save The Blog

Thrsday Story Strip Day.

Well first make me clear these stories are not by Wayne Boring, but by Win Mortimer. The only Boring sample here is the Sunday. And a pretty good one it is. Mortimer went on to do David Crane, which I should share soem day as well.

The Superman newspaper strip ran for a very long time, all through the forties and fifties, in fact. Even though the early years were reprinted, most of it wasn't. And that is too bad, because the stories and art (especially that by Wayne Boring) was pretty good. For many years, I think the newspaper strip was actually better than the sillier comic book version. So why these were never reprinted, I don't know. Theu only thing I can gues is the early years didn't sell and then they just dropped it. Which is silly, but it happens. There is a focus on reprinting stuff from the beginning even when it might take five years before we get to the really memorable stories, especially at DC. Marvel is taking a much more smart approach with their Atlas Era series of books, where they just pick the best runs and do those first. But of course, they are advised by Doc Vasallis, the best Atlas expert around.

Anyway, here is a paticulary long run of Superman from 1952/1953. I haven't got a lot of Sundays, but from what I can see here, they are not tied in to the daily storyline. Since the Sundays are even more impressive than the dailies, that makes a reprint series of Sunday strips even more desirable, I'd say.