Hepcat

On 5/21/2024 at 2:52 PM, MrBedrock said:

It took about a week of negotiations with the collector who had worked years trying to put together a high grade collection of many DC titles.

Wow, awesome! 

But why did the collector toss in the towel? Did he decide to collect My Little Pony figures instead?

On 5/4/2024 at 12:26 AM, ganni said:

 

Hot Stuff was my go-to "funny animal" title on the newsstand as a kid after Dell comics went to fifteen cents in December 1960.

As an adult though, I've noticed that Hot Stuff wears a diaper which I've come to find offensive. The Harvey titles I like the most these days are Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost ( I like his attitude and his doiby), Dick Tracy, plus Blondie and Dagwood.

On 5/21/2024 at 1:19 PM, Darwination said:

I put it on for a trip to the gym the other day.  My wife said, YOU LOOK RIDICULOUS

A wife's condemnation though is proof positive you've got something that's mega cool!

Challengers of the Unknown 48 may be my only comic from the Massachusetts collection:

Yay for Blaze the Warrior Dog and Lightning the Miracle Dog!

Here are a couple less heroic doggies from Playful Little Audrey:

Incidentally, here are some shots of my Grateful Dead inspired Lithuanian basketball T-shirts:

On 5/21/2024 at 11:18 AM, Robot Man said:

Yes, this was the beginning of his career. In the late 1960’s he “tuned in” and moved to the Bay Area and started doing concert posters for Chet Helms and the Family Dog. 

Indeed he did. But I still preferred him as a beatnik marketing T-shirts to hot rod enthusiasts and sundry greaseballs though.

Though I had rock star long hair for decades beginning in the late 1960's myself and an enviable accumulation of LPs, I rebelled against the whole hippie thing. I decided it was far more counter culture to be a muscle car loving greaseball. So I drove a candy apple red Dodge Charger with B.F. Goodrich Radial T/As and an engine courtesy of Jesse at the Hemi Shop (but with a Craig Powerplay cassette deck and Pioneer 6x9 speakers for my Rolling Stones, Doors and psychedelic garage rock).

And no, I've lost neither my hair or greaseball attitude to this very day!

Adventures of the Fly 1 hit newsstands 65 years ago this month:

Penciller: Jack Kirby
Inker: Joe Simon

The Fly's origin was fleshed out in this story:

"The Strange New World of the Fly"

Script: Joe Simon
Artwork: Jack Kirby

The Fly's two-part origin tale was indeed "atmospheric, dark and creepy". Tommy Troy, a fifteen(?) year old resident of the Westwood Orphanage, decides that he must confront the superintendent, old Aaron Creacher, with respect to the ongoing food shortfalls and cruel treatment of the boys in the orphanage. In the hall outside Creacher's office, Troy overhears Creacher being threatened by gambling den operator McCoy and another man over Creacher's gambling debts. It seems that Creacher has been embezzling orphanage funds to meet his gambling debts, albeit not aggressively enough for McCoy's satisfaction. Tommy Troy though is discovered listening in on the conversation.

Fearing exposure, Creacher decides to farm out Tommy Troy to an old wizard named Ben March and his wife Abigail who occupy the local haunted house. The Marchs' intention is to employ Troy as an unpaid servant/slave and thus have no interest in any of Tommy Troy's tales.

Piqued by curiousity, Tommy Troy one day decides to check out the attic room (fortuitously unlocked that day) where the March couple is rumoured to conduct arcane ceremonies. Despite the room being filled with exotic artifacts, fatigue from overwork catches up to Troy and he dozes off to sleep. When he awakens, he sees a strange ring. When he puts it on, a strangely garbed humanoid figure appears and identifies himself as Turan of the Fly People. The Fly People had been a race with magical powers who had previously inhabited the Earth. But greed and power hunger had prompted an outbreak of a magical variant of total war which had reduced most of the Fly People to household flies. A handful had escaped the ravages of the war by fleeing to another dimension where they then dedicated themselves to battling greed and crime wherever it was to be found. Having ascertained that Tommy Troy was pure of heart while he slept, Turan tells Troy that rubbing the magic ring and wishing would enable him to change into the Fly. 
 
Turan tells Troy that as the Fly he will have these special powers:
 
1. The ability to walk on walls (and ceilings presumably).

2. The strength of 100 men.

3. A 360 degree field of vision without turning his head.

4. The ability to escape any trap.

After Turan disappears, Tommy Troy decides to aid the kids at the orphanage as the Fly. He finds McCoy and his henchman gleefully dividing up orphanage funds with Aaron Creacher. (Why McCoy was allowing the indebted Creacher to keep any part of the monies doesn't make sense.) The Fly of course quickly overpowers them all and turns them over to the police. He then finds that a reverse transformation back to Tommy Troy can be effected by rubbing the ring and wishing once again.

Not bad at all for an origin tale!

"The Fly Discovers His Buzz Gun" (5 pages)

Script: Joe Simon
Artwork: Jack Kirby

One morning mean old Abigail March sends poor Tommy Troy off to get groceries before her husband now also known as Ezra puts Troy back to work scrubbing floors and such. A love interest is introduced into the series as a comely blonde of about Tommy Troy's age stops her bike by Troy as he's coming back from the grocery store. She says that she's noticed he's moved into the old March house and introduces herself as Dolly Lake from just down the street.

They're then almost sideswiped by a getaway car with gunmen shooting at a pursuing police cruiser. Troy changes to the Fly behind Dolly Lake's back and goes to the aid of the police. He employs his Buzz Gun which has special stingers that are able to put ordinary mortals to sleep. (In future issues we learn that this Buzz Gun of his isn't often useful in slowing down more elaborate menaces.)

He's hit in the arm by one of the crooks' bullets though. Before passing out from the pain he rubs the ring to change back into Tommy Troy. Seeing the freshly reappeared Troy, Dolly notices that his arm is hurt. Too pure of heart to suggest any imaginative ways through which Dolly could nurse him back to vibrant good health, Troy merely allows her to think that he tripped and fell onto a sharp rock. Given that he no longer seems as badly hurt as he was as the Fly, there's an implication that turning back to Tommy Troy cures injuries sustained as the Fly. There's no further elucidation in this regard however.

"Come Into My Parlor" (7 pages)

Script: Joe Simon
Artwork: Jack Kirby

In this story the Fly battles the misshapen super criminal Spider Spry who has unusual climbing abilities and is a master at employing nets. It seems that the nasty Spider Spry and his gang have hijacked jewels Batista was trying to secret out of Cuba. Really! While fighting Spider Spry the Fly finds that he's vulnerable to bright lights but overcomes this weakness and apprehends Spider. The vulnerability to bright lights does not prove to be an ongoing weakness for the Fly over the course of his crime fighting career, however.

"Magic Eye" (4 pages)
 
Script: Joe Simon
Artwork: George Tuska

The Fly steps in to stop the destructive rampage of the robot creation of genius inventor Mr. Lighthouse. It turns out though that the Fly has it backward. Mr. Lighthouse has been tipped into a frenzy of destruction because he's lost control of his robot Glen Glim who's gained possession of the control panel. The Fly however soon cleverly ascertains which is which and turns Glen Glim's switch to OFF. Why the genius inventor was busting things up like a deranged robot isn't satisfactorily explained though.

The Adventures of the Fly 1 also contains a Shield story of just over a page which would act to deter most readers from ever buying a copy of a comic featuring said Shield. The issue also has a useful page devoted to "The 'Gentle Art' of Jiu Jitsu":

Good stuff! But more advisedly practiced on your younger siblings than on the schoolyard tough....

The Fly would go on to have a relatively lengthy publication history in the Silver Age rivalling that of second tier DC heroes such as Hawkman and the Atom:

The Double Life of Private Strong 1-2 (1959)
Adventures of the Fly 1-30 (1959-1964)
Laugh Comics 128, 129, 132, 134, 137, 138, 139 (1961-1962)
Pep Comics 151, 154, 160 (1961-1963)
Fly Man 31-39 (1965-1966)
Mighty Crusaders 1-7 (1965-1966)

Issue #5 would take place nine years after issue #4 by which point Thomas Troy would be an adult working as a lawyer. His powers would then become defined as those possessed by any insect multiplied to the nth power. These would not only include the power of flight with his previously strictly decorative wings and the strength of a million ants plus super durability, but also the ability to mentally control insects.

Here I've listed the creative talents who worked on the title issue by issue:

Scripts

1-4 Joe Simon
5-28 Robert Bernstein
29-39 Jerry Siegel

Artwork

1 Jack Kirby/Joe Simon, George Tuska
2 Dick Ayers/Paul Reinman, Al Williamson/Angelo Torres, Jack Kirby/Joe Simon
3 Jack Davis, Joe Simon, Bob Powell, Paul Reinman
4 Ted Galindo/Chic Stone, Joe Simon, Neal Adams*, Sol Brodsky, Bob Powell
5 Bill Vigoda
6-9 John Giunta
10 Martin Epp, John Giunta
11-26 John F. Rosenberger
27-28 John F. Rosenberger, John Giunta
29-30 John Giunta
31-39 Paul Reinman

* Just one panel of Neal Adams' artwork was inserted in a story otherwise drawn by Joe Simon:

It's also interesting that the first Golden Age hero to reappear in the Silver Age was Black Hood in the July 1960 issue #7 of Adventures of the Fly. Black Hood and the Fly would exchange secret identities in this issue while foiling sinister foreign spies in Germany. The Jay Garrick Flash would not make his reappearance in Flash 123 for over a year.

My Black Cat Westerns!

Some Tom and Jerry Giants:

On 5/1/2024 at 4:28 PM, vheflin said:

Cool! Top Cat is one of my very favourite Hanna-Barbera characters. Whether he actually has red hair though is debatable:

1

2

3

Top Cat is sort of mustard yellow. But Choo-Choo is light red or pink while Brain is orange.

I was absolutely enthralled by this ad that ran in DC comic mags late in 1964:

The ad had the effect of leaving me a Mouse fan for life! Here are close-ups of the box art:

I didn't, however, chance upon any Monogram Fred Flypogger kits in my regular wanderings through my local haunts. 

Then within a year in September 1965 I was packed off to a boys' boarding school operated by Lithuanian Franciscan Fathers in Kennebunkport, Maine for ninth grade. On the Saturday before Thanksgiving we the students of St. Anthony's were released onto the streets of Portland, Maine for the day! We reached Portland in mid-morning and were to gather at the assembly point around 6:30 PM for the trip back to Kennebunkport. This was quite the treat since we were given $2 each (Wow!) to finance our meals and other activities. I believe this was done to give the couple who worked as cooks for the school the day off to spend with their families.

So there I was at the age of thirteen let loose on the streets of a big sophisticated American city! Well it had to be big, didn't it? There were warships in the harbour. Try to find those in Canada. (Actually my home town of London's population of 162,000 at the time was substantially larger than Portland's.) The first thing I did was track down a hobby shop. It was on the second or third floor of an old building and had an elevator with an honest-to-goodness elevator operator! The fellow made a snarky remark to me about hurrying up, as if he was pressed for time or something. Clearly he just hated his job especially when it came to kids. The hobby shop had the most impressive selection of model kits I'd ever seen to that point. This of course cemented my impression that this was a big sophisticated U.S. city. 

Despite their stock though, the store didn't have the Monogram Super Fuzz kit I was trying to find. In fact they'd never heard of it. And then I heard one of the employees asking where the "weird" kid was. I left the store without buying anything. (Don't you often wish you could go back now as an adult to royally chew out the adults who cavalierly disrespected you when you were a kid?) 

Leaving the hobby shop empty handed, I decided to get some lunch. Lo and behold I discovered a spanking new fast food pizza parlour that served not just individual sized pizzas but Pepsi. There was no pop sold at the St. Anthony's store and we got a bottle of Coke just once or twice a month with hamburgers on Sunday evenings after a supplemental rosary service or something in the chapel. (We always had some sort of fun meal on Sunday evenings.) I was a Pepsi loyalist at the time though so this pizza parlour was just the ticket. Now I think I'd only sampled pizza once or twice before in my life, probably just a mushroom slice for $0.20 at Cicero's Pizza stand at the Western Fair in London: 

I of course had never had enough money for pizzas in grade school and my traditional old-country parents would never have ordered out for such a thing. (By the time I was attending the University of Western Ontario of course my father would happily participate in any pizza I brought home.) In any event I bought an individual cheese pizza for something like $0.35-$0.40 that day and it was so good I bought another!

Another eventual happy ending to my tale though. I now have  M.I.B. specimens of all three kits in my collection:

@jimjum12

That looks like a piece by Stanley "Mouse" Miller who did a lot of Fred Flypogger art in the early to mid-1960's:

And yes, I'm all about beatniks, monsters and hot rods (as well as comics)!

On 5/20/2024 at 1:29 PM, 50YrsCollctngCmcs said:

I have a pile of Kelly books I bought earlier this year I really haven't had a chance to look at them yet. When I do read them I'll post some fun photos. Here's a photo of the haul in the meantime.

 

Cool!  What stories did Walt Kelly do in Our Gang Comics?

From Sgt. Fury to Sgt. Rock:

Great purple colour on a cover before the title was dragged down into buffoonery by the TV show!

Evil Star is a very cool wildly colourful villain!

Those binders can fetch high prices. They're uncommon and in high demand with boomers anyway.

On 5/1/2024 at 11:50 PM, sartrexpress said:

toned coins

While I love silver coins, I'm no fan of toning. Such "toning" is due to sulfur in the air (pollution) causing silver to tarnish:

https://www.canada.ca/en/conservation-institute/services/training-learning/in-person-workshops/understanding-silver-tarnish.html

Multiple first appearances in these two:

My Big Apple Challengers of the Unknown comics:

Deputy Dawg!

When I was a young kid, Deputy Dawg was one of those cartoon characters that I'd vaguely heard about in the school yard or somewhere from kids lucky enough to have cable TV or a rooftop antenna capable of picking up signals from Erie, Cleveland or Detroit. We didn't even acquire a TV until the late spring of 1961 and even then we only got our local CFPL channel until 1966. As such Deputy Dawg seemed a magical character to me. (Howdy Doody and Shari Lewis were two others.)