Making Contact With L.B. Cole

Y'know - i left one of the big ones off the list of contractually obligated brooding - Old Geezer. 

Here's the kind of brood i get to enjoy - I'm now the oldest surviving member of my family line. This past Xmas brought confirmation the the rest don't care to hear from me. Not that we've had bad relations - just no relations in general. But they're republicans, so they may just assume i was chasing after Dad's money or something.

Fortunately for me, that whole Family Is Everything concept was something rather alien to my life experience, so not too big a deal. I'm far more concerned with my larger family of Humanity, and whether or not we'll survive early adolescence. (Obviously the species won't be maturing out of that phase any time soon)

So, let's drag the ol' brain out of the cave shadows and put it to work, eh? 

L.B. Cole is another of those old creators whom i thought we had looked at previously. Nope - just a bit over on the 1940s Funny Animalphabet, and not much of that. So let's start with Contact Comics. The only title published by Aviation Press, it ran for 12 issues in 1944 & '45, and Cole did some lovely work for the covers -

While i like the leap forward in Aviation for that final issue, it's kind of hard to picture someone yelling "Contact!" and a hard prop spin starting up a rocket engine, no?

Okay. I'm going to give the brain a break, and hopefully i'll drag it back later today with a peek at a lady under the covers.

cover art by L.B. Cole for Contact Comics #s 1-12 (1944, 1945)

They Don't Make 'Em Like That Any More - Valentine's Day Edition

Me and Brain still not getting along, so just a quick cover collection today. I did manage to figure out it was Valentine's Day, even if i didn't realize it was Friday again already. 

So our covers today are from one of the more odd Romance comics (unless there was an actual Odd Romance comic. I should look...)

Hang on, wokesters, here we go...

Don't you love how they decided this was the right place to find girls to write to soldiers? As noted in the title of this post, they don't make 'em like that any more.

But then, how could they?
We don't have Matt Baker any more.

Hmm...
Does that tie this into Black History Month?
Not the best way to do that. Might have to use that as a cheap excuse to come back to Matt once again, eh?

covers by Matt Baker for Teen-Age Temptations #s 1-3, 5, & 7-9 (1953, 1954)

Covers With Punch

Since modern comic publishers told me to go away, i've been spending a lot of time digging through old comics instead. Often i'm struck by the difference in covers on the old comics.

Sometimes they're nothing more than interior panels or pages with a little more text slapped on. 

Sometimes the cover seems to be an afterthought, stapled on at the last minute from whatever was laying around the office.

Sometimes they're Fun in a way we never see any more. Heroes know they're on the cover and break from the stories to just play and have a good time with the readers.

And sometimes, they just grab me. That's the case with Punch Comics -

(Tomb Cover of the Unknown Artist)

The covers for Punch started off solid. The first perhaps from George Tuska?
 

The second issue had an 'Anthology Cover' that worked well to advertise the contents from Charles Sultan...

...and then things got Odd.

Issues 3-8 don't seem to have actually existed. There's no reference to them, zero listings in databases - absolutely nothing i can find on them, nor any comment their absence. 

But, two and a half years later, #9 appeared with a terrific cover from Gus Ricca - 

Followed by another great Ricca cover, featuring Master Key -
 

Then we got the silohuette cover at the top of the page. Could Ricca be the unknown artist who created it? Not a whole lot of clues to work with on that cover, but i do like it very much.

After that, we got two more eye-catching covers from Gus Ricca. (Yes, the signature changes, but it's still him)
 

Ruben Moreira bent my reality a bit with his nice moody cover for #14 -

The stylized MK (for Master Key) and mood had me thinking for a moment that Mike Kaluta was considerably older than i had thought. Reality corrected itself fairly quickly. (but a look at the news tells me that reality is still broken)
 
As of issue 15 Paul Gattuso took over the covers for most of the rest of the run, with Master Key as the usual subject of the covers (perhaps by editorial edict after that sweet cover on #10) -

There were also a couple of cartoon/gag covers along the way before the title ended with #19 (above) as the final issue.

But, as with the beginning of Punch Comics, the end got weird. The next issue may or may not have a cover from Gattuso, featuring Rocketman (not pictured) for a change...

...but #21 did indeed feature his work up front, and back to the Master Key eye-beam pics...
 

...but they never, to my eye, reached the glory of the Ricca days again.

So, what the hells? Didn't it stop at #19?

Superior, a Canadian company, picked up the title and continued publishing it after the series was canceled by Chesler/Dynamic. It only last 4 issues, and it ended appropriately with this cover -
 

To make things more strangely confusing, there were apparently two more issues published after #23 - #30 later that year, and #31 about two years later.

I am wholly ignorant of those two anomalous issues, so we'll stop here. For now. There's some fun stuff inside, too.

cover art by indicated artists for the indicated issues of Punch Comics (1944-48)

Covering Early Ditko

Oops.

We forgot a post, even though i mentioned it while we were indulging in Ditko this week. Previously i said we'd get a collection of Ditko covers from Amazing Adult Fantasy and the earlier titles which we were perusing, so here they are - 23 covers from Steve Ditko's rising days in the mid-50s and early-60s...

Okay...   Now we'll move along from Ditko for a while.

Tomorrow i believe we'll visit with Stanley & Edwin!(?) See you then.

cover art by Steve Ditko from the books for which they're covers (1954, 1956, 1961, 1962)