Covering Out Of This World

This machine is still limping along without hard drive, running off of USB sticks. But it's actually the least impediment to posting lately. My mind is scuttling away from the outside world, making focusing on the posts more difficult, but fighting my way past that, too.

And then there's Blogger's 'upgrade' and the thoroughly frelled image uploads. That's a killer. It was only on the last attempt before giving up for the day that it finally upped the images for this post.

So, my apologies for the gaps lately - i'm working on it, but others are working against it. Hopefully things will smooth out soon.

Meanwhile, since the brain doesn't want to focus on wordly bits much, lets take a look at some covers. Out Of This World only had 16 issues between 1956 - 1959. That run of fewer than a dozen & a half issues sure produced a number of nice covers, don't you think...?

Of course, it never hurts to have Steve Ditko on your team.

cover art by Bill Molno, Steve Ditko, Maurice Whitman, Pat Masulli, Rocco Mastroserio, Charles Nichola, Vince Alascia, and Dick Giordano from Out Of This World #s 1-16 (1956, 1959)

The Secret Life Of Sue And Sally

As mentioned this morning, Flying Nurses and honorary Fly Girls - the twins Sue And Sally Smith - had just seven issues of their own comic, starting with #48. We also mentioned that the strip was usually drawn by Joe Sinnott.
But what came before?

The final issue of My Secret Life, #47, featured the debut of a new series created by Joe Sinnott. Joe wasn't just the artist on the strip, they were his girls. The writer on Sue and Sally's adventures is uncertain, but Joe Gill is the frequent guess as tho whose work it might be.

They debuted in September of 1962, and it was a good concept. Our heroes are positive heroes - healers by nature. They're pretty girls, always a bonus on the artwork for drawing in the readers. And their arrangement keeps them constantly moving from one potential danger zone to another, with the opportunity for widely varied and interesting background visuals. There's definitely great potential if the series had been more noticed by readers of the time.

To wrap up today's look at the Flying Nurses, here are Sue and Sally's first and final adventures. Their first appearance was on the cover of My Secret Life, with art by Charles Nicholas and Vince Alascia -

Fire Storm features pencils from Joe Sinnott with inks by Vince Colletta -

As seen in the story above, with Joe Sinnott's original concept we get a twin telepathic connection between the sisters. Whoever wrote the ongoing series ignored that potential and it was never mentioned again.

We saw the splash page for their final tale this morning. The credits on Symptom Of Evil are more nebulous. Dick Giordano is the 'best guess' penciller, and the inks are from the Vince Colletta Studio rather than the man himself.

page art from My Secret Life #47 and Sue And Sally Smith - Flying Nurses #54 (1962, 1963)