It Started In January 1955 When The Police Discovered The Body Of One Comics Code Official...

Thus did it begin...

Late last year, while presenting Ron Wilber's Star Woes from the old Rocket's Blast Comic Collector, i realized that i hadn't yet run his classic Twilight Of The Heroes despite having thought i had. Perhaps i was confusing it with The Massacre Of The Innocents, another strip from RBCC which did run previously. Or perhaps my deranged mind was playing tricks on me once again. 

Regardless, it's past time for another dive into those old zines and long past time for this tale to appear. However, we're going to break it up for a couple of reasons. The first is length - the story runs for 32 pages. You need a bit of room when telling an Epic, y'know. So we'll break the tale into two posts.

Moreover, we're also going to break this first post as well. After Wonder Woman shows up, it soon becomes NSFW. Fortunately, that's why The Other Voice Of ODD! exists. We can run the uncensored pages safely behind the adult warning.

Twilight Of The Heroes ran over several issues of RBCC, beginning in #139 - the same issue which featured Ron's above linked Star Woes tale.
 

Yeah, that got pretty grim. And that's just the beginning. However, next chapter Wonder Woman shows up (and shows other things) and so, as mentioned above, we're going to have to move the rest of this tale to our 'back room' for adult content.

Head on back past the age check for the rest of the first half of the tale, and we'll continue on the morrow.

page art by Ron Wilber for RBCC #s 139 & 140(1977)

I've Just Had A Blious Attack!

Let's get right into the next chapter of The Enchanted Flivver, from Capt. Frank T. Moss and Frank Borth. Those of you who may have missed the previous two chapters might want to catch up first.

For the rest of us, off we go...

page art by Frank Borth from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact #289 (1960)

The What If Fairy Hears The Magic Words

Sometimes you get an idea that just doesn't quite work. One such case comes from early on in Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact, premiering in the first issue - The What If Fairy. Who the creators are is unknown to modern man. (I've seen some speculation that the artist signed the next to the last panel, but it seems clear to me that it's another figure working the field, like those to the right) Here's the first strip...

Naturally enough, they followed Salt with Pepper...

While cute, the gimmick was clumsy and wasted too much of the available panel space on the framing sequences. It lasted only four episodes. Issue #5 featured the first of the more direct approach - The Story Of    Tin   ...

The simple and direct approach worked better. And we even got to see that it was done by Iris Vinton and Addison Burbank, so - bonus! It's always so nice to have those credits when looking back across the decades.

page art by ??? and Addison Burbank from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact #s 1, 2, & 5 (1946)

(And, yes - we'll be back this afternoon with the continuation of The Enchanted Flivver.)

He's Gobig To Blasht Off!

On her second outing, Henrietta - The Enchanted Flivver - starred on the cover of Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact -

I can't be certain, but i'm pretty sure that grumpy sedan looking up at Henrietta later showed up in Cars. (I could be deranged)

As we saw last time, Bobby Lane received an old flivver from his Uncle, and restored the car to running order. On his first trip out the car acted up something fierce... it jumped over a tree laying across the road!

Let's see what Capt. Frank T. Moss and Frank Borth have in store for us in the second chapter...

I love that she stops in mid-air for the traffic light. She'll break the laws of gravity, but not traffic. Or maybe it was Bobby's influence?

We'll see how things develop in chapter 3.

page art by Frank Borth for Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact #288 (1960)

They're Still Asking For Henrietta!

Captain Frank T. Moss, as rendered by Frank Borth

We'll be continuing with The Enchanted Flivver directly, and running the full first story over the course of the week.

As the lack of post yesterday and the still-no-response-to-comments may suggest, there's a lot of struggle going on between me and the mind. Sadly, it's not wanting to go wandering - it's simply wanting to not. It lately prefers to embrace a mental dial tone and the void. There was quite a bit of that during the recent down time. To the point that a good day was one spent playing games, simply because the mind was at least sort of doing something rather than just vegetating in front of a video. The heights of recent creative work has been nothing more than creating custom decorations for my Fallout 4 game world. (Keeping it dark and twisted, y'know)I think the last actual painting i did was for Jack Kirby's centennial - nearly two years ago.

Usually those dry spells last perhaps six months at most, and then i emerge on the other side with a bump up in the level of work i'm doing. Better be a hell of a bump this time.

Anyway - pages are being prepped and i've got a leash on the brain for a bit. With any luck, it might even cooperate when i try to correspond. (As opposed to the previous zone outs leaving time gaps - oh, joy) Thanks Nick, Dave, & TC, for the remarks - i do enjoy them and they do reinforce the positive effects of maintaining this link to the outer world. (And i've replied at least twice, according to my wicked trickster mind. But it didn't want to talk about that today, as i had intended. Ha! Snuck one past it!)

We'll be back with the second chapter of The Enchanted Flivver in half an hour, so this Ramblings post will soon be buried and we can proceed along on our merry way.

And maybe we'll even get to that time Darth Vader attacked planet Earth sometime soon...

Rattle Rattle Bang Bang

Oh, sure - we all knew that the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang had its roots in the book from the guy who created James Bond. But where did Ian Fleming get the idea?*

Y'don't suppose...

 A couple days ago we saw this cover tucked into a big batch from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact...

That cover is from 1966 - dead between the release of the book (1964) and the movie (1968). But Where's Henrietta? is a sequel to a story from six years earlier. The Enchanted Flivver debuted in the first issue published for the 1960/61 school year. Written by Capt. Frank Moss, the stories were illustrated by Frank Borth - the artist mentioned on my favourite cover in the above-mentioned post.

Young'uns - a 'flivver' was an automobile that did not possess an electric starter. You had to manually turn a crank mounted on the front to kick the engine over and get it running.
One of the things i found particular fascinating with this first chapter is the driving lesson information. For most folks these days manually operating the gears is too complicated. How many could manage to get from here to there if it was still like this...

Indeed - to be continued...

page art by Frank Borth for Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v16 #1 (1960)

*(Yes, we are absolutely ignoring Fred MacMurray here, just like everyone else did with Shazam!)

Ho! Ho! I Say, You Chaps, Look At This!

I made my monthly trek down the hill into town for supplies and now i'm fair knackered. And so we have an appropriately short post featuring The Shortest Code In History...

As one following recent posts might suspect, that strip comes from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact.

A quick bonus before i go collapse. Here's a sample of why this book stands out from other religiously published comics with which i'm familiar...

Note the date. It was back in the mid-40s and instead of pressure to conform they're telling young readers it's okay to follow your own heart. You can still be a good person even if you're not just like everyone else.

page art by Frank Huffman and John Norris from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact #s 181 & 450 (1946, 1968)