Cockeyed Wondering - Part The First

One of these days i'll get back to prepping each day's post and getting it into the queue the day before. At least, in theory. But currently it's part of my wake-up-get-functional routine.

Some time between about 4am and noon, depending on when i found my bed, i rise and hit the bathroom. Then it's kitchen cleaning to get my body woken and going and blog posting to get the brain woke up. Sometimes this plan even works. And sometimes you get these ramblings as the gears grind.

I've made mention a few times of Super Duck, and it even seems some have been waiting for more than mere mention. It's Saturday and i'm feeling like toons. I think it's time.

I noted that Super Duck had a longer run than most of the super critters in comics with almost 100 issues. But before his getting his own title, the duck started out in the first issue of Jolly Jingles (#10 because - say it loud enough for Snell to hear us up there - COMICS!)

Super Duck appeared in all seven issues of Jolly Jingles, graduating to his own title when the book ended. We'll look at his solo title later; this weekend, let's stick to those early episodes. We'll do his first three in this post, so let's get going. The cover above and the cover for #3 were drawn by Dave Higgins, who may have drawn today's comics. Sadly, we just don't know for certain.

Next time, another trio of Duck Tales before we venture onward.

page art by Dave Higgins? from Jolly Jingles #s 10-12 (1943, 1944)

Frank's Other Girl

Just about the same time that Frank Borth was writing & drawing The Spider Widow (at whom we peeked last weekend), he was also drawing his most reprinted work featuring Phantom Lady. He drew only 5 episodes, but all have been reprinted multiple times.

That's not going to stop us from re-running them here. We've got four of the five for today. You'll see why we're waiting for #5 at the end of this post. While reading through these, remember that this was 1943 and how sophisticated the artwork was compared to the standards of the time.

Hey!
That big bird is the same guy we saw showing up in The Spider Widow when we left off with Dianne. What's he doing over here with Sandra? Well, obviously, we're going to have to see where this all leads, no?

By yon by - my previous idle speculations about Frank Borth meeting Capt. Frank Moss during his time in the service proved to be as wrong as most idle speculations. They did not meet until after the war and after Borth's time living with Reed Crandall. So strike that out, eh? 

Yeah, we'll come back to more on Frank Borth's life, too.

page art by Frank Borth from Police Comics #s 17-20 (1943)