Wheelan's Weekend Film Festival - Matinee Performance

We continue from this morning's post with our look at Minute Movies from ...  is it Ed Wheelan or Art Hokum?

I guess it depends on one's frame of reference.

Let's start off with the lovely Hazel Dearie in a starring role -

As i noted last time, the concept of using a regular team of 'actors' starring in an anthology series is a rather brilliant notion. Not only does it dramatically reduce the character design stage, it creates a framework to have fun. And have fun exploiting the notion Wheelan did -
 

There ya go - our director, Art Hokum, as teased last time. He'll show up more, when he's not working on his autobiography (That's Why Hokum Was Born or No Runs, No Hits, One Error). 

While having fun with the format, Ed even stepped outside of movies with his ensemble troupe -
 

Matinee Bonus!
It's a Matinee Performance, so let's have a Matinee Performance, eh?
 

Well, you can't find Minute Movies every month in Flash Comics any more. But, i suspect we can find a few more around these parts before too long.

page art by Ed Wheelan from Flash Comics #s 20, 30, 37, & 39, (1941, 1942, 1943)

Wheelan's Weekend Film Festival

Back in 1939 at the dawn of Comics, Ed Wheelan created a strip for Movie Comics entitled Minute Movies. These were essentially old serials in half-page comic strip form. They were printed in two-colour format (black & red ink) and featured regular players - a brilliant concept, really. But Movie Comics lasted only a half dozen issues and Ed moved over to Flash Comics where he invented Flash Movies decades before we came to know them. After a few months, he decided to bring back the Minute Movies, now fully realized in concept.

Directed by Art Hokum and starring Dick Dare, Hazel Dearie, Will Power, Blanche Rouge, Paul Vogue, Lotta Talent, Andrew Handy (Don't call him Andy), and the rest of the Minute Movie Players - including the great villain Ralph McSneer, and comedy buffoon Fuller Phun. Not to mention, Milo the chimpanzee.

Each issue they'd mount a new production - Now Showing All Month!

As you can see above, Wheelan also got the jump on Bob Rozakis by several decades, too. It's interesting that this Answer Man delivers only the answers - figure out the questions for yourself! 
Ed kind of presages another feature i've been planning (ask the Mindbender from Mars, he knows. As usual.)

As noted in the green box above, Minute Movies did not appear in the next issue, but returned in #18 and stuck around for almost 50 more issues.

You didn't think i was kidding about Milo, the chimp, did you...?
 

Our weekend film festival continues this afternoon. And we might even get to meet the great Director.

page art by Ed Wheelan from Flash Comics #s 16, 18, & 19 (1941)

Repair Report

As noted a in the previous post, the Trump Flu Blues Prevention series seems to have had most of the images scrubbed for some mysterious reason.

The first of the fixes is completed, and the Puzzle Pages whose solutions should have been posted this morning are now back online.

Let's see if they stay that way, eh?

Curious Glitching

Well, isn't that ... interesting?

I went to post the answers to this week's puzzle pages and found that most of the puzzles themselves are gone from the original post. In fact, most of the pages from the posts that are labelled Trump Flu Blues Prevention all seem to have disappeared from the server.

Strange system glitch? Or are things getting uglier? We may have to make some posts to test and see what happens.

But, not right now. And i'll refrain from posting the answers just yet. Later i'll go back and repost the images that have gone missing.

In theory, we'll have a real post later today. 
Meanwhile, have yourself a groovy Mel circa 1970 -

The Complete Barney Brainstorm

As noted once again in recent days, i have a fondness for Boy Inventor/Genius comics. One such character comes to us from Larry Harris and the pages of Top-Notch Laugh Comics back in 1944. Barney Brainstorm was bit older looking than the average comic book boy inventor, so perhaps he's got less time in the role than most.

Let's take a look, eh?

...and that's it. Every episode of Barney Brainstorm ever published. 

Five years later, "Brainstorm" Barney came along...

...but he's hardly a boy, though possibly classified as inventive.

page art by Larry Harris and John Sikela from Top-Notch Laugh Comics #45 and Superboy #31 (1944, 1949)