As Usual, Jack Was There Before Us

I'm awake! First time i've gotten more than 2-3 hours of sleep in a single block in weeks. Kinda forgot what that was like.
 Others are busy not forgetting.

A lot of folks in this country (the USA) got their first introduction to Guy Fawkes, or "Guy Fox" as many seem to believe, in the movie V For Vendetta. And most of those folks don't seem to realize that he was an actual person from history, and one of your more bizarre holidays.

Fortunately, Jack Kirby is here to educate as well as entertain. Let's jump back almost 75 years to Headline Comics #23 and Jack & Joe Simon will learn ya some -

Remember, remember, the 5th of November
The gunpowder treason and plot...

page art by Simon & Kirby from Headline Comics #23 (1947)

Can Termites Be Romantic?

I like to say that Jack Kirby is the reason that this blog's lifespan is measured in years instead of weeks, but that seems kind of like laying blame. He might have been the reason, but it's not his fault.

You see, i started this blog in late July, and then a few days later i realized that The King's 100th birthday was just a month later in late August. That realization begat the King Kirby 100 - 100 (+2) post on Jack Kirby in his centennial month. That period of intense posting kind of ingrained this blog in the patterns of my life. 

Another, unintentional, result was that we don't do Jack very often. In no small part because it's sometimes very hard to sort out what i've already done.

Tomorrow, August 28th, is Jack's birthday - so let's work on rectifying that a bit and have a King Kirby Weekend, eh? And since Jack is about the only one who saw and predicted comics dominating the movies the way they do these days (when we actually have movies, that is), let's do it Hollywood style and start the weekend early for the extra numbers. (Of course, i'm just talking Number Of Posts, not them yummy box office dollars) And let's try to lean into some of what might be termed Odder works - or, at least less familiar and expected.

Now, you might not know it, but Swifty Chase is known for his unique automobiles. But i think i prefer the one he built for that "romantic termite" House-Date Harry. Here's Jack & Joe Simon to tell you all about it -

Here's the cover for the tale -
 

Swifty starred in the four issues of My Date Comics that were published, and Harry got one short tale of his own. Odds are good we'll catch a bit more with them this weekend.

page art by Simon & Kirby from My Date Comics #3 (1947)

Some Cavemen Are More Cavemen Than Others

Before we get back to Tragg & Lorn (and we will get back to them), let's stop in to check out a rather different caveman. From the pencil of Joe Beck (often aided & abetted by Otto Eppers) comes the world of Prehistoric Pete. 

Pete first appeared in Spotlight Comics back in 1944. Spotlight only lasted three issues, but it didn't take Pete down with it. He also appeared in an issue of Punch Comics, and enough issues of Red Seal Comics to bring him up to an even dozen stories.

Today, let's take a look at those first three tales from Spotlight -

Get the feeling that perhaps this was where Dogpatch might eventually evolve?

page art by Joe Beck and Otto Eppers from Spotlight Comics #s 1-3 (1944, 1945)

In The Days Before Ken Jennings

It'll come as no surprise that a lot of my favorite books and movies as a youngling were about oddballs and outsiders. I ran into one of those old faves while poking through some comics this morning in an old issue of Hollywood Film Stories from 1950. It's one of those movies that i really loved as a kid, but that nobody else i knew seemed to have ever heard of - Champagne For Caesar. It's not like it was a back lot one-reeler with no distribution and no stars. Ronald Colman was tolerably Huge, and Vincent Price - n'uff said? Celeste Holm playing leading lady opposite Colman, and Barbara Britton rounding out a nice foursome.

Beauregard Bottomly, our hero, is a bit of a social misfit who feels abused by a corporation and finds a unique way to take his revenge on the company via the gameshow they sponsor. Burnbridge Waters (don't you love the names in this script?) is the esoteric chairman of Milady Soap company, the Soap That Sanctifies, to be sure that cleanliness is next to Godliness.

It's a fun little romp in a twisted little corner of Hollywood, and it's all broken down for us in eight pages...

And even a believable conclusion.

Now i'm in the mood for some more old movies. I'll have to go digging through the video closet. But not today.

Today i've already got 007: From Beijing With Love lined up.

no page art, just pages from Hollywood Film Stories #5 (1950)

My Favorite Caveman

I started building towards this topic a little over two years ago. Regular readers know the struggle, but we've finally wrangled the beast back around this way...

One of Jack Kirby's many great concepts was the inception of the Inhumans (and similarly the Eternals & Deviants). Highly advanced alien races experimenting on emerging Humanity to see what they can make from the raw clay of Man. (the species, not the sex)

In 1975, over at Gold Key Comics, a new caveman comic crawled up on the shore - Don Glut and Jesse Santos teamed up like peanut butter & chocolate and brought us Tragg and the Sky Gods. Engaging the same basic concepts, they didn't jump ahead thousands of years to see the results. Instead, they told the tale of the new Humans resulting from their experiments, and their interactions with the primitive world of cavemen and dinosaurs. (It's comics, not science)

After two issues, they switched to painted covers. Still Jesse Santos and still looking mighty fine, but i really prefer the psychedelia infused feel of his inks. Here's the other drawn-not-painted cover -

Tragg only had 8 issues, plus a Gold Key Spotlight comic. Some will tell you that there's also that issue of The Occult Files Of Dr. Spektor, but that's a single panel lacking even name designations, so it's a cameo at most. That's not a whole lot of comics, but they were fairly densely packed. The first issue has 25 pages of story - let's ago ahead and dive in rather than have me try to break things down for you...

Let me pause to say how much i enjoy the way Don & Jesse play together. Beyond Tragg, they also teamed for the aforementioned Dr. Spektor, and for Dagar The Invincible, too, along with a smattering of Mystery tales.
I rather thought that we'd have covered some of them by now, but we'll get there.

Meanwhile, let's cover the rest of this series, shall we? 
Here are Jesse's painted covers for the run of Tragg -

...and, what the heck - here's the cover to that issue of The Occult Files Of Dr. Spektor that has the single panel in it. Just because...

I expect we'll be back to check on Tragg and Lorn's progress. But i also expected we'd be here two years ago...

page art by Jesse Santos for Tragg And The Sky Gods #1 (plus covers) (1975)