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)