This well drawn story by Gil Kane and John Giunta is from Mystery In Space #3, 1951. Kane learned his comic art lessons well since the 1948 crime story of his I showed you in Pappy's #787. In "Vengeance of the Moth" with Kane's powerful drawings of the human figure in action you're getting an advance look at his work on Green Lantern and The Atom a few years later.
The story has nothing to do with space, despite appearing in Mystery In Space. It likely belonged in Strange Adventures, and perhaps it was placed in this comic to fill up a hole left by an artist who wasn't as fast as Kane.
Crime Does Pay Week: Charlie Birger and the Birger-Shelton War
This is day two of Pappy's Crime Does Pay Week.
According to the Grand Comics Database this ultra-violent example of the art of the crime comic is drawn by a young Gil Kane, published in Murder Incorporated #1, in 1948. Victor Fox was the publisher, and his books of this era almost single-handedly define sleaze.
As for the actual comic book, the story has some element of truth; there was a Charlie Birger, and he did have a war with beer rivals, the Shelton brothers, in Illinois during Prohibition. They did use armored cars, and did use a plane for an aerial attack. Something not told in the story (nor told in another version in Atlas' All True Crime #28, from later in 1948, either) is that before they went to war, Birger and Shelton were partners in the beer biz during a time the Ku Klux Klan was heavily involved in the area. The KKK had decided Prohibition was a good thing. It was so lawless there that KKK members would go into private homes looking for alcohol, and take offenders to a special Klan jail! Between Birger and Shelton they managed to push the Klan out of the area, maybe the only time in the sorry history of the sorry-ass Klan that the tables were turned.
The cover of Murder Incorporated #1, artwork attributed to John Forte, has a cover slug that says For Adults Only. How much do you think that mattered when a kid handed over his dime?
I wonder how the folks at Magazine Enterprises felt in 1952 if or when they noticed the cover of DC's Jimmy Wakely #18, and saw what looked like their character, the Ghost Rider, under another name. Vincent Sullivan was the publisher at ME; in the earliest days of comic books he had worked for DC Comics. I can imagine a phone call to Jack Leibowitz, DC publisher: "Uh, Jack, Vin here...yeah, Vinnie Sullivan. Say, Jack...I wonder if you know you folks have stolen my character?"
The Phantom Brander was a one-out villain, one story and he was gone, but very close to artist Dick Ayers' depiction of the Ghost Rider.
In 1952 there were hundreds of comic book titles. Maybe folks at DC who worked on Jimmy Wakely comics hadn't heard of the Ghost Rider, or had even seen it. But Gardner Fox would know. Fox worked for both DC and ME, where he wrote most of the Ghost Rider stories.
Jimmy Wakely was a singing cowboy who was in movies toward the end of the singing cowboy era in the late 1940s. This story is from the last issue of his comic, artwork attributed by the Grand Comics Database to Gil Kane and Bob Lander.
As a bonus, here's a radio clip from 1943, Jimmy Wakely and his Rough Riders doing "Boots and Saddle":
This well drawn story by Gil Kane and John Giunta is from Mystery In Space #3, 1951. Kane learned his comic art lessons well since the 1948 crime story of his I showed you in Pappy's #787. In "Vengeance of the Moth" with Kane's powerful drawings of the human figure in action you're getting an advance look at his work on Green Lantern and The Atom a few years later.
The story has nothing to do with space, despite appearing in Mystery In Space. It likely belonged in Strange Adventures, and perhaps it was placed in this comic to fill up a hole left by an artist who wasn't as fast as Kane.
Number 787
Crime Does Pay Week: Charlie Birger and the Birger-Shelton War
This is day two of Pappy's Crime Does Pay Week.
According to the Grand Comics Database this ultra-violent example of the art of the crime comic is drawn by a young Gil Kane, published in Murder Incorporated #1, in 1948. Victor Fox was the publisher, and his books of this era almost single-handedly define sleaze.
As for the actual comic book, the story has some element of truth; there was a Charlie Birger, and he did have a war with beer rivals, the Shelton brothers, in Illinois during Prohibition. They did use armored cars, and did use a plane for an aerial attack. Something not told in the story (nor told in another version in Atlas' All True Crime #28, from later in 1948, either) is that before they went to war, Birger and Shelton were partners in the beer biz during a time the Ku Klux Klan was heavily involved in the area. The KKK had decided Prohibition was a good thing. It was so lawless there that KKK members would go into private homes looking for alcohol, and take offenders to a special Klan jail! Between Birger and Shelton they managed to push the Klan out of the area, maybe the only time in the sorry history of the sorry-ass Klan that the tables were turned.
The cover of Murder Incorporated #1, artwork attributed to John Forte, has a cover slug that says For Adults Only. How much do you think that mattered when a kid handed over his dime?
Number 666
The Phantom Brander
I wonder how the folks at Magazine Enterprises felt in 1952 if or when they noticed the cover of DC's Jimmy Wakely #18, and saw what looked like their character, the Ghost Rider, under another name. Vincent Sullivan was the publisher at ME; in the earliest days of comic books he had worked for DC Comics. I can imagine a phone call to Jack Leibowitz, DC publisher: "Uh, Jack, Vin here...yeah, Vinnie Sullivan. Say, Jack...I wonder if you know you folks have stolen my character?"
The Phantom Brander was a one-out villain, one story and he was gone, but very close to artist Dick Ayers' depiction of the Ghost Rider.
In 1952 there were hundreds of comic book titles. Maybe folks at DC who worked on Jimmy Wakely comics hadn't heard of the Ghost Rider, or had even seen it. But Gardner Fox would know. Fox worked for both DC and ME, where he wrote most of the Ghost Rider stories.
Jimmy Wakely was a singing cowboy who was in movies toward the end of the singing cowboy era in the late 1940s. This story is from the last issue of his comic, artwork attributed by the Grand Comics Database to Gil Kane and Bob Lander.
As a bonus, here's a radio clip from 1943, Jimmy Wakely and his Rough Riders doing "Boots and Saddle":
