Number 1435: “Who is the Black Cat?”

Who is the Black Cat? I just happen to know: Linda Turner, glamorous Hollywood movie star by vocation, masked crimefighter by avocation.

As far as superhero types go, I think Black Cat was as good as any, and being a pretty girl didn’t hurt. It is nice to see a babe kicking butt. There have always been female superheroes, of course, but Black Cat was succeeding in a comic book market where her male counterparts were being cancelled.

This particular story, from Black Cat #2 (1946) has what I always think of as a Batman plot, where a crime kingpin puts a bounty on information leading to the secret identity. I must have seen it used more than a few times, and it is entertaining. I like the Rook’s* gang of illiterate crooks. The panel sequence at the bottom of page 7 is funny. “How ya spell ‘cat’?”

“K-A-T, ya joik.”

The art is by Lee Elias.

**********

*Thirty years later Elias would do stories for Warren about a time-traveler called the Rook. No relation.

Another Black Cat story. Just click the thumbnail.

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Number 1229: The Black Cat uses her ninth life

The Black Cat, really movie star Linda Turner, lasted a bit longer than many other costumed characters of the 1940s and into the ’50s, but eventually her time came to an end. This is the last issue of her regular series. There's a full-page announcement that next issue would have mystery stories, and so began the lifespan of Black Cat Mystery, one of the premier horror comics of the pre-Code era.

Not long ago I said there was just something about a girl in a cat suit*...and so it was with Black Cat. It was a cute strip, well drawn by Lee Elias. Linda was a beautiful girl, and she had a partner, Kitten, who was a young boy. A boy called...Kitten?** At least Linda called him Kit some of the time.

I'm also showing a short story with Linda and her “boyfriend” Rick. I'm not sure about that question he asks of Linda in the splash panel, “Got your tonsils oiled?” Sounds dirty to me.

From Black Cat Comics #29 (1951):

 *Check out Tigra, who advertised a Belgian cigarette brand of the same name:

**Another Golden Age hero, Cat-Man, had a girl sidekick named Kitten.

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Number 1038


In and out of the closet


Jeez, it's only ten days until Halloween, and I've been so busy working on this blog that I haven't been able to re-wrap Ex-Lax wafers in Hershey Miniatures wrappers. See what I do for you? Blogging is work, sabotaging Halloween is fun, and for you I've chosen work.

Oh well. I've got a couple more horror stories for Halloween. We have two different stories dealing with putting people in closets. One is of a mean ol' aunt punishing her niece in that nasty dark closet, from Harvey Comics Tomb Of Terror #11 from 1953. The second story is from Charlton's Lawbreakers Suspense Stories #12, from 1954. Both comics regarded the stories as good enough to get the cover position, but then, the closet is a universal fear, isn't it? Being in a confined, dark space gives some folks the whim-whams.

"The Black Closet" is drawn by Art Cappello, and the cover is by Lou Morales. There's sleazy cheesecake (sleazecake?) in this story. This type of comic helped fuel the furor against comic books. I think it's just good sexy, sadistic fun, myself. "The Closet" is drawn by ?, according to the Grand Comics Database, with a cover by Lee Elias.

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Number 1022


Brush and pen: two by Lee Elias


Readers, I see the scrolling viewer that has given me so much heartburn this past week is gone. Did Blogger get feedback that convinced them to go back to the old way? My biggest complaint was when going into my archives it was a hassle to read my old postings. StatCounter showed that total readership for this blog was down by 1/3 this past week. I suspect it might have been that viewer.

And now, as they say, back to our regularly scheduled program...


Lee Elias had a varied comics career from the 1940s to the '80s: artist's assistant (George Wunder, Al Capp), syndicated strip (Beyond Mars), comic book artist (Fiction House, Harvey, DC, Warren, among others), and in his later years, a magazine illustrator and painter. In comic books Elias' work shows up in love, war, science fiction, horror and mystery comics, not to mention the sexy masked Black Cat, or a space hero like Tommy Tomorrow. The two stories here are a couple of those little gems from DC's mystery-science fiction comics of the '60s. "My Brother Is A Robot" evokes the Adam Link stories of Eando Binder, and is a poignant tale from 1960's My Greatest Adventure #42. It has a gorilla, too. A plus for me!

"Bang! Bang! You're Dead!" is from Tales Of the Unexpected #102, 1967. This story has a young protagonist able to see invisible monsters with a pair of mysterious glasses, and not believed by his parents.

Elias' versatility as an artist shows in both these stories. "Robot" is inked with a brush, the favorite tool of comic artists since the days of Milton Caniff, a style with which Elias excelled. He used a pen for inking "Bang!", filling in black areas with the brush. Either way works, although "Robot" appears smoother and slicker with its tight brushwork. The pen brings out some dynamics in "Bang!" with the shorter, looser strokes of the pen.

Elias was born Leopold Elias in the UK in 1920, emigrated to the US, and died in 1998 at age 77.

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