Number 608


Vigilante and the Dummy X 2


Ventriloquist's dummies are a cliché in horror stories. They're weird looking caricatures of humans, and voices come out of their mouths. One of Vigilante's enemies is a guy who looks like a ventriloquist's dummy. How weird is that? I guess it depends on how spooked you are by ventriloquists' dummies.

The Vigilante is Greg Sanders, who is a radio star, a singing cowboy. His partner is Stuff, also known as the Chinatown Kid.

These two stories are from Action Comics. "Blunderbuss Booty" is from Action #75, August 1944, and "The Dummy Art Expert" is from Action #87, August 1945. They're drawn by Mort Meskin, an artist who mentored the young Joe Kubert, and if the story is to be believed, influenced the young Steve Ditko. I like Meskin's use of blacks, which give the stories a deep, shadowy look.

Meskin was a comic book pro for many years until quitting in 1965 to go into advertising. He retired in the '80s and died in 1995. I'd consider him to be a pro's pro...an artist that other artists looked to for inspiration. The scans are from tearsheets I got in the late '70s. They're ragged and brittle around the edges so there are chunks missing here and there.

I have presented some other Vigilante stories, in Pappy's #406, and Pappy's #463.

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Number 463


"Shoot me for a kiyoodling coyote..."


Vigilante is radio singin' cowboy Greg Sanders, who moonlights as the bandanna-wearin', two-fisted do-gooder. He's aided by yet another version of Robin, "Stuff," a kid from Chinatown. In this particular silent opus, we have to imagine the squawking sounds from the strings of the villain, the "frustrated concert violinist," Ben Bowe, aka The Fiddler. I guess if ever there was a real excuse to be a criminal, not being able to play Carnegie Hall would have to top the list.

Didn't The Flash also have a foe called The Fiddler? Checking with the Grand Comics Database I see a notation about this episode of Vigilante: "The Fiddler is not the same villain as Flash's." Aha. Two villains with the same name working for the same comic book company? Who's in charge of continuity here?

Whoever wrote this story gave it some pretty snappy dialogue. Vigilante: "Are you hurt, Stuff?" The boy replies, "I'm not feeling kittenish." ...whatever that means, and maybe it meant something in 1943 that is lost to us now, but I think it's funny.

Mort Meskin, as "Mort Morton," and "Charley," Charles Paris, did the art chores on this story from Action Comics #59, April 1943. Meskin created the character with Mort Weisinger, and I've included the origin story from a DC reprint of the early 1970s. Meskin's artwork is dynamic and dramatic, aided by the equally dynamic and dramatic inking of Paris, who worked a lot on the Batman comics over a couple of decades. I believe, except for some occasions, that Meskin was essentially THE Vigilante artist. Vigilante, who also appeared in Leading Comics with the second banana group, Seven Soldiers of Victory, was one of the more popular features in Action Comics for years, and might be the most popular DC character who never earned his own book.













UPDATE: Readers Mike and Carole Curtis asked me to refer you to a link about the 1947 Vigilante movie serial starring Ralph (Dick Tracy) Byrd.

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Number 442


Boxing Day noir


Americans don't know what Boxing Day is, a holiday celebrated in the rest of the English-language speaking world. For my fellow Americans, here's an explanation of Boxing Day.

I don't have a posting that relates to the Boxing Day holiday so I came up with a boxing strip. This is from Silver Scream #2, from 1991, a black and white reprint from Harvey Comics' 1954 Black Cat Mystery #51. The drawing is by Mort Meskin. Because of the moodiness of horror comics, I think some would have been improved had they been printed originally in black and white. Oftentimes the coloring detracted, rather than added, to the mood. "Punch and Rudy," sans comic book colors, is a noirish story, stark and dark, with a punch ending (literally).

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While on the subject of noir, recently I watched the film, Blast Of Silence, part of the Criterion Collection on DVD. The movie was made as an indy film in 1960, released in '61. It was written , directed, and starred Allen Baron. The reason I mention it in Pappy's is that Allen Baron was a comic book artist sometime in the Golden Age. In the German-produced documentary that accompanies the movie, there are some quick and tantalizing shots of comic book original art. I did some screen captures. I didn't find Allen Baron in the Grand Comics Database, but maybe somebody out there will recognize these stories.

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