Posted in: Comics, Vintage Paper | Tagged: Promise Collection, riddler

Promise Collection 1948: Riddles and Unknowns

"So you think funny books are a bad influence on youngsters? Ha, scoffs 12-year-old Jackie." A few years younger than the fan who assembled the Promise Collection at this point, Jackie's interview was part of the growing push-back against comic book industry critics as 1948 drew to a close.  "How about the grown-ups who read'em? Don't mention my name Jackie warned, or my folks'll whale the daylights out of me, but they read Superman, Batman, Mr. Marvel, Submariner and all the rest of 'em just as much as I do. In fact, declares Jackie, (the Jackie being a nom de plume for the youngster's protection) they sometimes read the same ones twice. Jackie admits having about 300 unread funny books piled up under his bed. He figures he'll have them all read before spring rolls around with its velvet green carpet of grass and balmy weather. My  biggest problem states Jackie, is to keep my older brother and my folks from swiping them on me before I'm ready to trade em."

While such sentiments represented in the media were no doubt welcome by the industry and its fans after a rough 1948 for the comic book business, one wonders if the Bennington Evening Banner reporter was playing a little fast and loose with his quotes. Though the notions behind the interview might have some basis in reality, he may have made some of this dialog up out of whole cloth (the "Mr. Marvel" reference suggests a lack of attention to the details at best).  If so, one can hardly blame him.  Newspapers had been full of incredibly exaggerated claims against the industry throughout the year, including one of my all-time favorite news stories from this overheated moment in comics industry history, when newspapers across the country reported that a pair a pre-teen kids had stolen and plane and were able to fly it 120 miles — because they learned how to do that from comic books.  But in an underappreciated moment in this history, the AP was forced to retract this claim when one of the kids came forward to flatly deny it.

Welcome to Part 19 of the Promise Collection series, which is meant to serve as liner notes of sorts for the comic books in the collection. The Promise Collection is a set of nearly 5,000 comic books, 95% of which are blisteringly high grade, that were published from 1939 to 1952 and purchased by one young comic book fan.  The name of the Promise Collection was inspired by the reason that it was saved and kept in such amazing condition since that time. An avid comic book fan named Junie and his older brother Robert went to war in Korea.  Robert Promised Junie that he would take care of his brother's beloved comic book collection should anything happen to him. Junie was killed during the Korean War, and Robert kept his promise.  There are more details about that background in a previous post regarding this incredible collection of comic books.  And over the course of a few dozen articles in this new series of posts, we will also be revealing the complete listing of the collection.  You can always catch up with posts about this collection at this link, which will become a hub of sorts regarding these comic books over time.

October Through December 1948 in the Promise Collection

Compared to the enormous number of new series #1's represented in the Promise Collection of 1948 up to now (and particularly the incredible 28 new series launches in the collection from Q3 1948), the seven new series launches of the final three months of 1948 represents something of a downturn.  And indeed, as we'll see in the few weeks to come, 1948 was the peak year of the collection.  The steady, long runs of titles ranging from Batman and Detective Comics to Modern Comics, Wonder Woman, and everything in between continued unabated through the end of this year.  Detective Comics #140 CGC 9.6 featuring the first appearance of The Riddler recently sold for a record $456,000.00.  Just as importantly, the new series launches of this moment foreshadow the changing tides of the industry as it closes out the decade of the 1940s: the more Westerns, the decline of crime comics, and the Pre-Code Horror era getting underway in earnest with Adventures Into the Unkown.

• Adventures Into The Unknown #1
• Dead-Eye Western Comics #1
• Firehair Comics #1
• Humphrey Comics #1
• Northwest Mounties #1
• On the Spot #1
• Western Adventures #1

Heading into the Unknown

Although Eerie #1 is usually considered the first true horror comic book, Adventures into the Unknown from publisher ACG (American Comics Group) is a vastly underrated comic book series in this regard. Considered the first ongoing American comic book horror series, the title lasted 174 issues from Fall 1948 to August 1967 — several months before other publishers began to ease into horror-focused titles, and about a year and a half before EC Comics' horror titles began in earnest.  Adventures into the Unknown is underrated from a creative standpoint as well. The series maintained a high standard for stories and art throughout, under the editorship of industry pioneer Richard E. Hughes. And most of the debut issue's stories were written by horror and science fiction legend Frank Belknap Long.

Frank Belknap Long began writing for pulps in 1924 with Weird Tales.  He became a close friend of H.P. Lovecraft and made early contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos.  Long had expanded his range to science fiction by the 1930s, in pulp titles such as Astounding Science Fiction and others.  By the late 1940s, Long was also writing comic books and contributed the scripts for most of the stories of the first two issues of Adventures into the Unknown, as well as stories for several other early issues.

Long's stories for Adventures into the Unknown #1 include a fascinating mix of horror tales from historical to modern.  One interesting choice for this issue is his brief but effective adaptation of Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto:

The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole, is generally viewed as the first Gothic novel. Its first edition, published in 1764, claimed to be a translation of a work printed in Naples in 1529 and newly discovered in the library of 'an ancient Catholic family in the north of England'. It tells the story of Manfred, the prince of Otranto, who is keen to secure the castle for his descendants in the face of a mysterious curse.

Artists collaborating with Long on these early issues include Fred Guardineer, Edvard Moritz, Max Elkan, King Ward, and Al Ulmer.

Opera and Operation Vengeance

While comic books may not have taught a pair of teenagers to pilot an airplane in 1948, it's undeniable that they often contained a wealth of real-world references just waiting to be unraveled.  Blackhawk included such historical touchstones from the very beginning.  The Blackhawks' plane was modeled after a real-life aircraft called the Grumman XF5F Skyrocket. The Grumman Skyrocket was part of a massive media blitz in newspapers and magazines across the country from 1940 to 1942, which generally touted the aircraft as the fastest and most deadly war machine to ever take flight. The XF5F never made it past the testing stage, but a successor model was later put into production.  This is far from the only such real-world historical reference in Golden Age Blackhawk comics, and Modern Comics #78 cover-dated October 1948 from Quality Comics is another fascinating example from the Promise Collection of this period.

Modern Comics #78 was written by William Woolfolk and drawn by Reed Crandall. Both creators had a longtime association with Blackhawk.  Crandall served in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, while Woolfolk served in the Army.  Interestingly, while Woolfolk apparently didn't have a direct connection to the Air Force, he did continue his editorial association with the kind of aerospace technology that often appeared in later-era Blackhawk comics when he launched the aerospace industry magazine Space World in 1960.  Space World was published by Woolfolk, with fellow comics great Otto Binder as his editor.

The magazine's contributors included a number of aerospace industry heavy hitters, including Wernher von Braun in the debut issue. In another intriguing twist, Woolfolk later sold Space World to Raymond Palmer.  Palmer, the inspiration for the secret identity of the Silver Age version of diminutive DC Comics hero the Atom, was also a longtime friend of Otto Binder and DC Comics editors and writers such as Julius Schwartz and Mort Weisinger.  Palmer later became a pulp and magazine editor and publisher of note and was investigated by the FBI for his apparent role in helping to kickstart the UFO phenomenon. In short, Space World can be seen as a fascinating sort of continuation of Woolfolk's work on Blackhawk.

As for Modern Comics #78, the villain of the issue, Madame Butterfly, was obviously inspired by the opera of the same name, which was enjoying a resurgence in America around the time that this issue was written.  Based on various clues in story, the setting of this tale is the Maldives, a nation spanning 1192 islands in the Indian Ocean.  But most interestingly of all is this line from Madam Butterfly in the issue:

You see, I too, once loved a man! He was Mitsamo, chief of the Japanese Secret Intelligence! He died in the flaming plane of Admiral Yamamoto, killed in a Yankee sky ambush!

This is an obvious reference to Operation Vengeance, the retaliation against Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander in chief of the Japanese Navy, who had planned the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Interestingly, one can also plausibly say that his assassination was made possible by a security failure on the part of Japanese Signal Intelligence.

Big-Time, Big-City Journalism

While Blackhawk made his way through the post-War era by keeping up with the progress of technology and politics, other titles stayed current by tracking the cultural forces in play throughout this era. Sort of a version of Lois Lane a bit more grounded in the real world, daring reporter character Brenda Starr got her name from 1930s socialite Brenda Frazier and her persona, fashion sense, and looks from Hollywood actress Rita Hayworth.  A character whose rise mirrored the shifting roles of women in the workforce and the culture at large during WWII and beyond, Brenda Starr eventually attained popularity across comic strips, comic books, film, and merchandise.

Although the character debuted as the star of her own comic strip in 1940, it's noteworthy that Brenda was originally designed with the comics format in mind: "About this time Marshall Field started a new newspaper in competition with the Chicago Tribune," Messick told Cartoonist Profiles in 1972.  "This was a period when comic books were big and so the Tribune decided to put a little supplement over the top of their regular funnies to look like a comic book to help beat the Field competition. They needed 8 comics for this extra section and Batch called me to alert me to the situation. Mollie Slott, then the syndicate editor, thought that only a woman could do Brenda Star, so this was how I started."

Messick had changed her name from Dalia to Dale to avoid submission editors' prejudices against female cartoonists, and used Brenda to push such boundaries for women in journalism.

While many praised Messick's work as pioneering, others criticized "Brenda Starr, Reporter" for its unrealistic portrayal of the journalism profession, since most female reporters were delegated to covering social events or city council meetings. But many of her female readers, especially little girls, looked forward to reading the comic strip to see a woman do things that during the early part of the 20th century were typically assigned to men. The Los Angeles Times' Claudia Luther wrote that CNN anchor Charlayne Hunter-Gault said in an interview that she "wanted nothing more than for her life to have the 'mystery and romance' she associated with Brenda's big-time, big-city journalism."

All of this makes Brenda Starr an underappreciated example of why comic books survived the peril of this period of history and other perils to come.  While Brenda Starr or Blackhawk might not exactly teach someone how to be a journalist or pilot, they can certainly inspire people to do so.

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