SALLY FORTH MEETS THE MONSTERS

Often referred to a "sexy action-adventure" character, Sally Forth was -- like his male character, Cannon -- created by Wallace Wood for a male military readership in a tabloid military newspaper for servicemen.

Woody explained in a 1976 interview:

"It all started in 1968, when I was asked to do a complete comic section for a proposed tabloid newspaper for servicemen, four pages of full-color, service-oriented humor strips ... There was a high-flying lowlife named 'Wild Bill Yonder,' a couple of others that for some reason escape my memory ... (such an embarrassment) and one that I felt, and still feel, had a great name for a comic heroine ... Sally Forth."

In 1971, Sally reappeared in OVERSEAS WEEKLY, the same paper that the Cannon strip ran. Her last installment was on April 22, 1974. Wood had several art assistants during this project, including Nicola Cuti, Larry Hama and Paul Kirchner.

From 1993-1995, her strips were collected and re-formatted by editor Bill Pearson into a series of comic magazines under the Eros Comix imprint, a division of Fantagraphics.

Monster and cheesecake fans should enjoy the "strip" shown here today. In this episode, Sally arrives at Castle Vernacula, where she encounters Krankenstein's monster, the Mummy, the Wolf Man, King Kong and Count Vernacula himself.

THE MAD HORROR PRIMER

Spoofing children's "primers" is MAD'S version from issue #49 (September 1959), "My First Scary Reader", written by Larry Siegel and illustrated quite nicely by Wallace Wood.

MARS ATTACKS MONDAY!

Len Brown wrote all the text on the card backs. "I got away with a lot back in those days," he recalled. "I don't think management even bothered to read the backs. They were very worried about the artwork being offensive, but they let me write about any gruesome thing I wanted!"

MARS ATTACKS MONDAY!

Parents, teachers and lawmakers alike were in an uproar over the violence depicted in these cards (shades of the pre-Code comics era!).

"At the time", Len Brown remembered, "We actually kept a file of all the complaints we received. Our Civil War set was just as gory as Mars Attacks. I suspect it was because it was historical, people felt that kids were learning, so the violence was okay."