Number 2581: Sub-Mariner and the Amphibious Elmer

Today a fun 7-page story from the 1954 issue of Sub-Mariner #35, drawn by Sub-Mariner creator, Bill Everett. The story adds an homage to The Creature From the Black Lagoon, a popular movie from that year. (The Creature movie was released March 5, 1954, and the Sub-Mariner comic was probably put on sale in June, 1954). Everett loved weird characters, and he must've been impressed by the design of the movie creature.

“Elmer” is an amphibious man, created by another in the long list of comic book mad scientist-villains, Professor Zunbar. The twist here is Elmer is frightened by water. That takes the underwater monster and dries it out, so to speak.

Number 2573: “Hey, Joe...where you go?”

When it comes down to dictators, I think Adolf Hitler gets some sort of recognition for being one who definitely stood out in a crowd. Humanity has put up with a lot of dictators in the past...too many for me to count...but Hitler just steals the thunder from among the rest. Maybe it was that Charlie Chaplin did a splendid satire of Adolf in the movie, The Great Dictator. Hitler was fun to caricature.

This short story from an Atlas horror comic shows a craven Hitler after years in hell. Adolf tries to get some historical figures to vouch for him, telling the devil he was really a good man, so he can get out of hell.

The ending originally puzzled me. He finally calls on someone named “Joe” for help. Who the hell is Joe? I thought perhaps it was Joseph Goebbels, but Goebbels died in 1945 and had probably been stoking the fiery furnaces ever since. Then I hit on Joseph Stalin. That gave me pause. If ever there were true enemies, Stalin and Hitler fit the definition of enemies. I’ll stick with Stalin because it seems right to me, although I am not sure. Stalin died on May 1, 1953, and the date on the comic book is August, 1953. So it was big news that year, and perhaps the writer jumped on the idea. Basically, the last dialogue in the story, for me, that is, seems to point to Joe Stalin. Which only leaves why Hitler would want to implore Stalin to tell the devil that Hitler was a good guy.

The story is from Adventures Into Weird Worlds #21 (1953), with Sam Kweskin's signature for the artwork.

Number 2543: “Fire burn, cauldron bubble...”

Note to students: do not use this Shakespeare story to write a book report. Just thought I’d warn you. The story does hit some high points of Macbeth’s plot. The ending was made to fit a horror comic (as is explained in the splash panel), but not exactly what I would have expected. A better ending for me would be to have all of those of Macbeth’s assassination victims come back from the dead and go after Macbeth.

Charles (Chuck) A. Winter drew “Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble” in a definite horror-story style. Lots of dark panels with heavy shadows, lots of work on evil grimacing faces, too. Winter was a guy who entered the comic book business by working for the art shops of Harry “A” Chesler and Jerry Iger. He also freelanced. Chuck Winter was born in 1896, and when he drew this story he’d been in Ye Olde Comick Booke business since 1938. I remember seeing his work in DC Comics of the early '40s, and the list of publishers who had used his work is fairly long. He appears to be an artist who dropped out of the industry after a while, and his biographical information ends right about then. I don’t know what he did after comic books. He died in 1967, age 70.

From Atlas’s Adventures Into Terror #27 (1954):

Number 2539: Venus, pretty...monster, pretty ugly

Venus was a character created in the '40s, drawn by Bill Everett, the creator of Sub-Mariner. Talented Everett also had a way with pretty girls (on paper, at least), and proves it with his stories of Namora and Venus. Venus became the star of a horror comic in the '50s, and this 6-pager, “The Box of Doom,” is from Venus #19 (1952). I also showed it in 2008, but these are new scans.

Biographical information on Everett says that he was a teenage alcoholic, that he had tuberculosis, which is why he spent a lot of time as a young man  in the American Southwest, a destination for many TB patients. At age 55, in 1973, he had a heart attack that killed him. He was a comic artist who can be revered for what he did, and mourned for having a short life.

Number 2535: Origin of the Sub-Mariner

Sub-Mariner, also known as Namor, was born of a white American man, Leonard Mackenzie, and an Atlantean mother, Princess Fen. Fen was sent to spy on the depth-bombing Americans because she was the closest to looking like a white woman (and who was Fen’s mother?) Namor was what we would call today “mixed race.” His mom passed along the ability to breathe underwater (without gills), and for a real super power, keeping his hair sleek and combed while swimming in the ocean. The Sub-Mariner killed a couple of American divers, mistaking them for robots. Namor originally was a sorehead who hated America, but ultimately came around to becoming an ally. 

Bill Everett created Sub-Mariner, one of the more original and popular of the very early super-powered characters of the comics. Sub-Mariner was canceled in the late '40s, only to be revived in the early '50s, also drawn by Everett. The story I am showing today is “The Origin of the Sub-Mariner” from Sub-Mariner #33 (1954). I don’t know if Everett wrote the story.

Number 2531: The Uncanny Heath

Recently I showed a Western story drawn by Russ Heath. Russ was very versatile as an artist. He drew stories from many genres, including horror comics. This story, “Meet Mr Jones” comes from Atlas’s Uncanny Tales #13 (1953). It has underwater scenes, something Heath did very well. (A decade later he would draw several issues of Sea Devils, a soaked saga of a group of divers whose business is to be underwater, fighting off monsters.)

This story has a couple of bad guys after sunken treasure, a violent murder by stabbing, and an electric chair. I don’t think Mr Jones’s true identity is any surprise, but at its least the story is dynamically drawn.

 

Number 2529: Lorna in the Lost World

The Lost World is hidden from the rest of the jungle by some dense vegetation. Not so dense that Lorna, the Jungle Girl, cannot find her way in. As I read the story I was halfway expecting to see Professor Challenger, of Arthur Conan Doyle Lost World fame, but saw instead a man in a pith helmet who has trained the giants of the Lost World into doing his evil deeds. Since the story has only six pages, there isn’t enough space to have any suspense, but at least Lorna is nice to look at, drawn as she is by Jay Scott Pike. In Pike’s artistic life, while drawing  comic books, he also did illustrations for men’s magazines, and painted pulchritudinous pin-up girls, a la Gil Elvgren.

From Lorna the Jungle Girl #13 (1955).