Duke Douglas!

Comic Media was a short-lived publisher from the early 50's, and they put out some handsome material in their brief existence. Their go-to artist appears to have been the painfully underrated Don Heck who of course went on a decade later to be a mainstay at Marvel during its early days. Boardman Books gathered up the Duke Douglas stories in a slim volume first published in 2015. It is this book which I read for the reviews below. 

(Not in this collection.)

Danger was one of the company's flagship titles and begins its run in 1953 with a wide range of manly men engaged in a variety of sweaty activities as evidenced by this debut cover by Heck. These are, as the banner announces, stories about "Men Without Fear". Don Heck returns for the next couple of issues with some covers that promise some wild and intriguing adventures indeed.

But then with the sixth issue a new regular feature was introduced, drawn by Heck. Not named on the cover this is Duke Douglas, a dapper secret agent who appears by the many montages he is featured in on this cover and others to be engaged in all sorts of clandestine adventure. But in fact, Douglas does not appear inside the comic but only on the cover. It must've been quite odd for a reader attracted by the Heck artwork to find nothing inside to correspond. 

Duke Douglas debuts inside the seventh issue of Danger in a story entitled "Khyber Incident" in which he attempts to forestall the "Reds" from stirring up trouble in the mountains of Asia. The lead story is drawn by Don Heck. A second story titled "Escape to Death" sees our hero try to rescue a diplomat who might have been betrayed by the one he loves most.  This story was drawn by Pete Morisi. No writer is indicated for either tale in this issue. 

Ken Fitch is credited as the writer of "Crash in the Alps" drawn by Don Heck for the eighth issue of Danger. (This is the only time any writer is identified on a Duke Douglas story.) In this one Duke is trying to retrieve plates which would result in counterfeit money which could well cripple the fragile European economy. "Kill! Kill! Kill!" is drawn by Pete Morisi, We see Duke kill and kill again to rescue a damsel in distress from the very heart of the Kremlin. Did Duke kill Stalin? The story suggests he might have. 

With the ninth issue Duke's name finally rates a cover and the action here goes more for mood rather than action. "Ransom in Oil" was drawn by Don Heck and has Duke battling Red spies to gain contracts with rich Arab leaders. That Duke rescues a sheik's daughter only helps his case. "Racket Man" is a text piece in which an unnamed protagonist presumed to be Duke is loaned out to the FBI to help capture a man who has made off with a million bucks and fled to Brazil. "Intrigue" drawn by Heck has Douglas go into a long-term deep cover to uncover a Red plot, but he must toy with the emotions of a young woman to help his mission, much to the chagrin of her boyfriend who is drafted to fight in Korea. "Dedication" is a one-page text story in which Duke uncovers a grisly murder scheme. 

"Trouble in Morocco" has Duke join the Foreign Legion to discover why things are not going as planned. The death toll is high in this story drawn by Don Heck. "Trial by Fire" is drawn by Bill Discount and sees Duke seeking the secret of a man who seemingly died in a deadly car crash. Frankly the hero in this one doesn't resemble Duke all that much, but each artist seems to have his own take on our spy hero. "Oil" is a Duke one-page text tale in which he solves the murder of a Pentagon official and uncovers a Red spy. 

"Accomplice in Murder" in the final Comic Media issue of Danger puts Duke in a ticklish position where he must cover up a murder in order to uncover a deeper plot. The story is the final Duke Douglas comic story and is drawn by Don Heck. "Choker" is a one-page text tale in which Duke spots a hidden clue revealing that murder has been done. 

Duke holds down Danger until 1954 when it completes its Comic Media run, the company having given up the ghost. You can almost imagine him firing his gun into the fourth wall at the creditors. Charlton Comics was in a position to swoop in and gathers up much of Comic Media's material and titles, though Duke Douglas and Don Heck alike are gone from the covers when they relaunched the title in 1955. The series runs a mere three issues before a dramatic transformation takes place.

If you would like to savor some of those vintage Danger adventures, then check out this link. 

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Action-Heroes Day!

Dick Giordano was born on this date in 1932. Giordano began his career as an artist, working for Charlton Comics for many years. In the late 60's when superheroes were all the rage, he assumed the role of editor of the comics line. His goal was to create not "super-heroes" so much as what he called "Action-Heroes". These would be heroes, but people with skills and not so much power. Later Giordano was an editor at DC and was a partner with Neal Adams in the art firm Continuity Associates. 

Dick Giordano became editor of Charlton Comics after Pat Masulli. Giordano had made his mark with Sarge Steel, a hard-nosed detective turned super-spy. His artwork was always crisp and attractive. Shifting to the editor's desk, he surveyed the landscaped and decided that if Charlton were to make a move into the superhero market, they would need to find a way to make their heroes distinctive. Some heroes were already around and might need adjusting and new fresh heroes were needed. 

The line-up consisted of Frank McLaughlin's creation Rip Jagger, a WWII soldier who becomes a deadly master of martial arts Judomaster, who battles the Japanese forces in the Pacific Theater with his young partner Tiger. Peter Cannon - The Thunderbolt created by Pete Morisi, is a man trained by Tibetan monks and is possessed of fantastic skills and powers of the mind. Christopher Smith, the Peacemaker created by Pat Boyette and Joe Gill, is a diplomat who realizes that talk alone will fail to solve all problems and uses his technology to fight when necessary to preserve the peace. Giordano inherited Captain Atom, created by Joe Gill and Steve Ditko a decade before. Giordano had the good Captain's vast powers muchly diminished, and Steve Ditko was all too happy to do so. Added to the Captain Atom cast was Charlton's lone female super-heroine of the era, Nightshade. We learn more about her when Steve Skeates and Jim Aparo take over. 

The line-up was completed by the arrival of Steve Ditko's "All-New" Blue Beetle. Ted Kord becomes a Blue Beetle who is not reliant on a magical scarab but who turns to modern technology and fisticuffs to bring villains to heel. With the arrival of Blue Beetle the "Action-Hero" line was complete, just in time for it all to end. Sales were not what everyone hoped for and the super-hero craze which allowed for this flowering of talent and creations withered. The arrival of a new fresh look for Charlton, the big "C" which would in a few years be replaced by the famous Charlton Bullseye badge, marked both the height and the end of the "Action-Hero" line.

Dick Giordano went to DC and took many of his most talented artists with him. He found great success at DC, sticking with the company for decades. DC purchased the "Action-Heroes", mostly as a gift to Giordano, the editor who had made these fondly remembered heroes possible. As we all likely know, the "Action-Heroes" formed the basis for Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbon's The Watchmen, which originally began as a vehicle for the classic Charlton characters, before DC decided to save them for other things. Hence the "Action-Heroes" live on. 

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Peter Cannon - Thunderbolt Day!

Pete Morisi, better known as P.A.M. was born on this day in 1928. Morisi was a key artist at Charlton and other small publishers, and he created some lasting characters including the focus of today's Dojo celebration -- Peter Cannon -The Thunderbolt. 

Peter Cannon, The Thunderbolt is the singular creation of Pete Morisi, an artist better known by the sobriquet of "P.A.M.". Morisi was a policeman for much of his career and that job forbid moonlighting so according to stories he obscured his artistic identity. 

What he could never hide was his distinctive style. A fan of the great George Tuska, Morisi took the particular look of Tuska and refined it even more giving his own work an almost ethereal look. More than most artists, Morisi's images looked like stolen moments in time.

In Thunderbolt he concocted a hero who combined some of the look of the Golden Age Daredevil and the origin of the Golden Age Amazing Man to offer up a low-key hero for the modern age. Peter Cannon was a cool customer and entered the fray with aplomb and absolute confidence, using the skills he'd gained in a remote monastery to protect people in the modern world. He was assisted by a friend named Tabu and often confronted by a foe dubbed the Hooded One, a villain who shared some of T-Bolt's remote origins.

Thunderbolt shifted over to DC during the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" and even had a series for a time at DC, but ownership of the character reverted to Morisi and his estate. The series lasted twelve issues from 1993 into 1994. 

Dynamite got hold of the property for some time in this century around 2011, doing very little with it of interest. They did give us a glorious P.A.M. cover as one of the myriad alternates they offer as a rule. 

No matter what they do with him though, they will never be able to repeatedly recreate the amazing essence and charm of those original P.A.M. comics. Note that Pat Boyette steps in to do a few of these as well. 

Special Note: Look for many more of these one-day celebrations as 2025 tumbles along. 

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Johnny Dynamite - Wild Man Of Chicago!

As Max Allan Collins explains in the expansive introduction to this Yoe Book collection of Johnny Dynamite, the story begins with Mickey Spillane. Spillane wrote comics from the very beginning of the genre. But he made his reputation in 1950's with the novel I The Jury which introduced rough and tough Mike Hammer. 

Versions of Hammer had appeared in comics before as Mike Danger and Mike Lancer. But the essence of the Mike Hammer character was arguably best captured by Johnny Dynamite from Comics Media in their series Dynamite. While there is no doubt what inspired the character, the question of who created Johnny Dynamite is an open one. 

(Announcement of the character in Dynamite #2)

It might have been an editor at Comic Media, or writer Ken Fitch, or perhaps it was artist Pete Morisi, better known to the world as P.A.M. There is no question however that it is the work of Morisi, using a style evolved from that of George Tuska, which causes the character to resonate still in a modern comics arena. There's something absolutely stylish and compelling about Morisi's work.

It's in the third issue of Dynamite that we first meet "The Wild Man from Chicago", who in three heavily written tales confronts the mobsters and molls of that inhabit his morally challenged world. Johnny still has two good eyes when we first meet him, designed to resemble John Garfield. 

One of the more distinctive aspects of the character is that he is more than capable of shooting and killing a woman. Generally, "heroes" eschew such behavior, but for Johnny it's almost a defining quality.

One woman he's eager to kill is the dame who took out his eye. In the very first story of the second issue, he gets shot in the face and loses a "lamp" as he puts it. It's not surprise he eventually finds the woman pays her back. But Johnny also tries to help women who come to him for such things, but he's not all that successful as more than few fall victim to mobsters, either being killed outright or falling under the spell of hard drugs. In the second issue also, the text diminishes somewhat and while we still get the classic first-person perspective so prevalent for noir, the artwork does more of the lifting in the narrative. 

In the fifth issue we get a story narrated by Hennessy the cop who Dynamite calls often after he's plugged a few mugs. It's a tale of a mobster trying to go straight and failing. We also get a two-page text story about Johnny by Fitch which not only satisfies the post office, but also showcases the hard-nosed hero in the format from which he sprang. Morisi's artwork gets more refined as he continues to present these tales. 

In the sixth issue Morisi takes over the writing as well as the art for the series. Or at least he now gets credit for the work, it's hard to know to what extent he was already doing this. Most hard-boiled dicks have a sexy secretary and Johnny Dynamite is no exception. She's named Judy Kane and one of the two stories in the seventh issue of Dynamite deals with her kidnapping. The second story is a brutal tale which ends with Johnny meeting a woman he actually trusts enough to cover her crime. 

Morisi is really in the swing of things in the next issue which is one longer story. This helps out nicely as the compression of three tales was damaging to the drama. Two was pretty good, but one is even better, and allows for the cinematic feel to develop. There are call girls and stole diamonds in this yarn which sees Johnny consummates his "Vendetta". 

There's no doubt these are brutal stories. The phrase "Exciting Adult Reading" is perfect for the kind of no-holds violence which bristles on these well-honed pages. Love this red cover, it really pops. The first story gives us a glimpse of Johnny's past when he was a boxer called "Kid  Dynamite". This manager and friend gets caught up in crime when his beloved wife is killed, and he vows to gather mob might to get his revenge. We then get a one-page text story. This is followed by a second tale that has Dynamite get involved with yet another gorgeous but dangerous dame. 

The ninth issue of Dynamite is the final one from Comic Media. It's a got a great cover and the best Johnny Dynamite story yet. He goes up against the Mafia and it's a beautifully rendered and paced tale of deceptions and secrets. This one was the most like a film noir film, with the narration beautifully aligned with the imagery. 

The leftover material produced by Morisi for Comic Media finds its way over to the folks at Derby Connecticut where the Charlton Comics operation was located. The first two issues of the renamed Johnny Dynamite series (it continues the originally number) have one Pete Morisi story in each of the first two issues. They also feature less impressive Morisi covers. The two stories take Johnny overseas, first to Germany where he confronts an old nemesis from World War II, and then to Vietnam to assist with the fight against the Commies. 

(Cover by Dick Giordano and Vince Alascia)

The series wraps up with issue twelve with stories written most likely by Mickey Spillane friend Joe Gill and art supplied by the rock steady Bill Molno. 

The collection closes out with a story from the Ms. Tree series by Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty titled "Whatever Happened to Johnny Dynamite". We learn that Johnny and his secretary Judy Kane were both instrumental in sending a particularly deadly mob boss to prison and have been in witness protection for many years. Now to save them both, Mike Mist is called upon to join forces with Ms. Tree. The original stories from the Comic Media series would be reprinted as back-up features in many of the subsequent Ms. Tree issues for Renegade Press. 

(Officer Pete Morisi aka P.A.M.)

If you would like to read the original stories from Comic Media by Pete Morisi and others check out this dynamite link. 

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The Web Of Crime!

Audiences have always cottoned to heroes who are resolute and have the courage of their convictions. The Shadow was such a hero, and he was rough and tough and very successful, so much so that imitators came into being. In The Spider, a vintage pulp hero published originally by Popular Publications beginning in the 1930's they found a hero who was not afraid to take the law into his own hands like The Shadow, in fact he was quite ready and willing to hand down death sentences to those he deemed worthy.  The Spider as written by Norvell Page and others is the best of those, following the model but being just different enough to garner his own following. This month I want to spend some time with The Spider and explore his grim menacing world. Thanks to publishers like Moonstone, Baen, Vanguard and others, there is a lot of great Spider material out there, from reprints of the original pulps to new novels and short stories, and even comic book and movie serial adaptations. Below are some of the works I'm hoping to get to this month. 

But The Spider did not fight crime alone. There are plenty of other vigilantes who took a bite out of crime and I'd like to visit and revisit with some of those distinctive agents of justice. See below for a chamber full of options such as Lone Justice, The Black Beetle, Monstermen, and The Dreamwalker. 

And sometimes telling the difference between the good guys (or gals) and the bad ones can be a little difficult. Hardboiled dicks come in all genders it seems as we see with the classic It Rhymes with Lust by Arnold Drake and Matt Baker, Fiction Illustrated's Schlomo Raven by Tom Sutton and Chandler by Jim Steranko, Ms. Tree- Deadline by Max Allan Collins and Terry Beatty, and Johnny Dynamite by Pete Morisi. 

And crime can strike anywhere, even the "most magical place on the Earth". So, it seems only appropriate to check out the devious doings of Mickey Mouse's arch enemy The Phantom Blot. The Blot debuted in the Mickey Mouse comic strip but proved popular enough to even get his comic book series from Gold Key in the 1960's. 

Crime makes for good anthologies as well as evidenced by DC's Greatest Detective Stories Ever Told and The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics. Both tomes have delightful surprises between their mysterious covers. 

And look for an overview of the early career of Marvel's famous crime crusher, the Punisher. Frank Castle rose to fame in the pages of The Amazing Spider-Man and took the world by storm, shot by shot. These early tales allow a reader to enjoy the evolution of Marvel's toughest character. 

And I want to take a little time tomorrow to talk about the late great Steve Ditko who gave us two of comics most relentless crime fighters in The Question and Mr. A. Mr. A's stories have most recently been gathered together in the pages of Avenging World. 

And I mentioned Max Allan Collins earlier. He's a fecund writer of mysteries of all kinds and some of the ones I enjoy most are a trio of stories he fashioned which take a look at infamous crimes committed within the comics community, or perhaps might have been. 

And then there's more film such as the hard-nosed Blade Runner which adapts Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick with gritty determination. Also on hand is the somewhat more tongue-in-cheek trio of tales about Trancers which features a tough as nails detective named Jack Deth of all things. Also look for the movie Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow a strange movie which has an even more bizarre connection to The Spider. 

That's a lot on my plate this month of Thanksgiving, and there's more I haven't mentioned. But we in America like to eat hearty during this month. So, strap in and come with me down some pretty dark crime alleys at Dojo this month. But be sure to keep your heads down amigos, the bullets are flying. 

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