Monday, May 27, 2013

WOMEN OUTLAWS "Trigger Tess"

Here's a short about how not to handle a gun...
...featuring a gunslinging girl who's not quite up on gun etiquette!
I'm not sure if that's really true, but it's a kool idea.
This never-reprinted short from Fox's Women Outlaws #2 (1948) was apparently illustrator John Belcastro's (aka John Bell) first published comic book work.
His short, but prolific, career encompassed sci-fi, horror, Western, war, and even humor work from 1948 to 1954.

Monday, May 20, 2013

TIM HOLT "Target: RedMask"

You know you've "arrived" as a hero...
...when a criminal mastermind actually sets up a training program just to teach people how to kill you!
You may note that Frank Bolle's artwork for this tale from Magazine Enterprises' Tim Holt #39 (1953) has a very "open" feel with characters constantly "breaking" the panel borders.
That's because it was created during comics' brief flirtation with 3-D in the 1950s.
The process used red and blue line-art along with red and blue glasses to create three-dimensional effects from flat artwork as shown HERE.
However, Magazine Enterprises didn't go that route!
Instead, they directed their artists to do exactly what you saw here to create a pseudo-three dimensional effect...and labeled it as "3-D in Full Color".

Monday, May 13, 2013

"Calculating Killer"

Here's a short tale that redefines "armed and dangerous"...
...originally presented in Dell's Wagon Train #5 (1960), but not using any of the characters from the tv series!
Illustrator Alex Toth did a number of these 4-page "fillers" for Dell's Western comics, which were used whenever the page count for a book came up short.
You can see other examples HERE and HERE.

Monday, May 6, 2013

DEATH VALLEY "Long Winded Killer"

Anthologies without ongoing characters were a popular format for Western comics...
...allowing for life-or-death situations that sometimes actually resulted in a tale's feature characters ending up on Boot Hill!
The first issue of Comic Media's Death Valley (1953) was a showpiece for Ross Andru and Mike Esposito to demonstrate their storytelling prowess in all four stories.
Besides the one we're running today, we presented two other stories HERE and HERE.
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