Today in Comics History, April 22: Happy birthday, Ralph Byrd!

Born on this day in 1909: actor Ralph Byrd, who appeared in dozens of movies and film serials across two decades, including The Trigger Trio, S.O.S. Tidal Wave, The Howards of Virginia, The Mark of Zorro, North West Mounted Police, The Son of Monte Cristo, Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book, Radar Secret Service, Jungle Goddess (those last two riffed on TV's Mystery Science Theater 3000), and lots more, but he's especially know as Chester Gould's square-jawed detective Dick Tracy in four serials. When the role was recast at RKO in 1945 with Morgan Conway, movie exhbitors protested and Byrd returned to the role to do two more features in 1947!


photo cover of Ralph Byrd on A Cop Called Tracy #7 (Avalon, 1999)
Byrd played another comics character role portraying cowboy crimefighter Greg Sanders/Saunders in 1947's movie serial The Vigilante: Fighting Hero of the West from Columbia.


cover of Real Fact Comics #10 (DC/National, September 1947), pencils and inks by Mort Meskin
DC Comics didn't adapt the story, but they did publish a making-of-the-movie-series story in Real Fact Comics!


from "How a Movie Serial Is Made!" in Real Fact Comics #10; script by Jack Schiff, Mort Weisinger, and/or Bernard Breslauer; pencils by Mort Meskin, inks by George Roussos
Happy birthday, Ralph Byrd!

Today in Comics History, October 1: Happy birthday, Everett Sloane!

Born on this day in 1909: character actor Everett Sloane, who's been in Citizen Kane, The Lady from Shanghai, Somebody Up There Likes Me, Lust for Life, The Desert Fox and other movies, plus television episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, Gunsmoke, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Twilight Zone, The Andy Griffith Show, Route 66 and lots more. On radio, he was a regular player on Orson Welles's The Mercury Theatre on the Air and played on s Inner Sanctum and The Shadow (as the Shadow's personal cabbie Shrevie). He was also the voice of Dick Tracy in the problematic 1961 cartoon version of The Dick Tracy Show:


from Dick Tracy (August 12, 1990), text by Max Allan Collins, art by Dick Locher. Special thanks to pal Greg A. who posted this strip on Twitter.
Sloane also co-starred in Marlon Brando's 1950 film debut The Men, a great faorite of Harvey Pekar's:


from "Harvey Pekar's Lost and Found: The Men" in Entertainment Weekly; reprinted in American Splendor: Our Movie Year (random House, December 2004); script by Harvey Pekar; pencils, inks, and letters by Gary Dumm
Happy birthday, Everett!

Today in Comics History, February 9, 1972: I don't know much about art but I know what I like to steal*

from Dick Tracy (Chicago Tribune Syndicate, January 10, 1980), script by Max Allan Collins, art by Rick Fletcher
*Art.

Today in Comics History, November 20: Happy birthday, Chester Gould!

Born on this day in in 1900 (only a few weeks after my own Grammy Bull!): cartoonist and writer Chester Gould, creator of Dick Tracy, America's only detective!


from Dick Tracy (1950 series) #26 (Harvey, April 1950)
Happy birthday, Chet!

Today in Comics History, September 9, 1962: Who let Vince Colletta loose in space?

from Dick Tracy (Tribune Content Agency, December 9, 1962), by Chester Gould

Today in Comics History, July 19, 1957: And she would've gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for that meddling Dick

Dick Tracy (Chicago Tribune Syndicate, August 31, 1957), by Chester Gould
A special tip of my little stuffed bowler hat to pal Greg, who presents classics comic strips (including Dick Tracy) on his Twitter daily!

Today in Comics History, May 13: Happy birthday, Arthur Sullivan!

Born on this very day in 1842, so you'd better get peddling on your time bike if you want to see him make his spectacular debut: Arthur Sullivan, half of the laff-riot stand-up comedy team of Gilbert and Sullivan, and composer of one zillion light operas like H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, The Mikado, Patience, The Yeoman of the Guard, Iolanthe, Ruddigore, The Gondoliers, and The Rise of Skywalker.

Now, musical composers are always difficult subjects to find in comic books, unless you're leafing through the pages of P. Craig Russell's Night Music, books from the Marvel Music line like Bob Marley: Tale of the Tuff Gong or Billy Ray Cyrus, or maybe Jennifer Love Hewitt's Music Box. Perhaps if I had a copy of this on my shelves in the Great Bully Underground Vault of Comics:


But I don't.

Today in Comics History, May 2, 1946: Surprise finding determines escape from Alcatraz involved criminals

"America's Finest: Alcatraz," text story from Dick Tracy (1950 series) #43 (Harvey, September 1951), creator uncredited and unknown

Today in Comics History, January 19: Happy birthday, Joe Staton!

Born on this day: comics writer and artist Joe Staton. He's known for his work on (among others) E-Man, Scooby-Doo, Doom Patrol, American Flagg!, Green Lantern, Tales of the Green Lantern Corps, Guy Gardner, DC Comics Presents, Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, Action Comics, as well as the co-creator of the E-Man, Huntress II, Huntress III, and the Omega Men, and a near-ten year stint on the Dick Tracy comic strip! Whew! here's some more of his achievements:


from DC Comics cover-dated November 1979
My very first Charlton Comic was an issue of E-Man, so I've been a big fan of Joe's work from early on in my comics readin' and collectin' career.


house ad from First Comics cover-dated March 1984
And I've enjoyed Joe's artwork over the past decade as he and Mike Curtis (and these other good folks) brought a new vibrance and energy to the long-running Dick Tracy strip. Joe's in the brown jacket and yellow shirt below.


Dick Tracy syndicated comic strip (Tribune Content Agency, October 24, 2021), script by Mike Curtis, pencils by Joe Staton, inks and letters by Shelly Pleger (now the main artist on the strip!), colors by Shane Fisher
Happy birthday, Joe!

Avengers: Age of Magnets

If you had asked me before I saw the movie, I would not have guessed that out of all Stan Lee's early-Marvel Age corny goofball gimmicks that could possibly make it into Avengers: Age of Ultron, it would be this one:

CAPTAIN AMERICA'S SHIELD-RETRIEVING GLOVE MAGNETS

Which — it's canon, fanboys! — debuted in Avengers #6. Soon after the publication of this seminal comic book, every kid in the neighborhood was sticking refrigerator magnets to their cuffs and throwing trash can lids around. Cultural response was rapid: every dad in America yelled "Stop throwing trash can lids around!"



Panels from The Avengers (1963 series) #6 (July 1964), script by Stan Lee, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Chic Stone, colors by Stan Goldberg, letters by Sam Rosen
Yes, Captain Amagnetica's Merics America's Magnets! Designed to make his shield always return to him in those early days before a Roy Thomas retcon revealed that the shield was actually made of pure boomerang! Yes, magnets, the miracle invention that always work!


Panel from "Captain America" in Tales of Suspense #59 (November 1964), co-plot and script by Stan Lee, co-plot and pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Chic Stone, letters by Sam Rosen
Yes, as Howard Stark's contemporary Diet Smith was often heard to intone, to anybody who was unlucky enough to get cornered by him at a party: The nation that controls magnetism controls the universe! Voila:


But it took billionaire playboy scientific genius Tony Stark, winner of the George Sanders Slimmest Mustache of 1964 Award, to steal adapt Smith's designs and turn them into a powerful weapon for Cap, which he was not allowed to put anywhere near Tony's collection of Mamas and the Papas 8-track tapes.


Panel from "The Army of Assassins Strikes!" in Tales of Suspense #60 (December 1964), script by Stan Lee, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Chic Stone, letters by Artie Simek
And so that, comics history buffs, is why we see Cap use magnets in every single one of his appearances for, um, three months during the sixties, and then not again until today. Because they're goofy.


Panels from "Break-Out in Cell Block 10!" in Tales of Suspense #62 (February 1965), script by Stan Lee, pencils by Jack Kirby, inks by Chic Stone, letters by Artie Simek
Aw, don't pout, Cap! You'll always have a magnetic attraction to me! And Tony Stark continued to sweep the George Sanders Award annual until an upset loss in the early 1980s to John Waters. And now you know...the rest...of the story.

Hey, does this count as KirbyTech? It doesn't? OH FOR PETE'S SAKE.

Captain Tootsie Month, Day 24: Guest-starring Golden Age Bully from Earth-2

"Captain Tootsie and the Wolf Hunt," from World's Finest Comics #23 (July-August 1946), by C. C. beck and Peter Constanza

6,100

Captain Tootsie Month, Day 20: Captain Tootsie battles against the horrible tradition of blackface

"Captain Tootsie and the Return of Dr. Narsty," from World's Finest Comics #2 (May-June 1946), by C. C. Beck and Peter Constanza
Captain Tootsie Saturday Special Bonus: Not only is he an energy-filled, fists-a-pumpin', sugar-high-addled crimefighter, Captain Tootsie is also a crack magician!


Tootsie house ad from All American Western #104 (December 1948)

Run away! Run away!

The scene: a perfectly ordinary regular day in the life of the Fantastic Four. Suddenly, in the middle of a null universe, Galactus releases an all-destructive, fast-expanding mysterious deadly force!

Panels from Fantastic Four #341 (June 1990), script, pencils, and inks by Walt SImonson; colors by Max Scheele, letters by Bill Oakley



What can it be? Even Reed doesn't know, and when Reed doesn't know, you're in big trouble, buster! But it's serious enough to have him fire up the Kurtzberg generators (and put his soft drink in the Lieber cup holder), and, in the words of Ben Grimm in that issue of Marvel Two-in-One where he teamed up with Bandit and the Snowman...put the hammer down!




What's the danger? What has Galactus unleashed? What are they running away from?

(Click picture to Pruneface-size)

Why, they're running away from Dick Tracy.

Actually, it's not really the world's greatest cop in the world's yellowest raincoat pursuing them...it's just an all-white page through which the movie advertisement on the other side bleeds:




You wouldn't see that phenomena happen in today's comics printed on glossy, heavier paper that doesn't bleed through, but in the days of newsprint, large white spaces were a perpetual problem. When designing Jean Grey's costume for her evolution into Phoenix, Dave Cockrum wanted to make her uniform white, but was overruled by Marvel editorial and that famous iconic uniform became green. Reason: on the cheap newsprint of the time, this costume...




...would have wound up looking like this:




So, there you go. The FF: not running away from Warren Beatty after all. Of course, if they were fleeing a giant galactic version of the star of Bonnie and Clyde, Ishtar, and $, it might go...a little something like this:




And sometimes, just for fun,. I like to wonder what would happen if the Fantastic Four were running away from Beatty's Dick Tracy co-star, Breathless Mahoney herself, Madonna:

Picket lines and picket signs/Don't punish me with brutality/Talk to me, so you can see/What's going on

Actual unretouched panels from yesterday's and today's Dick Tracy comic strip: