CRIME!

Fight Against Crime #20, July 1954.




Crime SuspenStories #4, April 1951. Cover art by Johnny Craig.




Crime Patrol #16, February 1950. Cover art by Johnny Craig.




Crime Illustrated #1, November 1955. Cover art by Joe Orlando.

Tarzan vs. Dinosaurs

Tarzan #121, November 1960.




Tarzan #124, May 1961. Cover by George Wilson.




Tarzan #131, July 1962.

Morning at the Door of the Louvre

This painting is by Edouard Bernard Debat-Ponsan. As best I can tell, the title translates to "One Morning Before the Door of the Louvre." I have no idea what is going on in this painting, but I like it.

Michael Kaluta

Here's a recent interview with Michael Kaluta on the blog Octavio Aragao. He talks about The Studio, doing the Tolkien calendar, the Shadow, and Photoshop!

The Maniaks!

Probably trying to capitalize on the popularity of television's The Monkees, DC created their own fictional rock band: "The Maniaks." With art by Mike Sekowsky and Mike Esposito, The Maniaks appeared in three issues of DC Showcase in 1967.




Showcase #68, May 1967.




Showcase #69, July 1967.




Showcase #71, November 1967.

Darth Vader's Autograph

A friend of mine went to Disney World for "Star Wars Day." I asked her to get me an autograph and she kindly got me Darth Vader's autograph.

Oops...Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I forgot it was St. Patrick's Day when I put together this morning's post. So here is a painting by Walter Baumhofer called "Grace O'Malley, Ireland's Pirate Queen." It was an illustration for Argosy magazine.

Illustrator Coby Whitmore

While looking around for some biographical information on illustrator Coby Whitmore, I realized I couldn't distill his life and what makes him so appealing as well as Leif Peng's writeup in his always informative blog Today's Inspiration. Leif's Flickr set of Whitmore here, and this page has some nice Whitmore galleries.

Below are a few more samples of Whitmore's work:

Dell TV Comics

Here's some cool Dell Comics...




Western Roundup #24, October 1958.




The Untouchables, Four-Color #1237. October 1961.




Sgt. Preston of the Yukon #18, February 1956.




The Mod Squad #1, January 1969.




Mission Impossible #1, May 1967.




Espionage #1, May 1964.

This Just In...

Actually, I found out about this about a week ago.

Steve Cottle of I Love Comix had a Kickstarter Project to purchase and scan a large collection of newspaper comics. It looks like he already raised the funds to buy the collection, but it sounds like he could use more funds to pay for rent on a climate-controlled storage place until they can be scanned. Definitely a worthy cause.



Here's a couple pictures of Jan Smithers. She played Bailey on the TV show WKRP in Cincinnati.









And here's the cover for Our Flag Comics #1, August 1941.

EC House Ads

Pre-Trend and New Direction titles.




Spring 1948.




Summer 1948.




Spring 1948.




Spring 1948.




February 1955.




December 1954.




February 1949.




May 1955.




May 1955.




March 1955.

Aviation Art

These paintings are by Harold H. Booth (R.C.A.F.) and from a book called Book of Modern Warplanes. The book was published by Garden City Publishing and is copyright 1942.

The American planes in this book feature the old style insignia with the red circle in the star. The red circle was omitted in 1941 due to the fact it might be confused with the Japanese rising sun insignia. The author notes this in the text. I mention this because I'm curious exactly when this book was produced. I'm thinking it was after the United States entered the war but not very long after. I can't pin down the date of the change of the insignia other than "1941."

There are descriptive paragraphs (presumably by Booth) to accompany each illustration that talk about the plane's development and armament. Information abot the Axis planes is sketchy and the armament of the F4U Corsair is described as "secret."

This book belonged to my Mom and I remember enjoying it and trying to copy the drawings when I was a little kid. I rescued it at some point when my parents were cleaning out a bookcase.




P-38 Lightning




P-39 Aircobra




B-26 Marauder




B-17 Flying Fortress




A-20 Havoc




F4U Corsair




SB2C Helldiver




SBD1 Dauntless




PBM-1 Mariner




Spitfire




P-40 Kittyhawk




Bristol Beaufighter




Westland Whirlwind




AT6 Harvard




Fairey Battle




Handley-Page Hampden




S25 Short Sunderland




Lockheed Hudson




Polikarpov I-16




1-18 (I've not been able to find out what this is. Maybe the Yak-1. The Americans did not know much about Russian aircraft at this point).




Focke Wulf 190




Henschel Hs 126




Zero Type 00




Kawasaki 97 (I'm thinking this might actually be the Nakajima B5N "Kate" torpedo bomber).




Macchi MC-202