Movie Posters of 1922 (Part 2)

Dan Turner, HOLLYWOOD DETECTIVE in Color! "Trap for a Booby" (1952)

This shorty appeared in Crime Smashers #11, from July 1952. "freddyfly", whose collection I envy, scanned it for comicbookplus. Written by Robert Leslie Bellem? Probably. 

Forgotten Books: THE KING'S COAT by Dewey Lambdin (1989)

You're probably somewhat acquainted with C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower, who starred in 10+ novels, a few shorts, a movie and a TV mini-series. He's honest, brave, honorable and pure of heart. (If you don't know him, think Captain James T. Kirk, who was based on old Horny.) Other heroes, notably Alexander Kent's Richard Bolitho, Dudley Pope's Ramage, Richard Woodman's Nathaniel Drinkwater and Patrick O'Brian's Jack Aubrey, have followed more or less in the same tradition.

Dewey Lambdin's Alan Lewrie, though, brings something different to the genre. He likes women (all he can get) and alchohol (of any sort), and is no more honest than he has to be. And he cares more for his own prospects than for the honor of the Navy. In short, he's almost a real person. 

In The King's Coat, first in the series of 26 books (so far), he's caught boffing his half-sister and forced to join the Navy to avoid the scandal. (But lest you think too poorly of him, know that the half-sister seduced him under orders from her father, to cheat him out of his inheritance from his mother.) 

Anyway, there he is, a Midshipman (the most junior of officers) in Her Majesty's Navy, circa 1780, and hating it. Over the course of the book, he makes friends, discovers a love of gunnery, and (to his own surprise) proves his bravery in battle. He decides the navy isn't so bad after all. But he remains a real guy, and at this point in his career an 18-year-old guy, with all the usual vices. 

Lewrie's interaction with his fellow midshipmen, his superiors and his subordinates is nicely handled, and the battle scenes are great. The only drawback is the naval jargon. Despite having read all the Hornblowers, all 30 Bolitho books, three Captain Bloods, half the Aubreys and assorted others, most of that stuff is still Greek to me. 

There are stays'ls and jibs, pawls and cro'jack yards, binnacles, braces and backstays, shrouds and spars and dozens of other dinguses the crew is always fiddling with. You could look all this stuff up, of course, and try to remember it (as I have, and failed), but I've found the best way to deal with it is to let it roll over you like poetry, knowing there will be human interaction - and battle - coming soon. 

I enjoyed this one so much, I plowed right into the second book (The French Admiral), something I dang near never do. 

FRANK FRAZETTA Meets Leif Ericsson (1950)

This little taste of American History comes to us from Real Life Comics #52, from April 1950. Dave Hayward scanned it for comicbookplus, for which the blogoshere should be eternally grateful. 

MICKEY MOUSE with the MOVIE STARS Gum Cards (1935)

Blackhawk, Reed Crandall and the Three Witches (1943)

There are a lot of great Blackhawk stories by Reed Crandall on comicbookplus, but this one caught my eye because it reminded me of the Old Witch from The Haunt of Fear. And this, you will note, was seven years before the witch made her EC debut. This tale appeared in Military Comics #15, dated May/June 1943, and scanned by someone known as CB+.

Your FURTHER Excuse to Collect Playboy (Hint: It's "Elementary")

December 1953

As you may or may not recall, last Thursday I did a post about Hugh Hefner pinching pennies by running public domain Sherlock Holmes stories in the first three issues of Playboy. Online, I'd found only a distorted pic of the artwork for issue 1, so I issued a plea for someone to send me the art for the others.

Well. Let's give three cheers and a 21-gun salute to Mr. Ed Vosik, who came through with the goods. He sent not only the art and titles from issues 2 and 3, but a much-improved look at that artwork from number 1. He found it, he explains, reproduced in The Playboy Reader. A little googling tells me they published a Twelfth Anniversary edition of such a book in 1965, and a Twentieth Anniversary volume in 1974.

Thanks again, Ed! On with the Sherlock . . . 

January 1954

February 1954