Showing posts with label Quality Comics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quality Comics. Show all posts

Friday, October 21, 2022

Halloween Horrors KEN SHANNON "Corpse that Wouldn't Sleep"

It's almost Halloween, so let's present a scary private eye story...
...from the 1950s, the era when horror comics were all the rage, starring private dick Ken Shannon, to whom this sort of thing happened quite often, as seen HERE!
This tale from Quality's Ken Shannon #3 (1952) was one of several cover-featured stories during his run that featured horror comics elements, though the "monsters" were fakes created to cover-up crimes!
The superb artwork by Reed Crandall makes up for the fairly obvious plotting by an unknown writer.
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Saturday, October 2, 2021

Halloween Horrors KEN SHANNON "Vampire Mob"

It's Halloween season, so let's present a scary private eye story...
...from the 1950s, the era when horror comics were all the rage!
Ken Shannon started in 1950 when Police Comics dropped all their superheroes (including Plastic Man and The Spirit) in favor of crime stories.
Beginning with #103, Ken took the cover and lead story slot until #126.
Simultaneously, Ken received his own title, which ran for 10 issues.
As you can see from the story, Ken was the typical hard-boiled private dick with an internal monologue, obviously patterned after already-popular detectives like Sam Spade and Mike Hammer.
His only distinctive characteristic was that he was of Irish descent.
(In fact, his premiere tale was called "The Mad Irishman"!)
The art for almost all his tales (including this one) was by Reed Crandall, one of the best illustrators in the business who went on to become one of the mainstays of EC Comics, handling horror, war, romance and sci-fi with equal panache.

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

T-MAN The Twice-Told Tale of "Trouble's Double"!

We presented the original version of this tale HERE...
...and now we're going to show you how the Comics Code Authority ordered alterations to this already-rather innocuous tale when it was reprinted in T-Man #31 (1956)!
The girl's dress is redrawn to eliminate what little cleavage was there, "Britain" is changed to the "Free World" and "Russia" to the more generic "Reds".
Pages 2 and 3 are unchanged from the original.
The girl's cleavage is eliminated and her bust is reduced in the second panel.
Pete's comment in the last panel is modified to eliminate how the lookalike apparently also interfered with his own love-life!
Pete's dialogue in panel three is made less sexually-suggestive.
The assassins' knives are eliminated and dialogue changed in panel three.
The girl's cleavage is reduced (but not in the first two panels).
More cleavage reduction, and a change in the impostor's dialogue in panel three, eliminating his suggestion to hold a knife to the girl's throat.
Panel one is altered to have Pete bitch-slap the villain whereas the T-Man punched the criminal in the original.
More cleavage reduction, and the tops of stockings and slip originally shown in panel two are gone.
Pete's pot-shot at the villains in panel five has been made into him just pointing his gun at them.
Knives and cleavage eliminated.
Kogov's dialogue on panel six changed to eliminate his orders to kill the girl and Trask.
Panel one: the gun Pete has in his hand as he hits Kogov is removed.
Panel two: Pete's dialogue to Lorna to grab the gun he kicks out of the assassin's hand is removed.
Panel three: Lorna shooting the assassin with the gun she picked up and Pete complementing her are changed.
And the dialogue in the last panel is modified to be far less suggestive.
Hope you enjoyed our detective work!

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

T-MAN "Trouble's Double" and a Twice-Told Tale!

If you believe Iran is a hotbed of evil now...
...why not ask Pete Trask: T-Man, what it was like in the 1950s?
He'll tell you about this adventure from Quality's T-Man #3 (1952)...
Illustrated by Edmund Good, and the writer is unknown.
But that's not the end of the story!
When this tale was reprinted in Quality's T-Man #31 (1956), the Comics Code Authority was in effect, and it demanded some...interesting...changes in the reprint!
Since this story is so long, we're going to present the Code-approved version in two weeks, because next week, we're doing daily posts presenting the Classics Illustrated version of the Sherlock Holmes tale "Hound of the Baskervilles"!
Don't miss either one!