Thursday, October 31, 2019

WEREWOLF HUNTER "Priestess of the Spider Death" / "Mistress of the Web"

It's a double-feature Halloween treat...
..with two versions of the same tale, true believers!
The original version of this terrifying tale is from Fiction House's Ranger Comics #15 (1944)!
But, when it was re-presented in Fiction House's Ghost Comics #3 (1952), not only was it partially-redrawn (beginning at page 3) to remove a page of story, it was re-written (from the splash panel onward) as well!
Fiction House did a lot of this sort of editing when reprinting material in the late 1940s since th earlier magazines, like Rangers Comics, were 60 pages, but the later books like Ghost Comics were only 36 pages!
Lily Renee illustrated the original version.
But, judging from the crudeness of the art modifications, she didn't work on the modified reprint!
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Thursday, October 24, 2019

WEREWOLF HUNTER "Puppets of the Witch Queen"

After a round-robin of various artists...
...the series settles down with the woman who would become the strip's signature artist, Lily Renée!
As we mentioned last week, the new artist, Lily Renée escaped real-life horror!
In 1938, after the Germans annexed Austria, the then-teenage Lily Renée Willhelm was sent by her parents to England.
In 1940, she was reunited with her family (who escaped from Austria) in NYC, and finished high school.
Lily had an artistic flair, so she became both a clothing catalog model and illustrator.
In 1943, she answered an ad from pulp/comic publisher Fiction House for an illustrator.
With most of their regular contributors in the military, the editors immediately put the young artist to work on several existing strips including the sci-fi series Norge Benson and Lost World, the horror strip Werewolf Hunter, and wartime spy series Senorita Rio!
After the war, Lily married fellow artist Eric Peters and collaborated with him on St John's Abbott & Costello comic series in the late 1940s!
Trivia: in interviews, Lily stated she tried to steer the Werewolf Hunter strip away from lycanthropes since she claimed she couldn't draw them well!
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Thursday, October 17, 2019

WEREWOLF HUNTER "Tentacle Terror from Beelzebub's Void!!!"

Now is that a catchy/kitchy title, or what?
For a guy called "Werewolf Hunter", Prof Broussard doesn't spend much time actually hunting werewolves!
This never-reprinted tale from Fiction House's Ranger Comics #13 (1943) takes Broussard even further afield thanks to future Supergirl artist Jim Mooney, though the writer using the pen-name "Armand Weygand" remains unknown!
But the biggest change will occur next week as an artist who escaped real-life horror takes over the strip!
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Thursday, October 10, 2019

WEREWOLF HUNTER "Dungeon Dweller of Horror House"

Professor Broussard didn't hunt only werewolves...
...but anything otherworldly that threatened mankind!
We've skipped ahead several issues to show how the series evolved into the Professor going after anything paranormal!
You'll note a new aspect added...volume numbers indicating the stories are from Broussard's journals.
Note the volume numbers don't actually match the number of stories presented!
This tale is "Volume VI", yet it's the fifth tale in the series!
Was an earlier story scrapped?
We'll never know!
This never-reprinted tale from Fiction House's Ranger Comics #12 (1943) presents the change of concept along with a new art team, penciler Saul Rosen and inker Jim Mooney, though the writer using the pen-name "Armand Weygand" remains unknown!
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Thursday, October 3, 2019

WEREWOLF HUNTER "Introduction"

Here's a long-lost supernatural series that most comics fans have never heard of!
Not surprising, since it never made the cover of it's home title, Fiction House's Rangers Comics,  even once!
When Fiction House's Rangers of Freedom Comics shortened its' name to "Rangers Comics" as of #8 (1942), the editors jettisoned several backup features and added new ones, including this series.
Seemingly-inappropriate for a military-themed comic, the strip survived until #41, ironically just when horror comics were coming to prominence!
Written by an anonymous writer under the pen-name "Armand Weygand" and illustrated by Gustaf Schrotter, this premiere presents the main characters cleanly and concisely and sets up the premise.
It's the most sedate and "traditional" story in the series, which will eventually jump into other supernatural threats and even time-travel!
Buckle up and be here next Thursday!
It's going to be fun!
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Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Summer Blogathon BLACKHAWK "D-Day for the Blackhawks" Part 3: Showdown at Omaha Beach

...in the present (1964), Blackhawk and his team respond to a message from a French Resistance fighter who aided them on their first mission, right before D-Day, twenty years earlier!
After they re-unite, the assembled veterans relive the adventure that brought them together...


As we said, this origin rewrites history since Blackhawk and crew were shown operating in late 1940-early 1941 in their original Quality Comics incarnation...and the DC version was carried over, lock, stock, and Grumman XF5F Skyrockets from Quality to DC without a break in publication schedule or format!
Unofficially, this never-reprinted tale from DC's Blackhawk #198 (1964) was considered the origin of the Earth-One Blackhawks, with the Quality stories considered the Earth-Two team's tales!
This helped explain the Justice League's presence during the infamous "New Blackhawk Era" when the middle-aged aviators became super-heroes!
(You've got to see it to believe it!)
This was reinforced by DC using the back of the book to tell new WWII stories in "Combat Diary", which sometimes contradicted Quality stories they were based on!
But even this "update" wasn't exactly adhered to!
When the "New Blackhawk Era" mercifully-ended and the group went back to their WWII roots, the first issue of their revamp presented another new origin for the characters!
And, when the Justice League and Justice Society did their annual summer "Crisis on..." multi-part story in 1973, they ended up on Earth-X, where most of the Quality characters (including the Blackhawks and Plastic Man) had been killed by the Nazis, who had won World War II!
After yet another reboot making the Blackhawks high-tech mercenaries, there was one final revamp putting them back in the 1940s in the hopes a rumored Steven Spielberg film would be made.
(The HTF paperback novel listed below is a by-product of that incarnation.)
Don't even ask about the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths history of the Blackhawks!
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The only novel based on the comic book!
(and it tells a radically-different version of their origin!)
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