Showing posts with label Pluto. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Pluto. Show all posts

Thursday, January 4, 2018

Reading Room NORGE BENSON "Voyage of the Bilge Queen"

On Pluto there are thug penguins, magician penguins, and pirate penguins!
So the writer thought...let's add "whaler penguins" to the mix!
Just when you think this series can't get any weirder, it brings in references to Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick"!
Considering today's average high-schooler hasn't read it (nor probably heard of it), it says a lot for the literacy level of kids back in the 1940s!
Artist Al Walker apprenticed at the Walt Disney Studios in California, but returned to NYC due to personal matters.
His animated cartoon-influenced style was unique enough that Fiction House hired him to do humor-oriented strips like Norge, Greasemonkey Griffin (in Wings Comics), Simba (in Jungle Comics), and Private Elmer Pippin and the Colonel's Daughter (in Rangers Comics).
WWII put Walker in uniform...and serving in the Army's publications division as well as designing unit insignia, he smoothly transitioned back to working at Fiction House as soon as he was discharged.
But...Al had fallen in love, married, and discovered that his Fiction House work didn't pay enough to cover expenses!
He was already at his productivity limit due to his detailed style, and wasn't comfortable "watering it down" and a page rate raise was unlikely, so Walker, like many others during thie period, left the comic book industry.
Al ended up taking a better-paying job as graphic designer/illustrator for the publications department of a regional banking chain, where he spent the rest of his professional career.
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Wednesday, January 3, 2018

Reading Room NORGE BENSON "Ghoulish Gooleys"

Norge Benson was "meta" long before the phrase was even coined!
Note the references to Planet Comics or the fact they're in a comic on the second page!
More Norge Benson nuttiness TOMORROW!
Yeah, Norge definitely wasn't the typical square-jawed, all-American space hero, as this tale from Fiction House's Planet Stories #17 (1942) proves!
Artist Al Walker was one of the few creatives to spend his entire comic book career at only one company, Fiction House!
We'll go into his other artistic endeavors tomorrow!
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Planet Comics
Volume 4

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

The Return of Norge Benson and the Penguins of Pluto!

Yep, you read that right...
Pluto's inhabited by intelligent, talking penguins.
Lots of them!
Some are "hoodlums" who wear sweatshirts and newsboy caps and talk with thick Brooklyn accents, and some are "pirates" with eyepatches and peg-legs!
Didn't know that, did you?
The Cosmo Corrigan strip proved to be less than a smash hit, so the editors retooled the concept, adding even more juvenile humor (plus a talking polar bear and penguins), dropping the sexual innuendo and frat-boy antics, while renaming the lead "Norge Benson" and having him crash-land on Pluto, rather than simply being assigned there to get him out of his superiors' hair!
The new character was still what we politely call a "doofus", but Norge proved to be far more popular than Cosmo, lasting for almost two dozen appearances!
We've already run five of his never-reprinted tales HERE, and, inspired by the cold wave currently sweeping the US, we'll be presenting two more tomorrow and Thursday...as well as a couple more next week!

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Reading Room PLANET COMICS "Life on Other Worlds: Pluto"

While many in the Midwest and on the East Coast stay home due to blizzard-like conditions...
...let's visit an even colder planet that's no longer a planet (at least officially)...Pluto!
Mind you, Pluto was a planet when this chapter of the ongoing feature Life on Other Worlds appeared in Fiction House's Planet Comics #45 (1946).
In fact, it had only been discovered 16 years earlier and little was known about it beyond the fact that it was out there at the edge of the Solar System!
So, it was a blank slate for sci fi writers to play with, as artist Murphy Anderson and the unknown writer did in this "cool" 2-pager!
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Friday, July 17, 2015

Reading Room NORGE BENSON "Frozen Famine"

Let's visit Pluto, world of talking penguins...
...as stranded spaceman Norge Benson's existence may come to an end since the food supply on the frozen world seems to be running out!
As you can see, life on Pluto had its' charms back in 1942, as this never-reprinted tale from Fiction House's Planet Comics #16 proves!
Artist Al Walker and whoever was scripting under the name "Olaf Bjorn" did a heck of a job with this whimsical tale, providing comedy relief amidst all the deadly-series tales of space emperors and alien invasions.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Reading Room PLANET COMICS "Life on Other Worlds: Pluto"

...let's have a look at what we thought it might be like in 1946!
Mind you, Pluto was a planet when this chapter of the ongoing feature Life on Other Worlds appeared in Fiction House's Planet Comics #45 (1946).
In fact, it had only been discovered 16 years earlier and little was known about it beyond the fact that it was sitting out there at the edge of the Solar System!
So, it was a blank slate for sci fi writers to play with, as artist Murphy Anderson and the unknown writer did in this "cool" 2-pager!