Friday Fun / Baker Reading Room CANTEEN KATE vs The Comics Code Authority!

Besides Romance Comics and Scantily-Clad Heroines like Phantom Lady & Rulah... 

...pioneering Black comic book artist Matt Baker also did a military humor strip featuring (what else) a scantly-clad, beautiful WAC (Womens' Army Corps) officer assigned to run a canteen at a US military base not far from the front lines in Korea!

(She actually encountered North Koreans in a couple of tales)

The following, "Foxhole Floozie", appeared in St John's Fightin' Marines #7 (1952), where Kate's strip appeared in almost every issue from #2 to #12...while she also had her own comic book!

Straightforward, fun story with a little harmless cheesecake thrown in, illustrated by a master of the craft!

However...

When Charlton Comics bought out St John Publishing's inventory and began reprinting it, the brand-new Comics Code Authority literally got its' panties in a bunch, insisting on some ridiculous changes in the retelling of this tale in Charlton's Fightin' Marines #17 (1956)

Start with putting a bra/bathing suit top on Kate, and putting a boulder over her shapely legs in the opening panel and removing the story's title "Foxhole Floozie"!

Plus, throughout the tale, her tasteful shorts are replaced with mid-calf length Capri pants, and there's an olive-drab t-shirt under her uniform shirt, covering her cleavage!

One additional point...

Usually, when Charlton, Avon, and other publishers modified previously-published art to conform to the Comic Code's demands, they usually did it only to the black plate art, but, to save money, not to the existing cyan, magenta, and yellow plates!
Here, the reprint is totally-recolored!
Plus the retouching is so clean that it looks like the original artist, Matt Baker did it himself!
Did Charlton have the original art along with photostats and photo negatives, and asked Baker (who was doing freelance work for Charlton) do the reworking himself?
In truth, it's the sort of thing I'd expect editor Dick Giordano to do!

But, sadly, we'll never know the answer, since all involved parties are no longer on this mortal coil!

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Friday Fun CRAZY "Spencer the Censor"

With all the recent discussions regarding on-line censorship...

...we have to ask; what sort of person actually does the censoring?

Sadly under-appreciated comics creator Howie Post illustrated (and likely scripted) this never-reprinted feature from Atlas' Crazy V1N5 (1955)

(Note: The "V1" is because this was the first of Atlas/Marvel's attempts to use the title "Crazy" to match EC's MAD, either in color comic or b/w magazine form!

They tried again in the early 1973 with another short-lived color comic which reprinted material from Not Brand Ecch, but finally succeed with a b/w magazine which ran for 94 issues from late 1973 to late 1983.

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Sincerest Form of Parody

We Stand with Charlie Hebdo...

...as they return to the public forum...

...on newsstands and the Net!

BTW, we're showing more guts than CNN, New York Times, and others who "talk the talk", but don't "walk the walk" by running the cover itself!

One Million Moms vs Dracula!

Shades of Fredric Wertham and Seduction of the Innocent...the group One Million Moms has issued a fatwa against the Prince of Darkness...Dracula!

Warning! NBC’s new program Dracula airs on Friday evenings at 10:00 p.m. ET/9:00 p.m. CT with a TV-14-SV rating.
The gory series will air on weekends when children and teens usually stay up later.
Not only is this show extremely violent, but it also includes a high level of sexual content that should be considered pornographic material.
NBC’s website describes the series with words like sex, style, mystery and adventure.
Even the previews included several brief clips of sex scenes that would be considered soft porn. This program is entirely too graphic in too many ways.
Previews of this program also included: terrifying screams, a rotted corpse, death, murder, a woman burned alive while tied to a stake, spirits, satanic and occult elements, homosexual content, tons of blood (mostly on Dracula’s face and victim’s necks) and other gore, including decapitated heads in boxes and pools of blood.

Apparently no member of One Millions Moms knows how to set the V-Chip in their own tvs, dvrs, or cable/satellite boxes!
It certainly would be a lot easier, faster, and more effective than doing what they suggest...

Urge advertisers to place the program on their “do not advertise” list in protest of the attempt to desensitize America and our children by promoting inappropriate content.

But, that would require the One Millions Moms to act like parents...something they seem incapable of doing...