CAPES, COWLS & COSTUMES >> Strippin’ Time

Comic books didn’t start as comic books. They started as comic strips in daily and Sunday newspapers. Then 20, 30 years later, someone started collecting them into the cheaply printed pamphlets we came to know and love. And finally, when everyone had reprinted all the good strips and low-rent publishers found they could commission — and own — new material for a lot less than the licensing fees for Flash Gordon or The Katzenjammer Kids, the likes of Superman, Batman, Captain America and all their descendents were born. How far back did newspaper strip characters begin appearing in prose? Darned if I know. I found a 1934 DICK TRACY Whitman Big Little Book (chunky little 3.5-by-4.5-inch blocks of hardcovers and cheap paper with a couple of hundred pages alternating text and illustrations), but for extended stories, the trend didn’t seem to catch on until around 1940 or so, with another Whitman Publishing product: its Authorized Edition series. (I’m lacking in my knowledge of Whitman’s 1930s and 1940s output, so please, if there’s someone who does know what they’re talking about, I’d welcome comments correcting me). These featured stars of stage, screen, radio and, of course, comic strips. Dick Tracy, Blondie, Red Ryder, Little Orphan Annie and others were all given the opportunity to star in 250-page hardcover novels (with dust jackets, although none of the few editions I own have them, sad to say), each featuring almost a dozen full-page illustrations. BLONDIE AND DAGWOOD’S SECRET SERVICE seems typical of the Whitman Authorized Editions, credited as “an original story about the Bumstead Family of the famous newspaper comics, radio series, and motion pictures ‘Blondie’ by Chic Young.” There are no credits for the writer or the artist, whose full-page illos (one of which, lacking an interesting and pretty dust jacket, I reproduce here in lieu of the plain brown cardboard cover with orange title lettering) are in the style of — but not by — the strip’s creator. The plot, as one might expect, is rather simplistic and, thanks to the age and a little something called World War II raging around the globe, more than a little racist against those characters of (real or implied) Japanese extraction. Paragraph three of the first page has Dagwood attending an evening aeronautics school that will enable him to become an aviator in the war (yoiks!), and stopping to ask a question of a Filipino classmate named Togo, who is described as glaring at Dagwood “with such deadly menace in his beady black eyes” that the poor guy forgets his inquiry. Togo’s eyes remain beady throughout. From there, a disappearing briefcase, evil foreign agents and government secrets leads poor bumbling Bumstead through a series of screwball adventures as far-fetched as they are out of place for the gag-a-day strip character whose most strenuous activity in the comics was lifting one of his famous overstuffed sandwiches from the plate to his mouth. The unknown author of this story was obviously influenced by the more realistic, sitcom-type portrayal of the characters on the BLONDIE radio serial and in the movies(28 of them starring Penny Singleton and Arthur Lake between 1938 and 1950), but even so, such adventure-story lines as "(Dagwood) scrambled to his feet, forgetting his bleeding face, his aching head, and his pain-racked knee,” after he’s roughed up by a brute and thrown into a burning room, are glaringly incongruous when applied to our pal. Lee Falk’s THE STORY OF THE PHANTOM, on the other hand, is one of my favorite comic-strip-hero novels. It was published in 1972 (and sports a brilliant cover by George Wilson), and — rare for a book of this kind — was written (not just credited to, but actually written) by the character’s creator. The Phantom was created in 1936, the latest in a long line of masked heroes extending back more than 400 years, to when the current Phantom’s ancestor was washed ashore on the coast of the African nation of Bangalla after seeing his father slain by pirates. The young man, Christopher Walker, swore an oath “to devote my life to the destruction of piracy, greed, cruelty, and injustice, in all their forms, and my sons and their sons shall follow me.” (Gee, thanks, dad!) Because of the unbroken chain of Phantoms, the world believes him to be an immortal Ghost Who Walks. As you might well imagine, there’s ample backstory involved in a history like that, and who better than Falk himself to spin that tale? In fact, THE STORY OF THE PHANTOM is just that. The story, from 1536’s founding Phantom all the way through to the childhood of the current Kit Walker — or Phantom the 21st — weaving many plots retold from the comic strip and wrapped around the framework of young Kit’s learning of the family legacy and history through the tomes of the Phantom Chronicles, written by his ancestors and kept in the secret Skull Cave in the Deep Woods. It’s a charmingly written novel, full of information and pretty much everything a reader of the day would have needed to know to get up to speed for the 14 novels in the 1972 Avon series that followed, including four more written by Falk himself. (A little research reveals this was actually the second Phantom novel, the first being Whitman's 1944 SON OF THE PHANTOM by Dale Robertson.) Another well-written adaptation of a comic strip character by its creator is DEAD MAN’S HANDLE, a novel of Modesty Blaise written by creator Peter O’Donnell and published in 1985. Modesty is a British strip created in 1963 (and running until 2001) starring an almost super-heroic young woman with a criminal past (she was, like, the crime boss of Europe) that she has since given up in the name of service to mankind and Sir Gerald Tarrant of the British Secret Service. It spawned a terrible movie in 1966 — a comedy yet, starring Monica Vitti as the title character and Terence Stamp as sidekick Willie Garvin, the tough-as-nails Cockney whose own skin is secondary to that of his boss, whom he calls “Princess.” Modesty and O’Donnell are revered figures of British pop culture, both deservedly so. In DEAD MAN’S HANDLE, the last of the 11 Modesty Blaise novels (along with two collections of short stories), our heroine and hero are targeted by crazy old Dr. Pilgrim, whose specialty seems to be creating “interesting scenarios” in the old monastery he owns on the Greek island of Kalivari. One scenario he’s concocted involves kidnapping Willie and brainwashing him into believing Modesty has done something unforgivable that requires he kill Modesty on sight. By the time Modesty’s found Willie, his brain has been through the wash, rinse and spin cycles, and the confrontation between these two masters of combat and martial arts is inevitable. O’Donnell — who also authored plays, screenplays and articles — was a superb stylist. He wrote in a smooth, easy style that, while suited to the adventure genre, he treated as though he were writing literature. The final entry, 1991’s DICK TRACY GOES TO WAR, was written not by the strip’s creator, but by the strip’s creator’s hand-picked successor, Max Allan Collins. This hardboiled detective strip, started in 1931 by cartoonist Chester Gould, is an American institution, still running in newspapers, and has spawned, over the years, movies, film serials, TV shows, radio programs, cartoons and, of course, prose. Tracy was another of the Whitman Authorized Edition regulars in the 1940s and, come Warren Beatty’s 1990 big-budget DICK TRACY film, Tracy was back with another series of books, including a film novelization (also by Collins) and the anthology DICK TRACY: THE SECRET FILES, edited by Collins and Martin Greenberg. With America gearing up for war, Detective Tracy trades in his fedora for a Naval uniform as a member of the intelligence service, using his cop skills to help keep the home front safe from saboteurs and racketeers. And with big illegal bucks to be made off the wartime restrictions and regulations, rats like Shaky, the Mole and B-B Eyes come crawling out of the woodwork to make grabs for their share. But compared to the fate of a top-secret weapon with the power to destroy the world, these thugs are the least of Tracy’s problems. Collins came to these Tracy novels with an insider’s knowledge and love of the character that makes these particular media tie-ins stand out from the crowd. Next time: Hey, kids! Books! —Paul Kupperberg Buy them at Amazon. OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF MAX ALLAN COLLINS: • BLACK HATS by Patrick Culhane • DEADLY BELOVED by Max Allan Collins • DICK TRACY by Max Allan Collins • THE FIRST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins • THE GOLIATH BONE by Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins • A KILLING IN COMICS by Max Allan Collins • THE LAST QUARRY by Max Allan Collins • MY LOLITA COMPLEX AND OTHER TALES OF SEX AND VIOLENCE by Max Allan Collins and Matthew V. Clemens • QUARRY'S LIST by Max Allan Collins • RED SKY IN MORNING by Patrick Culhane • ROAD TO PARADISE by Max Allan Collins • STRIP FOR MURDER by Max Allan Collins • TOUGH TENDER by Max Allan Collins • THE WAR OF THE WORLDS MURDER by Max Allan Collins OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THE PHANTOM: • THE ISLAND OF DOGS by Warren Shanahan

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