Your blogger says...

"Of course, he meant to say that the world revolves around ME."--Rosie (below)

Lee

At Lee's Comic Rack: "Exposed: The History Behind X-ray Specs, Gogs, Tubes, Pens, and Scopes."

The behind-the-walls, true story of a gimmick that worked infinitely better for its marketers than its market:  Exposed... at Lee's Comic Rack.


 Lee

Comic book ads, before they were comic book ads

A He-man body; money-making opportunities at home (seeds, cards, etc.); weird novelty items; magic tricks; X-ray scopes that see through walls, etc.; sound-effects devices; cut-rate disguise kits; at-home electronics; cheap trinkets hawked as miracle inventions; correspondence schools....

The stuff of Boomer-era comic book ad pages, right?  Actually, I'm referring to boys' magazine ads from the turn of the (previous) century, a bunch of which I'll be featuring very soon in a Lee's Comic Rack post.

Some samples, dating from 1902:

Coming soon to Lee's Comic Rack....


Lee

At Lee's Comie Rack: Grace Gay Betts and Bill Molno, side by side

Could my favorite Charlton artist, Bill Molno, have been influenced by the great painter, muralist, and children's book illustrator Grace Betts?  We all should be so lucky.

At Lee's Comic Rack, I've posted side by side comparisons of Molno and Betts, with Molno's work rendered in a darker-shadowed and orange-tinted form for convenience.  (Or, why did this post take me a week to complete?)

Lee

At Lee's Comic Rack: Bill Molno war comic splash pages

One of my favorite Bill Molno splash pages, from a March, 1958 Charlton Fightin' Air Force comic.  Molno likely did his own inks for this one.  Looks like it, anyway.

More Molno where that came from: Bill Molno war comic splash pages, at Lee's Comic Rack

Yes, nowadays I read war comics, mostly musty Charltons (Army War Heroes, Battlefield Action, Fightin' Navy, War at Sea, and so on).  I love the art, and the stories are fun so long as you accept them as good-guys-vs.-bad-guys wish-fulfillment fare and refrain from reading too much political meaning into them.  They were for young male readers in search of a lot of Taka Taka!  Budda! Budda! and Vooosh!  (I think that's how "Vooosh" was spelled.)  It's hard to logically fault the war comics of my youth for being 1) one-dimensional, 2) pro-U.S., or 3) not very dovish.  People died in them.  Things blew up.  Nazis and "Commies" were depicted in a less than favorable light.  Macho behavior abounded.  Everything was over in about five or six pages, counting the "splash."  At Charlton, the close of a piece was marked by "End."  They saved money by leaving out the "The."

Lee

P.S.--Oh, and I forgot Screeecchhh!