Recent Posts

Super Detective Library #45

Crime From the Sky

Good story. No nits jumped out at me. Okay art. Nice choice, Goof.

BANACEK:  THE GREATEST COLLECTION OF ALL
The Missing Masterpieces   (7 of 10)

$23,000,000 worth of rare, privately-owned paintings, at the end of a nation-wide tour, are being shipped by truck back to Boston. For 5 hours, 2 security cars, one in front, one in back, escort the truck, and the woman who organized the exhibit is in the rear car, never once taking her eyes off the truck. Yet, when the cases are unloaded and opened, all but ONE of the paintings have vanished! Police pull over the departing truck and a thorough examination of it is made, but no obvious clues turn up. That's when Thomas Banacek is called in. As he does his usual investigation, he not only slowly romances the woman everyone suspects must be involved, but also has fun spreading rumors about the insurance man who hates his guts and resents an "outsider" being called in to save HIS job!

This one had a cast of actors I'd seen before, including Mike Farrell (MASH), Lloyd Gough (THE GREEN HORNET), Barbara Stuart (GOMER PYLE), John Hoyt (STAR TREK: The Cage), Garry Walberg (QUINCY), Robert DoQui (TARZAN), Gene Dynarski (STAR TREK: Mudd's Women), Arch Johnson (THE MONKEES), and George Murdock (BATTLESTAR GALACTICA). Penny Fuller (CHINA BEACH) was "Gloria Hamilton", who had a bigger chip on her shoulder than most women Thomas takes an interest in. He didn't seem to mind.

One fun moment was when Banacek wants to talk to the man in charge of security, who deeply resents the insurance company being responsible for his having been suspended from his job. Instead of helping Banacek solve the case quicker so he can get back to work, he decided to take out his rage on Thomas in a back alley... only, he's the one who winds up lying on his back unconscious.

Most episodes of this short-lived series tend to run along similar lines, with a clever crime & solution, and a long stretch in the middle of investigations where it's often near-impossible to figure out how things will end along the way. I rated this one higher than average, simply because it was FUNNIER than most.

I have most of the School Friend annuals, so if you would be interested in me trying to suggest some names of artists, just let me know which years you have.

Hi Goof - On closer inspection of my bookcase, it turns out that only one of them is the School Friend Annual and that's from 1963. The other one I had was Schoolgirls' Annual which was 1968.  I also have two of the June annuals (1963 and 1967) and the Eagle Annual from 1968. I found all of them at second-hand sales. Always fun to look through.

Cheers

QQ

“It seems that these books are designed for a very specific audience of girls who have a private school background.”

Odd though it may seem, I think that the appeal of these boarding school stories went way beyond readers who had a background in private education.

Years ago in an issue of Writer's Digest a writer of teenage girl stories said she assumed her readership was girls of the same age as her heroines, but at a book signing she was surprised to be signing books for pre-teens. The only teenage girl mentioned she was just their to get the book signed for her younger sister who was sick.

So there is an appeal to people to read things that they might experience later on or never experience.

So a country where private boarding schools are a big deal to part of society is probably of interest to those wouldn't get to experience it.

Several accounts from the original creators themselves show that editors went to great lengths to keep artists and writers apart. It was quite normal for the artist to have no direct contact with the writer whose story he/she was illustrating.

Mark Evanier talking about his Gold Key Comics days mentioned that the editors kept the writers and artists apart. In one script he wrote a note to the artist to 'go wild' and the editors were worried the artist might draw something too shocking or something. Funny that both sides of the pond had editors who wanted to keep a separation between writers and artists (well, when they were separate people, that is.)

Never write entirely from memory: Phil Belbin did the covers of True Pirate Comics - all the ones I've seen over the 24 issue run.

Link to the comment: True Pirate Comics 1

Thanks for your reply, QQ.

“I've managed to pick up a couple of volumes of School Friends annuals from the 1960s at second-hand sales. I would have loved these when I was probably around 9-13, but I don't recall anything similar in Australia. I still like looking through them now.”

Fleetway annuals are quite a good way to sample the contents of the associated comics and picture libraries, as they include a lot of reprints.

Some UK titles used to offer subscriptions to readers in Australia, New Zealand or Canada, and at least some of the SPLs were also issued with “overseas” price tags – maybe 40-50% more than the UK price. Overall, I think a fair bit of UK girls’ comics material found its way to Australia. I’ve actually bought quite a few UK girls’ comics from Australian sellers!

I have most of the School Friend annuals, so if you would be interested in me trying to suggest some names of artists, just let me know which years you have.

“Such a shame the artists didn't always get their due. Sometimes the writers weren't named either. I guess the publishers saw them just as employees or contract workers, but they were doing top quality art.”

The only reason that I’ve heard, which seems to have come from the publishers themselves, was that they didn’t credit artists’ names because they didn’t want them poached by other firms. As most of the best artists found work with a variety of publishers via their agents as a matter of course, I don’t find this particularly convincing. I think it’s more likely that they kept artists (and writers) anonymous to lower their profile and therefore their pay rates. Several accounts from the original creators themselves show that editors went to great lengths to keep artists and writers apart. It was quite normal for the artist to have no direct contact with the writer whose story he/she was illustrating.

Thanks for your comments, SuperScrounge and Panther. I hope you don’t mind a compendium reply, as you’ve both raised essentially the same point about the formula that this story follows.

Schoolgirls’ Picture Library 76
Loyal to Her Disgraced Mother

I’m glad that you enjoyed the story. I thought that the very surprising and individual art lifted it above the norm.

“Hmmm... a valuable item disappears, an innocent person is assumed guilty, and the item is hidden somewhere at the place it disappeared from... is it just me or is this like every third or fourth plot in these types of books?”
   
“There is almost always someone falsely accused of a crime - usually theft. They are disgraced and no longer have access to (the school-mansion-castle) and so the girls have to solve the mystery. The stolen object is usually still on the premises and hidden and comes to light at the end of the narrative.”

Yes, I think you’re both right that the story follows one of several standard formulas which provided the plots for most of the SPLs around this time, although I don’t know that this particular formula predominated. It’s probably not surprising that the plots of most of the PL stories were formulaic, when the publication of the books was such a production line. At the height of their popularity, Fleetway was issuing eight girls’ PL titles per month – four SPLs and two each in the Princess Picture Library and School Friend Picture Library series.

In fact, adventure and mystery formulas were so much the norm for girls’ PLs (I can’t speak for the boys’ titles), that when popular characters from the comics were transferred into PL stories, they were expected to conform to a standard format even if it didn’t much suit them.
   
One example of this which sticks out is The Happy Days series from Princess. This was a gentle domestic comedy series written with a Wodehousian sharpness and wit by Jenny Butterworth, which ran for 13 years. Its rare forays into crime never went beyond farcical misunderstandings about perfectly innocent bystanders, but when the heroine Sue Day and her friends were transferred to PL they found themselves fighting gangs of smugglers and international jewel thieves for real. It’s a tribute to the writer(s) that they managed the transfer as well as they did, but it inevitably changed the characters over time, and in their later PL stories Sue and co were little different from other PL adventurers such as the Peewits, or any other Famous Five-like gang of intrepid children.

The editors evidently thought that this was what readers wanted, but for me it was rather limiting, and the later PLs did move toward a wider range of story types, which gave more scope for comedy in particular.

“It seems that these books are designed for a very specific audience of girls who have a private school background.”

Odd though it may seem, I think that the appeal of these boarding school stories went way beyond readers who had a background in private education. As I mentioned above, School Friend comic started with a readership of a million a week. Its lead story was The Silent Three, archetype of girls’ boarding school picture stories, which was popular enough to run (with interruptions) for about 13 years. But the ultimate proof of the general popularity of the genre was the series that lasted longer than anything else in girls’ comics – The Four Marys, which ran in Bunty from first issue to last. Unlike some of the Fleetway titles, Bunty was aimed squarely at lower middle/working class girls (it’s the one my female relatives read, and my family never got within shooting distance of private education!). Yet the series dealt with a traditional elite public school, complete with all sorts of arcane names and customs and an earl’s daughter as one of the heroines. Despite this, it ran for 43 years.

An oddity in the issue of Smoky Dawson in this issue is the villain, the Bat. This character look like a British supernatural superhero of the same name. This seems unlikely to be a coincidence. The Bat was created by George McQueen, but at least one story appears to be (clears throat) "adapted" from a Ghost Rider story by Dick Ayers (from Magazine Enterprises Ghost Rider #12), with the same dialogue and layouts very similar to the original. In this story, the Bat takes on Satan (just like Ghost Rider did!). I don’t know how this unofficial crossover occurred, or if the British creator of the Bat even knew about it. (Sadly, there are no Bat comics available on Comic Book Plus.)

Link to the comment: The Adventures of Smoky Dawson 7

The Adventures of Smoky Dawson began as a radio adventure series in 1952, with episodes being broadcast until 1962. The show starred Smoke as himself, a sidekick called Jingles, Smoky’s horse Flash, and a young friend named Billy, who would often get into trouble. A regular villain named Grogan would often be thwarted. Smoky often enjoyed a bowl of Cornflakes (Kellogg’s was the sponsor of the show), and would sometimes sing a song. A comic, featuring Smoky, Flash and Jingles, soon followed, running 11 issues between 1957 and 1958. You can here an episode of the radio show at https:www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zpym5ixCUo

Link to the comment: The Adventures of Smoky Dawson 7

Who is Smoky Dawson? He was an Australian singer-songwriter and musician, who released his first single in 1941 and his album in 2005. He cultivated his image as a happy-go-lucky singing cowboy. He received many awards and titles over his long career, including being made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (OBE - under the British systems of honours) and later a Member of the Order of Australia (AM - under the Australian systems of honours created in 1975, after which awards under the British system ceased to be made to Australians generally although Smoky was awarded his OBE in 1982, recognising his importance in Britain). He also received many music and entertainment awards. He was a radio announcer, appeared in TV series and movies. His general ubiquity has lead to him being considered an Australian icon. And he had a fictional extra life, in the radio show and later comic, ‘The Adventures of Smoky Dawson’.

Link to the comment: The Adventures of Smoky Dawson 7