Print

[The Australian Panther]

As per usual, I am not posting the book I had in mind. I thought I had it cached in comicmarks, but no, but this one was, so I have decided to use it.
Simon and Kirby did these two books - published by Charlton.
What impresses me is that even for something like this, they give their all. That double-page spread by Kirby is as good as anything he ever did. There were only two issues, but my memory [admittedly faulty] tells me I have seen the art for another one on the Jack Kirby Museum site, so they might have produced a third which was never printed.
Some of this was probably reprints. Pretty sure the Poe 'Tell-tale heart' story is a reprint.
GCD doesn't give us much in the way of artist credits, so if anybody can identify them, please post the info in the comments section under the books.
Win a prize Comics #1
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=32833
Win a prize Comics #2
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=20282

Enjoy!

[SuperScrounge]

Win A Prize Comics #1

The Emissary - 1975, huh? A retelling of this story could have the unearthly alien see President Nixon's face, scream, and run back to it's spaceship. ;-) Okay story, but Uncle Giveaway's trying to oversell it was embarrassing as the story wasn't that good.

The Tragic Clown - The happy ending surprised me. I was expecting this to be a typical crime/horror story. Not sure the happy ending really works given the attempted murder in the story.

That Giveaway Guy - Kind of cute. Uncle Giveaway is kind of an anti-Uncle Scrooge. 

The Telltale Heart - Rushed.

War Diary - Eh, Uncle Giveaway's interruption didn't help this story.

I'll read the second book later.

[crashryan]

I'll be commenting on both issues together, so I'll begin with the summation rather than leaving it to the end. I think Win a Prize Comics is a fascinating failure.

These two issues definitely look like leftovers from Simon & Kirby's publishing days. This would make the comic's gimmick even less believable because you can be sure Charlton had neither the resources nor the inclination to send out a thousand prizes. Most of the prizes would probably have been dime-store knicknacks but just a few bicycles, radios, and binoculars would have eaten up half of Charlton's art budget. It's a safe bet that not one reader "discovered they had won" in late February, 1955, when their gift arrived in the mail.

Which makes me wonder how S&K intended to fulfill the prize promises had their own company run the contest. Did they get complimentary goods from suppliers in exchange for advertising? A number of the comic giveaway items also appear in The FUNman's back cover ad. When I googled the book seeking a backstory all I found were offers to sell the comics. Does any CB+ Kirby fan know the history of Win a Prize Comics?

So why is the book a failure? Because it has no recognizable personality. Is it an s-f comic? A war comic? An adventure comic? The stories cover every genre. Their only common thread is the presence of Uncle Giveaway, and his jolly hucksterism clashes with everything in the book except the humor features. This is a shame, because a couple of the stories aren't too bad.

In issue one The Emissary is a compact, gentle little story much like the ones Kirby contributed to Stan Lee's Atlas books. The effect is spoiled by Uncle G's manic opening hype, which no story could live up to, and the ending is buried by his closing tirade. I'm glad S&K eased off on the carnival-barker stuff in the second issue. Jack's Gulliver of Space drawing is prime Kirby. Great stuff.

The Tragic Clown shows the drawing and characteristic lettering of Paul Parker. As SuperScrounge points out, the protagonist really does attempt murder. Had he only considered it but seeing his girlfriend imperiled shocked him to his senses, he would have earned the happy ending. I feel this was a miscalculation on the writer's part. He intended that the clown should redeem himself but didn't think the story through.

The Giveaway Guy isn't so much funny as it is weird. Dollars to donuts Kirby wrote this. Benny, Hateful George, and Sammy the Happy Wholesaler are just the sort of surrealistic characters Jack loved to dream up. I don't get the bit of Benny having no face. Is there a joke I'm missing? The surprise ending wasn't.

Telltale Heart looks like a 1940s reprint. How about it, Prof H?

War Diary's attempt at grim-and-gritty is torpedoed by Funny Uncle Giveaway's mid-story popup. Why the heck is he there? What's the purpose of recapping the story and questioning the sergeant's strategy? Did S&K figure the kids wouldn't understand the story otherwise? If so, S&K didn't either. The GI's couldn't "fight their way back to [their] regiment" because they're lost in enemy territory and don't know which direction their regiment is in. Anyway, this story's intensity and violence are way out of place in what is basically a lighthearted package. Some of the art gives off a Bob McCarty vibe but his style is usually more obvious than this.

Thankfully issue #2 throttles Uncle G a bit, though doing so makes the comic seem even more like a "stuff we had left over" collection. Rodeo Rider is obviously intended to launch a series. The story and character are nothing special, but Bill Draut's art is good. He's using a style more like his later Harvey work than the simpler Caniff-inspired art he did for S&K at Prize Comics.

Sir Cashby of Moneyvault misses the boat. The constant time references made sense in Uncle G's noir story but doesn't fit comic knightly dialogue. Why exactly does Uncle G cold-cock Robin? Does he turn Robin over to the authorities or keep him in a private prison? Weird.

Torpedoed confused the heck out of me at first because the first story caption describes Billy so thoroughly that it leaves the impression that Billy is the guy shaking our protagonist awake. It didn't help that the dark-haired shaker wears a blue jacket and a captain's cap and the storyteller is a redhead, but starting on the next page the storyteller is a dark-haired man with a blue jacket and a captain's cap. Anyway, I got it figured out in time for the twist ending. It looks like McCarty was involved in this story, too.

The Handsome Brute is a throwaway story. The art is frustratingly familiar. I was thinking Bruno Premiani, but Premiani has a slicker brush style. Any ideas? Thanks to Charlton's first-class printing I can't tell if the Martian was drawn with a monstrous face or if the face was deliberately blacked out to tie in with the Draw-A-Martian contest.

The ending of The Bull has a poignancy that gives the story unexpected depth. The Bull finally feels justified in battering The Kid once he realizes that partying after a match is the only thing that makes him and his empty, phony friends feel like "real people." A good story with a Kurtzmanesque feel.

However "The Bull" and "Torpedoed" make me ask again, who was the intended audience for this comic? And were the issues planned this way or were they (as they appear to be) collections of random inventory pieces strung together by a contest gimmick? I guess we'll never know.

[SuperScrounge]

Win A Prize Comics #2

Bullet Ballad - Okay story, but names like Rodeo Rider and Deadpan made it seem like they were trying to create a western superhero.

Sir Cashby of Moneyvault! - Amusing.

Torpedoed! - Eh, okay, I guess.

Treasure - Not bad.

The Handsome Brute - Nice.

The Bull - Interesting psychological type story.

[gregjh]

So I read the Telltale Heart (I'm a fan of Poe) from the first comic and the "Rodeo Rider" from the second. Both were superbly drawn, rich in color and contrast and the right balance of speech to visuals.

The Poe story was indeed slightly rushed but trying to recreate the genius of Poe's short stories without his level of storytelling skill is exceedingly difficult.

Rodeo Rider was a well-told western with a typical but enticing tale of revenge. I enjoyed it.

[lyons]

Simon and Kirby's innovatation led them into territories other writers and artists avoided.  Win A Prize Comics failed, but it was a quality package of humor, war, science-fiction, mystery and classic stories.  The hook, of course, wasn't the book's content but the 500 free prizes. A true time capsule from the 1950s - Thanks Panther.       

[Robb_K]

Win A Prize No. 1:

The Emissary
This was a quietly decent, and somewhat expected story, given that books of this type are made up of several very short stories, with little room to develop complex plots.  This has the feel of a Science Fiction Theatre episode. The monster alien was quite nicely drawn.  But the reader knows that we won't see alien monsters gobbling up helpless humans after tricking them into falling for their false assurances of having come across galaxies in peace, and solely for the purposes of mutually beneficial cooperation.

Write A Story About This Picture
This is a great splash panel, with the sleeping or unconscious alien cosmonaut, and the Lilliputian Earthlings. or vise versa.

The Tragic Clown
This had quite an unexpected ending!  A non-resolved ending contest for the reader to write the best ending.  I wonder if Issue #2 posted the winning entry of this contest?  I think she dumps Dino, because she can't love someone who wants to hurt others.

That Giveaway Guy
A surprising ending, but not even remotely holding interest up until the end.  A mystery story - What is going on in this story? Nothing makes any sense.  The reader does get any buildup of clues that he or she can build up to make any conclusion until the answer is thrown at him or her.

The Telltale Heart
The artwork of this story is terrific.  It has a style from 15-20 years before this comic book's issue.  I'd guess this was drawn by Kirby many years earlier, and issued in a book by a publisher who was already defunct when Win A Prize Comics operated.  Does anyone know about its original publication?  It was only 4 pages, but is an excellent distillation of Poe's original short story.

War Diary - The Ambush
A typical 1950s-style military combat story.  It was well drawn.  It has a few more pages than all the other tiny stories in this book, which gives it a little room to breathe - without being just a bare bones distillation of a short story. 

Overall Assessment
This book is an interesting gathering of very short stories from different genres, partly ruined by the atmospheric degradation/interference from the wraparound structure of vignettes starring Uncle Giveaway, and his constant sales pitch touting the opportunity for readers to win prizes.

Win A Prize No. 2

Bullet Ballad
This is a good story - the best of both books.  The art is excellent.  The writing was good.  It would have made a good regular series. 

Sir Cashby of Moneyvault
This story was completely silly and uninteresting - written only for laughs, but failed miserably.

Torpedoed
This was an interesting story with a nice, unexpected twist ending.

The Handsome Brute
This science fiction story was a common moralistic tale, which telegraphed its attempted surprise twist ending. 

The Bull
A sad, sobering, serious look at the sport of boxing, and people with shallow lives.  Kind of depressing.  Certainly not escapist fare.

Overall Assessment
This book had better stories than Issue No. 1, on average.  I ignored Uncle Giveaway this time, which made the reading more pleasant.  I can understand why these books didn't sell very well.  The contest gimmick wouldn't draw customers, and doesn't work to tie the different genres together.  A few of the stories were good.  But, I'd rather have spent the dime on a book with all Sci-Fi stories, or all Westerns, or all Combat, or all police/mysteries, if I were a fan of one of those genres.

[The Australian Panther]

Article here from the Kirby Museum - I can get lost over there! - on Win a Prize and Simon and Kirby's time with Charlton. Clearly the comic was produced by Simon and Kirby's Mainline, not by Charlton.
The End of Simon & Kirby, Chapter 3, Unlikely Port In The Storm
https://kirbymuseum.org/blogs/simonandkirby/archives/64

Win A Prize was unique for Simon and Kirby. They had produced anthologies before but they were always genre specific. They did crime, horror and romance, but Win A Prize with just a general anthology. That sort of thing was common during the war, but I suspect it was unusual in the mid 50?s.

So!
Win a Prize #1.
Cover:- Excellent Kirby action scene. The hero is holding a shield, as is one of the baddies. Was Kirby nostalgic for Captain America? 
Was this the first comic with advertising right on the front cover? Marvel definitely and I thin DC did this for a while, I think in the 80's. I don't like it, I think it cheapens the book.
'World's first giveaway comic' 'Price 10cents.Huh? Not clear.
It's not clear how they financed the give-aways, perhaps with sponsorship deals? But that doesn't seem to be the case.
Whatever the contents, the splash page works well, its all promise and lures you in to open the book.
The first story is a rehashing of the plot of the movie, 'The day the earth stood still' with a few Kirby touches thrown in.
Write a short story based on Kirby's one page drawing. Wonder if anybody did?
The Tragic Clown:-
The Art is good, but I don't recognize the artist. The story is messy and unsatisfying.  Looks like the clown has homicidal tendencies and we build up to an horrific ending, but in the last page, everything gets turned on its head and the clown gets the girl.
One page text article explaining the cover. Interesting idea.
That giveaway guy:- Kirby indulging himself and having fun,but without losing sight of the purpose of the book, which is to give away prizes.
ON ICE. A puzzle to solve.
Tell-tale heart, nice but a fairly pedestrian telling of this tale. And all to get the reader to write in with suggestions and 'Win a prize'                     
War Diary - nice story - artist unidentified and once again' send in suggestions to win a prize.'
Overall impressions. The creative thinking went into how to movivate people to 'win a prize' and the stories were selected towards that goal.
But, since most of the ideas were about asking the reader to make creative decision, that may have limited the number who would respond.
Gamblers don't like to think too hard.
Win a Prize #2.
Great attention-getting cover. Question, how is that diver breathing? He doesn't appear to have oxygen tanks.
Bullet Ballard:- Looks like an inventory story.
[Maybe Simon and Kirby thought they could save money on these books, by using pre-existing stories?]
Sir Cashby of Moneyvault!
Silly and unsatisfying ending. I can see they thought that leaving the ending unclear would be motivating to the reader to supply the ending, but that's in defiance of the basic reason you read a story. I found it irritating.
[Plastic Aircraft carrier with 5 catapulting Jets - how fast was that catapult? Might have been quite a dangerous toy. ]
Torpedoed! Underwhelming.
The Handsome Brute. The story title seems deliberately ironic. Clever. Paul may have won a 'perfect man' contest but his behaviour towards his wife tells us that the Martian got dudded. A more interesting competition might have been, 'Describe the perfect man.'
The Bull
Low key ending, but it bites.

  Win A Prize #2
?Bullet Ballad? by Bill Draut (western)
?Sir Cashby Of Moneyvault? by Jack Kirby (humor)
?Torpedoed? (war)
?The Handsome Brute? by Joe Albistur (science fiction)
?The Bull? (sports)

I don't know what was going on here, but there is an underlying melancholy or bitterness throughout both these books which wouldn't have made them attractive to most kids.
Possibly because Kirby and Simon were at a low ebb in their publishing career.

it did not last long, ending with issue #2 in April 1955, the same month that Mainline ended. The ?hook? really wasn?t the contents, it was the prizes. With all the logistical problems these prizes brought I am sure Charlton wanted to see really good sales really quick. When they failed to materialize, the title was cancelled.

As the comic strips used to say - Tomorrow, new story!   



         

[profh0011]

I've had "The Tell-Tale Heart"-- taken from this very site-- up at my blog since November 2015.  Comics fan Mike Cannon Jr. pointed the story out to me, while fellow fan Tim Bateman identified the artist as being JERRY ROBINSON.

So artistically, this is like a cross between CAPTAIN AMERICA and BATMAN.

I currently have 16 different comics versions of this one story at the blog...and LOTS more coming (assuming I stick with this project long enough).

http://professorhswaybackmachine.blogspot.com/2015/11/poe-1955-pt-1.html