Print

[The Australian Panther]

Star Studded Comics [Cambridge House Publishers: One Shots]
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=9106

This is a bit of an oddity on CB+
Scanned by RichardB, and uploaded by Yoc, there are only 33 out of an original 128 pages.
If anybody knows the story of this book, I would like to hear it. How rare is it?
However, what is here, is quite good indeed, as is d most of the output of Cambridge House Publishers. A sum total of 3 books on CB+.
If you wish to comment on one of the other two or just any one of the three. be my guest.
Gold Medal Comics
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=61606
Hurricane Comics
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=7486

[Robb_K]

I think this book is certainly hard to find.  I would guess it is rare, as Golden Age Comic books go.  Here's the Canadian issue's front cover:

[Robb_K]

I will also add this short funny animal story, starring "Dipsy Doodle Bug" which is in that book, but missing from CB+s scanned version, and surely is within The Public Domain:







I had planned to get this story, plus the book's back cover added to the scanned version, eventually.  But now, I hope to get that done within a few days, if I can squeeze in the time.. 

[The Australian Panther]

there is a cover in the scan, not as good as this one, but the pages are well out of order. 

[SuperScrounge]

Star Studded Comics

Funny that the pieces of this issue are not in numerical order.

STAR studded... not in the Hollywood sense it seems as this was many characters only appearance. Perhaps Wannabe Studded Comics would have been a better title?

Ghost Woman - Why would the husband think his daughter is dead? Why is she in a foundling home? If the mother found her why didn't she take her home? Why is the inconsequential backstory more interesting than the main story?  Otherwise okay, but nothing special.

Red Rogue - Simplistic, but okay.

Captain Combat - So the hero is dressed as a comic book hero? If this guy had made future appearances would he have had problems with the publishers of Captain Combat? Okay story, but that bubble pipe doesn't seem like the threat the writer makes it out to be.

Commandette - Why pass on information while you are being filmed? I laughed at the director thinking that with the police called this won't be kept out of the papers as, apparently, the Hollywood area police were not adverse to covering things up for well-paying studios. Did I miss something or did the story not explain how Harry got stabbed? Funny how the characters talk about the movie script's bad writing while the comic script was a bit wonky. The writer's subconscious sending him a message? 

[Robb_K]

Star Studded Comics

Funny that the pieces of this issue are not in numerical order.

Ghost Woman - Why would the husband think his daughter is dead? Why is she in a foundling home? If the mother found her why didn't she take her home? Why is the inconsequential backstory more interesting than the main story?  Otherwise okay, but nothing special.

Red Rogue - Simplistic, but okay.

Captain Combat - So the hero is dressed as a comic book hero? If this guy had made future appearances would he have had problems with the publishers of Captain Combat? Okay story, but that bubble pipe doesn't seem like the threat the writer makes it out to be.

Commandette -  Did I miss something or did the story not explain how Harry got stabbed?

I agree that it is perplexing as to why the pages of this book are out of order, and why so much of the book is missing.  Only a small portion of the missing pages are likely to be out of The Public Domain.  It would be nice to know more about the particulars of the book's uploading, and also the general history of Cambridge House as a comic book publisher, and why they only published a handful of titles, and why each of the titles had only one issue.

Commandette
No, you didn't miss anything about Harry's murder.  Nothing about how it happened was shown in the story.  The author only let us find out near the end that the film's storywriter wanted to kill all the other people involved in the film, and arranged the story's plot and dialogue to make it look like someone else committed the real murder (or later murders as needed).  That was a decent, fairly innovative idea. But it was not carried out well in the comic book's story script or shown in artwork and dialogue on the pages. Such an achievement was not really possible in the short page allotments usually provided in 36 to 68-page comic books (or even 128-132 page Giant books, which are usually compilations of stories previously printed in shorter books).

Captain Combat
I agree that the bubble pipe's science is flawed, and its use as a murder weapon is thus tainted.  The plot is just too unbelievable.  The main plot idea that a film industry acrobat stunt man accidentally gets exposed to a large scale crime plot and committing of that crime, and chooses to rise to the occasion, acting like his fictional character to fight crime, is a nice idea.  Also, the villain's plot to use the Christmas Santa Clauses' workers' Union as a source of helpers for him to commit his crime, and thus, take in much more loot than he could on his own, but steal the stolen goods from them, as well, is a great idea. But the background for the settings of the crimes is not shown, and would be an unbelievable situation in any case.  The fact that these union card-holding Santa Clauses would all be inside rich people's homes sounds unrealistic to me.  Are we to believe that most of The part-time Santa Clauses would work for a Rent-a-Santa Claus service who sends the actors to the houses of wealthy people on Christmas Eve once a year.  And these actors, who do other work all the remainder of the year, are members of a separate workers' union just for the few weeks they can work in the department stores, and the one night they can work for wealthy patrons?  And our hero overhears a meeting of the villain trying to recruit many of them into joining him for his crime?  How did the in-house jobs come about?  THAT was not shown nor explained in the story.  Did the villain set up the individual wealthy home jobs for the union members, and then assign them?  Or did they already have the jobs through an agency?  The former HAS to be true, otherwise how could he justify receiving a cut of their take?  In any case, they could just keep everything they would steal for themselves.  It is all too unbelievable.

Ghost Woman
I too, am disappointed that the backstory of The Ghost Woman's marriage with the hero, and their child's ending up in a foundling home, is not included in the story.  And we never find out why The Ghost Woman is in her car, driving quickly to warn her husband.  I don't really like the werewolf supernatural element, which seems to have no connection to The Ghost Woman's death or story relating to her husband and child.  An accomplished writer would have made the Werewolf a member of that family, and tie that fact to her murder, rather than accidental death.  It is also difficult to believe that stuffing a fork into the barrel of a blunderbuss would result in a shot so accurate as to have its prongs moving in the exact trajectory to have them pierce the Werewolf's skin so deeply as to reach a vital organ (presumably its heart), that would kill the beast, instantly.  The whole story is too disjointed and improbable to make it an enjoyable read.

Red Rogue
The storyline of a private detective losing his license to operate in a given city, because the chief of police was tired of his being shown up by his privately solving police cases is a novel, good idea.  But, it is not very believable, especially if the chief isn't shown blackmailing the head of the city's licensing department to get that done.  That plotline would be the most satisfying to me as a means to justify a "caped crusader" for justice or fighting crime would choose to use a silly "superhero" outfit (to disguise his identity).  The murder plot is decent, as comic book murder plots go.


Dipsy Doodle Bug
Great Golden Age Funny Animal animation-style artwork. It is great visually, and I like the colourisation. But the story has no plot of consequence, and is not worth telling.  It is unusual to use worms as characters.  It is also an ironic twist for a bug to try to catch fish with a fishing pole.  And showing the worms' point-of-view and feelings about being used as bait to catch fish is interesting.  It's worth the look, but reading the boring so-called story is sorely disappointing.

[Captain Audio]

Star Studded Comics

Ghost Woman
I too, am disappointed that the backstory of The Ghost Woman's marriage with the hero, and their child's ending up in a foundling home, is not included in the story.  And we never find out why The Ghost Woman is in her car, driving quickly to warn her husband.  I don't really like the werewolf supernatural element, which seems to have no connection to The Ghost Woman's death or story relating to her husband and child.  An accomplished writer would have made the Werewolf a member of that family, and tie that fact to her murder, rather than accidental death.  It is also difficult to believe that stuffing a fork into the barrel of a blunderbuss would result in a shot so accurate as to have its prongs moving in the exact trajectory to have them pierce the Werewolf's skin so deeply as to reach a vital organ (presumably its heart), that would kill the beast, instantly.  The whole story is too disjointed and improbable to make it an enjoyable read.

I liked the story despite its many flaws.
They missed a good shot at believability by using the fork when a handful of silver coins would have been just as handy. In those days silver coins were still commonplace.
In some werewolf legends the silver projectile doesn't have to make a mortal wound, just break the skin. In the Wolfman film he was beaten to death with a silver headed cane, though he didn't stay dead thus the next film in the series.

While there were few clues to the back story it would appear the husband was going to be shipped to a war zone within days.
The infant may have survived a ship being torpedoed, train wreck or a fire, no way of knowing, with the dead and the survivors mis identified and separated from loved ones. Similar incidents involving car crashes have made the news in recent years.
I suspect they alotted to few pages for this story so vital panels didn't make the cut.

I liked how the Werewolf could see and touch her while normal humans could not, and how Ghost Woman was learning just how much power she had in the real world.

All the mysteries could have been addressed in following stories as flashbacks.

[crashryan]

I wasn't sure if we were talking about one book or three, so I read 'em all. I won't be commenting on them in a single post because there's so much to talk about. Let's start with...

Star Studded Comics: I can't read the title of this comic without feeling a twinge of nostalgia. Back in the late 1960s Star Studded Comics was a fan stripzine run by Buddy Saunders, Howard Keltner, and Larry Herndon, AKA The Texas Trio. It was an offset magazine in a world of dittozines and mimeozines and it featured early appearances by George Metzger, Jim Starlin, Alan Milgrom, Sam Grainger, Dave Cockrum, Mike Vosburg...and me. My first published strip appeared in SSC. Needless to say it didn't lead to the fame enjoyed by the previously-mentioned crew!

This SSC gives a tantalizing glimpse of another Cambridge House giant comic. These collections are such mixed bags that it seems they must be reprints or stuff left lying around when other publishers went bust. But I've never seen any of the stories anywhere else and 128 pages is an awful lot of stuff to find lying around. Could the stories have in fact been commissioned by Cambridge House, whoever they were? I dunno.

I liked Ghost Woman more than some other readers. It's not a great story, true, but the concept appeals to me. Wikipedia claims that this story inspired Dark Horse's character The Ghost. Does anyone know if that's true? The script suggests the dead woman is John's wife, but if so I don't know how John could be aware of her death. Only minutes pass between the accident and her teleporting to John's side. If he'd somehow heard news of the fatal crash he'd surely say more than "both my wife and daughter are dead." This phrasing implies that both incidents happened in the past. The script definitely would have have benefited from a rewrite or two. Come to think of it, after killing the lead werewolf John says killing the other monsters will be his life's work. Earlier he was "going overseas," suggesting he was about to ship out to fight World War II. He'll need to go AWOL to become a werewolf hunter.

Red Rogue boasts another appealing Charles Voight art job. The script isn't as quirky like "Boom Boom Brannigan" and his fellows, so Voight may not have written this one. It's an okay mystery short with a costumed mystery man grafted on. The Red Rogue certainly doesn't make much effort to protect his identity. Anyone but a comic book Dumb Cop would know the Rogue is Rod Rooney just from his jabs at the police captain for putting Rooney's out of a job. Does a police captain really have the authority to revoke a private investigator's license?

Captain Combat's major draw is John Giunta's art. Giunta is a puzzle. I've seen him described as an eager fan artist who turned pro. His early work, like the well-known "Crom the Barbarian," was pretty good. His figures could be stiff and he sometimes had trouble filling a panel, but his work was interesting overall. He and Manny Stallman were a great team in the 1950s. Manny pencilled and "Johnny" inked. But over time Giunta's drawing became more crabbed. During his stint on "The Fly" his figures became small and stiff and his inking increasingly perfunctory. By the time he reached THUNDER Agents in the 60s--the first time I encountered his artwork--his stuff was pretty bad. He was one of my least favorite Tower artists. I don't know what happened. Perhaps he lost interest. Perhaps he had health problems (he was only 50 when he died).

Commandette would have been a lot better with (appropriately enough, given the story) a better script. As others have noted, we never learn how the deadly knife was thrown. The writer also should have set up the outtakes in the cutting room so that the solution doesn't come out of left field. Ronald Poleman is, of course, supposed to be Ronald Colman. Unfortunately the artist draws him as a lounge lizard type. I was sure he'd turn out to be the guilty party. Fooled by trusting a stereotype.

"The Dipsy Doodle" was a novelty song recorded by Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra in 1937. It was a big hit and was re-released as a "classic" in 1941. Even Golden Age records ran reprints. Undoubtedly that's where this Doodle got his name. He shares nothing but his name with the song, which wasn't even about a bug. Unlike the song, this story isn't a smash hit. Robb has dissected it far better than I ever could. Read his comments for the details. I'll just add two gripes. First, when the worms force Dipsy into a "worm suit" we're not told what they're doing. Since he doesn't look like a worm while wearing the suit I couldn't figure out why the fish are sure Dipsy is a worm. Second, when Dipsy is tossed into the water he says "I'm drowning!" but a moment later he's breathing fine and making bad jokes. On the last page he suddenly announces that the suit is keeping him from drowning. You figure it out. We end with a classic "reversed balloon order" in the next-to-last panel.

It just occurred to me: Dipsy buys his freedom by sending the three worms to their deaths! Cold.

Hurricane Comics reminds me of  William McCleery and Ralph Fuller's Oaky Doaks newspaper strip. Both feature unlikely heroes in a medieval setting rife with anachronisms. "Hurry Kane" is nowhere near as funny, nor as well-drawn, as Oaky Doaks, but it raised a smile or two. The "chapters" look like they were intended to be serialized episodes in another comic.

The artwork isn't all that bad. The editor, however, missed a couple of glaring errors. Notably, on our page 19 Hurry is suddenly wearing armor. He should be in street clothes. Several times the letterer forgot to letter a boldface word, for example on our page 45 Gold (the horse) says there's only way not to have trouble with women, "...and that's to __ a woman!" I suspect that in order to avoid changing pens frequently the letterer did all the regular text first, leaving spaces where he'd put bold words later. He and the editor both missed a few. By the way, if you the reader saw a picture of a dragon roasting a marshmallow on a stick, and nearby  was an open box filled with white, cylindrical objects, wouldn't you know what they were without the label "marshmallows" and a pointer to the box?

That's all for now. A final note: though the horse/human jokes were hit and miss, I tip my hat to the writer for having the horse exclaim, "Coltocoltocolt!" Now that's funny.

[Robb_K]

(1) This SSC gives a tantalizing glimpse of another Cambridge House giant comic. These collections are such mixed bags that it seems they must be reprints or stuff left lying around when other publishers went bust. But I've never seen any of the stories anywhere else and 128 pages is an awful lot of stuff to find lying around. Could the stories have in fact been commissioned by Cambridge House, whoever they were?

(2) Red Rogue boasts another appealing Charles Voight art job. It's an okay mystery short with a costumed mystery man grafted on. The Red Rogue certainly doesn't make much effort to protect his identity. Anyone but a comic book Dumb Cop would know the Rogue is Rod Rooney just from his jabs at the police captain for putting Rooney's out of a job. Does a police captain really have the authority to revoke a private investigator's license?

(3) Hurricane Comics -  reminds me of  William McCleery and Ralph Fuller's Oaky Doaks newspaper strip. Both feature unlikely heroes in a medieval setting rife with anachronisms. "Hurry Kane" is nowhere near as funny, nor as well-drawn, as Oaky Doaks, but it raised a smile or two. The "chapters" look like they were intended to be serialized episodes in another comic.

(1) Cambridge House was a general book publisher, which published, for the most part, educational and "high-brow" and family-oriented books, rather than pulp magazines, whose publishers made up most of the publishers who entered The US comic book market in the mid and late 1930s and early 1940s.  Its comic book production unit operated only in 1945 and 1946, and so, was likely just a vehicle for already existing comic book publishers to get more content printed, using Cambridge House's excess (unused) wartime paper ration, just as William H. Wise, Leffingwell, LaSalle, and Croydon' excess allotments were exploited.  I have read several times, that Bernard Baily's Studio packaged the work contained in the Cambridge House comic books (Star Studded, Gold Medal, Hurricane Comics, and Barrel Of Fun Play Book).  I believe these deals were set up the same way as Sangor' American Comics Group and Ned Pines' Better/Nedor Comics did with William Wise, LaSalle Publishing, Leffingwell Publishing, and Rural Home/ Croydon Publishing, and Lev Gleason did with William Wise, having the comic book company commissioning the comic book production studio to produce X number of books filling X number of pages, and paying the publisher holding the excess paper allotment a fee for the value of that paper, plus a fee for the service of making it available (the favour), and the comic book producing company (previously existing comic book publisher (ACG, Nedor, or whichever company packaged the commissioned artwork under their imprint) would be in-turn, paid for packaging the books for printing (reducing the fee the packaging comic book company's original fees to the paper supplying publisher, and the latter would then take the packaged books to the printer, to have them printed with their new comic book line imprints.  I don't know which comic book companies used Bernard Baily's studio for artwork, but, perhaps the superhero and non-funny animal artists, such as Bernard Baily, Charles Voight, John Giunta, Carmine Infantino, Nick Briefer, Nina Albright, Al Pross, George Marcoux, Al Stahl, Mac Raboy, Bob Fujitani, Manny Stallman, Howie Post, Edmond Good, and people signed as Lit-Win and Schertz(?) used in the Cambridge House books can provide a clue to which comic book publisher commissioned them in 1945?  Baily's producing the Dipsy Doodlebug story is the only credit I know for sure.  I'm pretty sure that Bernard Baily, Al Pross, and Howie Post worked on the younger children's  and comedic stories in these books. I don't know enough about who was working on the more serious Human-figure stories in these books, and from which comic book studio or free-agent artist individual stories were commissioned.

(2) A police chief of a US city back in 1945 (or any period) does and did not have the legal authority to deny or remove a license to operate as a private detective in that city.  I suspect that the police chief in this story was letting the detective know that he would use his political influence and/or even blackmail on the mayor, or highest officer in that city's business licensing department, to ensure that Rod Rooney would have his license revoked, and there would be nothing Rooney could do about it.  This was totally realistic in 1945, and would be more difficult to get accomplished today, with The Internet and mobilephone cameras.  But it wouldn't be impossible, even today.  People in authority carry influence.  If they want to ruin a normal person's life, they have that ability.

(3) I have no doubt that Hurry Kane character and the stories' settings were meant as a clone, to piggy-back upon the popularity, success, and public recognition of the popular Oaky Doaks newspaper strip in 1945.  So, we can rule out EAstern Color Printing's "Famous Funnies" as the "purchaser" of Cambridge House's allotment's unused paper, as that publisher currently had the rights to print Oaky Doaks in comic books at that time.

[SuperScrounge]

Hurricane Comics

While not great I was at least entertained reading this comic which is something.

[Robb_K]

I'm still hoping someone here can figure out from the credited artists list, which larger comic book publishing company "farmed out" these one-shot books to Cambridge House, because they wanted to get more of their product out on the market, but were prevented from doing that by the wartime paper shortage restrictions, and so, made a proxy deal with book publisher, Cambridge House, to get access to the latter's unused paper allocation.  As stated above, Bernard Baily's studio was employed for the artwork, and Bernard Baily, Charles Voight, John Giunta, Carmine Infantino, Nick Briefer, Nina Albright, Al Pross, George Marcoux, Al Stahl, Mac Raboy, Bob Fujitani, Manny Stallman, Howie Post, Edmond Good, and people signed as Lit-Win and Schertz drew the stories.  Which major comic book studios regularly used Baily's and that combination of artists during 1944-1945, and printed stories of similar ilk, using similar formats?  I can't help in that regard, as I only read Funny Animal and very cartoony Human-figure comedy comics from that period.

So, as a framework we can apply to the more serious, action-oriented Human figure comics producers to infer which publishers may have used Cambridge as a proxy, I will explain how I KNOW that William Wise's "Americas Funniest Comics", Croydon's "Laffy Daffy Comics", Leffingwell's "Chuckle Comics", and La Salle's "Merry-Go-Round", "Funnybone" and "Hi-Jinx" giant comics, were all actually produced by Ben Sangpr's Comic book Studios by a combination of the same artists who were working on Creston's "Giggle and Ha Ha Comics" at that time, and used the same exact comic book physical layout format, fonts, and page layouts as those 2 long-running regular monthlies.  So, some of you GA Superhero, Horror, and Detective genre experts
should be able to recognise the group of these credited artists who worked for a large comic book publisher who used the drawing, colouring, story-writing, font magazine cover and page layout styles we see in these 3 Cambridge House books.

[SuperScrounge]

Gold Medal Comics

The Vanishing Boy - I wonder if this was a rejected Captain Marvel Jr. story?

Bill Hilly - Okay.

Fifty Dollar Reward - Eh.

Crime Detector - Similar to a Batman story, but this lacked the twist in the tale.

Silly & Filly - Feels like several weak jokes welded together.

The Witch of Salem - This could have been a good story, but the writing was not subtle.

Whitie and the Magic Crown - Maybe if I had read this as a kid I might have liked it better.

The Terror of the Temple - A scientist finds a way to shrink people down and put them in germs and he uses that to... enslave people. Bwha? Did they have the fantastical element first or invent it to get around a story problem?

The Man With the Mirror Eyes - Had potential, but comes up second-rate.

Jones and his Mrs. - Not very good.

Caribbean Interlude - It exists. It has words. I suppose the writer intended the ending to be a more satisfying twist than it was.

The Perfume Murder - Subtle, like a sledgehammer to the face.

Dreams - Dinky Winkie... worst porn name ever.  Overly simplistic.

Dennis Denton - Anyone else think Cheryl should have been the lead character with Dennis as the sidekick?

Albert - Ugh.

Hopeless Henry - Was Howie Post a Smokey Stover fan by any chance?

Trixie - Given the time period I'd guess Trixie is meant to be a knock-off of Little Lulu. Not very good.

The Wise Guy - A thoroughly unpleasant fellow to spend time reading about.

Sinister Sam - Not as funny as the writer seemed to think.

Luckyman - Not as bad as I feared a story about a very lucky crimefighter would be. I don't think I'd want to read a series about a guy like this, but this story was okay.

Joe Blow - All that for that joke?

[The Australian Panther]

Coming to the end of another fortnight, so here's my wrapup.
Robb_K, thank you for the info on Cambridge House. I was hoping for that.

A police chief of a US city back in 1945 (or any period) does and did not have the legal authority to deny or remove a license to operate as a private detective in that city.

That quite surprises me. I read a lot of Private Eye fiction and that constitutes a threat held over the private eye in a significant number of stories.
I'm going to limit my comments to Star Studded comics, since that was the book I was primarily interested in.
This is a book with a lot of one-off stories of characters [I think] most of which are interesting enough that they could have led into regular series. Which makes me curious as to why there are only a sum total of first issues of 4 titles.
Can't help feeling that there is a story there somewhere.
So.....  With what we've got.....
Ghost Woman.
I like the splash. Not often you see a splash of a woman facing down 3 horrible monsters. Makes me want to read more straightaway.
Page 2. Obviously she was alive until the car went over and is now a spirit, but you have to stop and look again to make it clear, because you never see here before she dies.
I like a story that is minimal and gets straight into the action and doesn't spell everything out verbally and tediously. The art is primitive but the artist is a great visual story-teller. On the other hand the dialogue is so sparse that some story elements are unclear.
I also liked the colouring. 
Red Rogue.
As Crash wrote, 'boasts another appealing Charles Voight art job.' 
The first page doesn't make a lot of sense.
the second page panel 4 is another example of Voight's tendency to draw characters well out of proportion with the environment. I think that details like this and the fact that Red Rogue's costume is ridiculous are indications that Charles Voight was signaling that, even tho his work is good, he just can't take this stuff seriously. And that element of irony is what I like about his work.
This is a straight-forward mystery, so why did he need to put on a costume to solve it?
It also makes no sense that he dives off the roof into a swimming pool when all he had to do was stand on the roof and untangle the bolas. Despite all this, I enjoyed it.
Captain Combat
"Just who are you supposed to be?"
"One of those comic heroes the kids are so crazy about. I'm supposed to be Captain Combat."
And then he overhears guys plotting a crime and plays Captain Combat for real.
Must be a few character creators thinking, 'Why didn't I think of that?' It's PD guys. Go for it.
The big surprise for me, is that he stands the girl up, but never gets back to her at all.
Commandette [credited to Nina Albright.]
This is pretty much a female version of Captain Combat - Actress plays 'Commandette' but does all her own stunts, gets involved in Murder plot, stays in costume, solves it and exposes the villain.
I believe all these stories are from the same writer.
In all three cases, he jumps straight into the action, uses so little dialogue and is so abrupt, you almost have to fill in the missing bits in your head.
And we get two female, no nonsense heroines.
It was fun, made me have to think a little, Could quibble and criticise, but I liked it.
And now,
As Lee Falk used to say,
Tomorrow - New Adventure!             

[SuperScrounge]

Commandette [credited to Nina Albright.]
This is pretty much a female version of Captain Combat - Actress plays 'Commandette' but does all her own stunts, gets involved in Murder plot, stays in costume, solves it and exposes the villain.

Which sounds more like Harvey's Black Cat.

[Captain Audio]

Police departments of the 40's , and the city governments as well, were notoriusly corrupt, as the norm rather than an aberation.
All any police official would have to do is make a phonecall to a political ally who could then pass along the request to whatever political appointee ran the licensing board.

If it were easy and didn't require expending a political favor the Chief wouldn't just threaten he'd go ahead and do it rather than pussyfoot around.

[Robb_K]

Police departments of the 40's , and the city governments as well, were notoriusly corrupt, as the norm rather than an aberation.
All any police official would have to do is make a phonecall to a political ally who could then pass along the request to whatever political appointee ran the licensing board.

If it were easy and didn't require expending a political favor the Chief wouldn't just threaten he'd go ahead and do it rather than pussyfoot around.

This is it, exactly in a nutshell.  That is why the police chief's threat was all that was needed.  In small towns like that The Police Chief and Mayor were usually buddies and could control every action of heads of departments.  On the rare occasions when they didn't get along, each used political influence based on their connections to higher-ups within the two political parties, or their knowledge of the skeletons in the closets of their foe.  In small towns, the higher offices were generally controlled by the political party in charge (which were often in bed together with the workers' unions.  So, in small cities and towns, and rural counties, the governmental officers were an old boys' club, in cahoots with each other.  A police chief could threaten a private dick with getting his license revoked, and the detective would instantly know that the threat was real, and just needed a 30 second phone call to the licensing official.  This was also true (perhaps to a slightly lesser degree) in Canada.  I have seen this kind of situation in The Netherlands and Germany as well.  And although I don't know for sure, I believe it is similar in Scandinavia.  So why wouldn't that be similar in Australia and The UK?  ALL these countries have politics, and in all Human societies that I've experienced, it's who you know, and what "friendship credits" you have with them that constitutes your range of influence.

[Robb_K]

I'm going to limit my comments to Star Studded comics, since that was the book I was primarily interested in.
This is a book with a lot of one-off stories of characters [I think] most of which are interesting enough that they could have led into regular series. Which makes me curious as to why there are only a sum total of first issues of 4 titles.Can't help feeling that there is a story there somewhere. 

I've addressed that in a theory I posted above, that ALL 4 of the Cambridge House original books were probably produced and packaged by one US comic book publisher, to get more income during the WWII War Effort paper shortage restrictions period, by taking advantage of a book publisher's unused paper ration.

Cambridge House WASN'T a regular comic book publishing company.  It was a traditional hardbound book publisher, same as was La Salle Publishing, who published Ben Sangor's ACG/Creston's WWII paper usage restriction period's 130 page giant comics, and William H. Wise Publishing, who fronted for other ACG oversized comic book productions, and also some Lev Gleason paper restriction period comic books.  The comic book producing publisher had a contract with a comic book production studio, which employed several or many artists.  During the paper shortage, those artists would be missing work needed to keep up their income, in order to keep them around, available, and not force them to take wartime factory jobs, the regular comic book publishers, who also needed to supplement their income to have enough to cover their operations' overheads, needed to continue producing more saleable books to bring in that needed income.  They did that through making under-the-table subcontract deals with the regular book publishers, purchasing the book publishers' unused portion of their paper allotments, by producing the additional number of comic book pages they would have otherwise produced, and packaging them for the proxy publisher (book publisher), whose imprint would be used on them.  Those books needed new titles and new characters, to appear to belong to the book publisher, newly moving into comic book publishing.

It is my theory, that The four Cambridge House comic books were all produced and packaged, and ordered for printing, and distributed by the regular distributor of one of the major, or second tier comic book publishers operating in 1944-45.  The best likely clue to which comic book publisher it was, would be the artists who drew the stories and features, and, possibly, the writers who wrote them.  We've already established that the majority of the stories were drawn by Bernard Baily's Studio artists, including Baily, himself. A few of the credited artists could be guesses, or freelance artists contracted just for the project, or added to Baily's staff just for the project (four 68-page books over a slightly over one-year period).  We might be able to discern, or make an educated guess as to which of the regular US comic book publishers from late 1944 to early 1946 used Baily's Studio, and also used the credited artists and writers who weren't in our list of having worked for Baily's during that period.  I can only comment on the Funny Animal and cartoony Human character stories, gags and features.  And, unfortunately, most of the comic book publishers of that period used a combination of Baily's, Sangor's and several of the smaller, New York comic book studios.  So, I can't even make a guess as to which publisher produced these four comic books.  But, I would guess that an expert on the US WWII-Period Superhero/Detective/Action-oriented genre publishers, and the artists and writers they used (both in-house and contracted studios), AND, also importantly expert on the formats, printing styles, colourisation styles and page layout styles, could formulate a better guess as to which comic book producing publisher it might be.

So, my esteemed action-oriened colleagues, - which comic book publishers' standard comic book formats, artwork, and writing styles do these Cambridge House books reflect and remind?

Fox Features?

Quality?

Robert Farrell?

DC?

Timely?

MLJ?

Novelty?

Fiction House/Iger?

Fawcett?  (NO)

Eastern Color Printing?

Western Publishing?  (NO)

Ace?

Chessler?

Centaur?

Better/Nedor?  (NO)

ACG/Creston?  (NO)

Prize Group?

McCombs/Crown?

Street & Smith?

EC?


My best guess is that the easiest clue would be the artist drawing the front covers, and the layout of those covers.  The four original Cambridge House covers have a distinctive layout style.  Which major, or second tier publisher had a similar front cover layout style to that, in 1945 and early 1946?
Charlton? 

I'll be waiting with baited breath to read your best guesses.