[Quirky Quokka]

I'm guessing there are some comics on this site that you've inked? Are you able to give a couple of examples?

Yikes! I'm not that old! I was barely in the public domain myself when these Dells were coming out. I inked Mike Sekowsky in the early 1980s on some short stories featuring Hanna-Barbera characters. I was one of a bunch of LA artists, many of them newcomers like me, who drew stories for publication overseas. I've no idea where these stories appeared. I've never seen one in print. I never met Sekowsky either. The stories I inked featured The Mighty Mightor and Wonder Wheels. I inked a couple of Captain Caveman strips; I don't remember the penciller. And I did full art on one Scooby-Do story.

Whoops! Sorry, Crash. Hope I didn't offend. I read a comic on this site that went up to 1963, so I can assure you that if you did ink anything here, I was thinking that you did it as an 8-year-old in the 60s  In the short time I've been on this forum, I've come to realise that many of you are actually in the comic book industry, or used to be, and I am suitably impressed. Would you believe I just bought a Scooby Doo comic a couple of weeks ago to give to a 14-year-old girl I'm helping with reading. She loves comics and graphic novels. And of course I read it first and then had to decide whether I would keep it or give it to her. LOL I have a better-informed appreciation of the fabulous work that inkers do, after reading Dave Gibbons' excellent book 'How Comics Work'.

[Robb_K]

Minor detail;
The show about the lady serving the cops the murder weapon was LAMB TO THE SLAUGHTER. Alfred Hitchcock. Third season. first broadcast in 1958. You can watch the whole thing on youtube for free. has Barbara bel Geddes as the wife. One of his 'lighter' murders. Like THE TROUBLE WITH HARRY. Wait for the punch line at the end.   

Thanks for clearing that up.  It was about 60 years ago when I saw it.  So, it's not surprising that I forgot which series it was.  We saw both Alfred Hitchcock and Thriller around  the beginning of the '60s, in Western Canada.  I thought I remembered a couple "Thriller" one shots during Dell's last year of Four Color Comics.  But, I guess it was the 2 Gold Key issues I was remembering.

[Quirky Quokka]

I've just started reading the 'Death Valley' one and will make some comments on the stories when I finish, but I couldn't go past the fabulous (?) ads.

On p. 2. there's a book on hypnosis, with some great ad copy: 'Want the thrill of imposing your will over someone? Of making someone do exactly what you order?' Who wouldn't want a book like that?

Then on p. 18, you can buy the amazing Vacutex blackhead remover. No more squeezing with your fingernails and risking infection when you can suck those babies up with this painless contraption. And just like Jim and his sis in the comic strip, you'll be going to the prom before you know it. If only that was available when I was in high school!

And if you want to look even better at the prom, there's the new-improved Chewing Gum Reduce on p. 26.

Also, I assume a comic book like this would have probably appealed more to boys and young men, so it seems strange that there are two full-page ads for women's underwear - the Young Form Bra on p. 33 and the Deluxe Tummy Flattener on p. 36. I guess they could be gifts for their mothers or wives.

Love looking at old ads.  I wonder what people will think of our 2022 ads in 50 years' time?

[Robb_K]

King of Diamonds
Interesting TV adaptation.  I never saw that TV show.  I don't think it was shown in Canada.  Clearly, Broderick Crawford was too old and fat, and out of condition, to make those diving moves he made in the comic book.  I assume that the story writer and storyboarder got the script of the TV episode, as well as still shots.  Parts of the story , and details were changed, as well as much of the dialogue.  The artwork,  by Mike Sekowsky, is great.  The inking is so strong, and uniform in quality, despite his using several different levels of line thickness.  The figures jump out at you.  The camera angles and staging are quite good, too.  And the brightness of the colouring is terrific (although I don't like some of the background colouring).  The light and dark contrast is very nice.  Of course, its easier to draw faces, when you have real photos for models.  I assume that the views of Crawford's face that look very, very much like him were taken from stills, and those that look a lot less like him were made exclusively in the artist's mind.  I think it is very unlikely that a smuggler, familiar with East Berlin and The Russian Sector, would have tried to hop over the barbed wire atop The Berlin Wall.  He'd have known that the soldier guards there would have shot him.  I'm also wondering if The Diamond industry would go to such lengths to retrieve industrial-grade, uncut, diamonds.  For cut and registered high grade diamonds, I could understand.

It's an interesting story to me about how valuables were smuggled back and forth from The East Block to The West (and vice versa).  It is also interesting to me because I grew up during that time after WWII, when those things were happening, and I had a great uncle who was a diamond cutter in Antwerpen, Belgium.  A very entertaining read for such a "late" book. I bought very few US/Canadian comic books after 1962, and not many Dutch books during the remainder of the 1960s.  And I only started again in the early 1970s, when Dutch Disney Comics' editorial office started getting populated by genuine comics fans.

Just a coincidence, but Al Casey was a music recording session guitarist in Chicago, who had a big US national hit in 1962, with "Surfing' Hootenanny". 

[Robb_K]

I've just started reading the 'Death Valley' one and will make some comments on the stories when I finish, but I couldn't go past the fabulous (?) ads.

On p. 2. there's a book on hypnosis, with some great ad copy: 'Want the thrill of imposing your will over someone? Of making someone do exactly what you order?' Who wouldn't want a book like that?

Then on p. 18, you can buy the amazing Vacutex blackhead remover. No more squeezing with your fingernails and risking infection when you can suck those babies up with this painless contraption. And just like Jim and his sis in the comic strip, you'll be going to the prom before you know it. If only that was available when I was in high school!

And if you want to look even better at the prom, there's the new-improved Chewing Gum Reduce on p. 26.

(1) Also, I assume a comic book like this would have probably appealed more to boys and young men, so it seems strange that there are two full-page ads for women's underwear - the Young Form Bra on p. 33 and the Deluxe Tummy Flattener on p. 36. I guess they could be gifts for their mothers or wives.

Love looking at old ads.  (2) I wonder what people will think of our 2022 ads in 50 years' time?

(1) Growing up, I also wondered why there were adverts for dolls in 1940s and 1950s Superhero, Military Combat, and other violence-laden action genre comic books.  I NEVER saw girls reading such books.  When I was young, I never even saw a girl reading a Classics Illustrated comic book.  If they liked to read, they already would rather read an actual book.  I only saw them, as little girls, read the cartoon-based comics, and "Little Lulu", and when older (9-14), Romance and some Comedy comics (like Blondie, Dotty Dripple, Archie, Wilbur, and other "teen humour" comics. - That was the same for newspaper comics.  It was similar in The Netherlands, with younger girls reading the Disney, Marten Toonder (Thom Poes/Panda, etc., Suske & Wiske, and other cartoon-based comics, and moving on to reading books and teen magazines later(like "Tina"(for whom a good friend of mine writes).

Girls did like John Stanley's comic book version of title Lulu", and "Tubby" very much.  They liked how she was so clever in dealing with adults and boys.  They also liked Stanley's "Nancy" comics. from 1959-1962, when he took over the story writing and storyboarding for that Dell Comics series, making it more or less a clone of the previous comic book "Little Lulu".  I never saw girls or anyone else reading St. Johns' "Little Lulu" clone, "Little Eva".  But, it must have been reasonably successful, as it ran 27 issues, plus one Giant annual.  But, it never came to Canada, as far as I know. I always wondered about Rural Home's "Calling All Girls".  I saw it on the comics racks and shelves, but never saw any girls reading it, unlike their "Calling All Kids" series, which was quite popular in the mid and late '40s.  Of course, in the late '50s through the '70s, a lot of the younger girls liked the "cutesy" Harvey cartoony series, including Casper, Wendy, Hot Stuff, Stumbo, Baby Huey, Little Audrey, Little Dot, Spooky, Little Lotta, etc.  But they grew out of them, and all other comic books by ages 9 and 10.

(2) It's been over 70 years since I started noticing those comic book ads, and I still think the same of them that I did back then.  Actually, I didn't like them polluting my treasured comics.  So, now, when I scan comic books for my own use, or download them, I remove the advertising pages, and even the polluting half-pages.

[Morgus]

Robb K; the 60's was a great time for suspense shows, no question. And it was super easy to get them wrong. The most confusing was when John Newland,  the host for ONE STEP BEYOND did a lead role for THRILLER one night.
Quirky; I collect old hypnosis books just like that one. They can be a real hoot, especially when you're a consulting hypnotist like I am. Like the Bugs Bunny cartoon you probably saw as a kid where Elmer makes the bear think it's a bird...and it flies away!!

[Quirky Quokka]

(1) Growing up, I also wondered why there were adverts for dolls in 1940s and 1950s Superhero, Military Combat, and other violence-laden action genre comic books.  I NEVER saw girls reading such books.  When I was young, I never even saw a girl reading a Classics Illustrated comic book.  If they liked to read, they already would rather read an actual book.  I only saw them, as little girls, read the cartoon-based comics, and when older (9-14), Romance and some Comedy comics (like Blondie, Dotty Dripple, and the like. - That was the same for newspaper comics. 

(2) It's been over 70 years since I started noticing those comic book ads, and I still think the same of them that I did back then.  Actually, I didn't like them polluting my treasured comics.  So, now, when I scan comic books for my own use, or download them, I remove the advertising pages, and even the polluting half-pages.

The gender thing's interesting. I was a kid in the 60s and I was a bit of a tomboy, but I never would have been interested in comics that featured crime, combat, horror and other 'boy' themes back then. But I probably would have read comics like Superman if they were around (I don't remember seeing any in the news stands here, though my hubby remembers seeing Marvel ones like Iron Man). But then I also didn't like the really 'girly' comics either, like the true romance, except for Archie comics which I still like. We couldn't afford many comics when I was a kid, so I used to borrow a lot from a friend of mine who had a big stash largely due to her older siblings. I liked the TV tie-in ones, like The Jetsons. Then by the time I could afford to buy my own comics, I'd graduated to Peanuts. It's only been the last few years that I've discovered the volumes of comics reprints that DC and Marvel have been doing and I'm catching up on what I missed as a kid.

I find the ads in a lot of contemporary comics to be really intrusive. I've bought a few 32-page comics recently that are at least one-third full-page ads interspersed throughout the stories, and it's really disruptive. I guess they have to finance them somehow. I also don't like it if I've bought a comic with fairly mild themes and they have horror or blood-and-gore type ads for something else in there. But I love the ads in the old comics. It's fun to see what they focused on back then, and it intrigues my sense of retro pop culture.

[Quirky Quokka]

Quirky; I collect old hypnosis books just like that one. They can be a real hoot, especially when you're a consulting hypnotist like I am. Like the Bugs Bunny cartoon you probably saw as a kid where Elmer makes the bear think it's a bird...and it flies away!!

Morgus, that would be a blast for your clients if you pretended to consult that book before hypnotizing them! I can only imagine what fantastic tips it would have given.

I used to watch Bugs Bunny, but I don't remember that cartoon.

[The Australian Panther]

I find the ads in a lot of contemporary comics to be really intrusive. I've bought a few 32-page comics recently that are at least one-third full-page ads interspersed throughout the stories, and it's really disruptive. I guess they have to finance them somehow. I also don't like it if I've bought a comic with fairly mild themes and they have horror or blood-and-gore type ads for something else in there. But I love the ads in the old comics. It's fun to see what they focused on back then, and it intrigues my sense of retro pop culture. 

I absolutely agree with you about all of that!
When it comes to many of the ads in comics on this site, they can be sometimes more entertaining than the comics themselves. And often the ads are totally inappropriate in the context of the particular comics themselves. And the ads create a cultural context for the comic stories themselves. 
I've also come to realize that one of the reasons why comic books on the US model are still not particularly respected, is because of the standard model of a regular monthly title, and + 50% ads.
Compare this with the French Model, where they are published more like books, no internal ads, or rear cover ads, and stand-alone books or series that are not on a regular monthly or weekly basis. In other words, no deadlines for the creators, who can take their time and create more satisfactory work.     

[Morgus]

'Quirky; THE HARE BRAINED HYPNOTIST (1942) it pops up on youtube with Warners playing whack-a-mole and trying to take it off as soon as they find it. happy hunting.

[The Australian Panther]

Re the subject of comics for girls and whether girls read them.
Huge subject.
They definitely do read comics now, as witness Cosplay and Star Wars, Star Trek and Marvel Movie Fandom.
The British market created a fairly big market for comics aimed at girls, usually the girls were teachers, schoolgirls in boarding schools, au pairs, tutors and private nurses getting jobs in foreign nations and mysterious castles. The books also gave many European and South American artists a good living.
I guess these comics carried on the tradition of books for girls that were popular in the early part of the last century, like the Nancy Drew books, and the Enid Blyton series like, 'the Naughtiest Girl' series.   
The Silver age [in the US] was the end for Romance comics and books like Millie the Model.
DC made an attempt to do new romance comics and also put out some gothic titles aimed at females, but unsuccessfully.   
Archie thrived. But what was the real intended audience for Archie comics?       

[Morgus]

Jim Vadeboncoeur did a great essay on this topic for an Eclipse mag, WEIRD ROMANCE, back in ’88. Romance comics were huge, maybe the biggest trend ever. So who was reading them?
And if your town didn’t stock PLAYBOY or there weren’t enough people to support ESQUIRE, where could you get some nice good girl art to look at?

‘Panther, I know we’ve mentioned that sideline before here on the page. How you could have plausible deniability getting some Matt Baker or some ARCHIE. Or even a Warren SPIRIT reprint.

I saw the ads for the ladies wear, and remembered an old Hi and Lois cartoon. He’s reading a catalog and she’s standing behind him asking if he planned on buying a bra.

[paw broon]

Britain has a long tradition of comics for girls and women.  Even before Bunty and the like, the story papers featured titles for girls alongside Magnet, Nelson Lee, Rover. There were many pocket libraries aimed at older girls and women. True Life is a great example of romance, crime, mystery, often with decent art. We have some on site.
https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=3560
King.  I notice someone mentioned the Crawford likeness in the art but there are some panels where the face is not good. Pages 9, 23, 24 and others.  More then made up for by the dark panels.  But when King is set upon by that huge bruiser, the figures look a bit " tubby Justice Leaguers"

[Robb_K]

Britain has a long tradition of comics for girls and women.  Even before Bunty and the like, the story papers featured titles for girls alongside Magnet, Nelson Lee, Rover. There were many pocket libraries aimed at older girls and women. True Life is a great example of romance, crime, mystery, often with decent art. We have some on site.
https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=3560
King.  I notice someone mentioned the Crawford likeness in the art but there are some panels where the face is not good. Pages 9, 23, 24 and others.  More then made up for by the dark panels.  But when King is set upon by that huge bruiser, the figures look a bit " tubby Justice Leaguers"

As I stated above, my guess is that when Sekowsky's likenesses of Crawford are right on the mark, he copied the pose from one of the photo stills from the TV show.  When the face doesn't really look like Crawford, Sekowsky was on his own, and had to turn the face to different angles, and take Crawford's facial features from the few photos he got, and move them to form new expressions not shown in any of the photos he received from the TV show production staff.  Naturally, in the latter cases, the faces looked somewhat to way off from his real life looks, depending upon how well he interpolated.  I know how that works, as I've done a lot of life drawings from living models, and from photographs, and also out of my head from memory.  And any portrait artist will tell you that drawing the same pose from a photo is a LOT easier than interpolating new poses at new camera angles from the few poses in a model sheet or a couple photos.  I took a lot of model drawing courses in art school, and ran model sessions at both Turner Feature Animation and Warner Brothers Feature Animation for awhile. 

[Robb_K]

(1) Growing up, I also wondered why there were adverts for dolls in 1940s and 1950s Superhero, Military Combat, and other violence-laden action genre comic books.  I NEVER saw girls reading such books.  When I was young, I never even saw a girl reading a Classics Illustrated comic book.  If they liked to read, they already would rather read an actual book.  I only saw them, as little girls, read the cartoon-based comics, and when older (9-14), Romance and some Comedy comics (like Blondie, Dotty Dripple, Archie, Wilbur and the like. - That was the same for newspaper comics. 

(2) It's been over 70 years since I started noticing those comic book ads, and I still think the same of them that I did back then.  Actually, I didn't like them polluting my treasured comics.  So, now, when I scan comic books for my own use, or download them, I remove the advertising pages, and even the polluting half-pages.

The gender thing's interesting. I was a kid in the 60s and I was a bit of a tomboy, but I never would have been interested in comics that featured crime, combat, horror and other 'boy' themes back then. But I probably would have read comics like Superman if they were around (I don't remember seeing any in the news stands here, though my hubby remembers seeing Marvel ones like Iron Man). But then I also didn't like the really 'girly' comics either, like the true romance, except for Archie comics which I still like. We couldn't afford many comics when I was a kid, so I used to borrow a lot from a friend of mine who had a big stash largely due to her older siblings. I liked the TV tie-in ones, like The Jetsons. Then by the time I could afford to buy my own comics, I'd graduated to Peanuts. It's only been the last few years that I've discovered the volumes of comics reprints that DC and Marvel have been doing and I'm catching up on what I missed as a kid.

I find the ads in a lot of contemporary comics to be really intrusive. I've bought a few 32-page comics recently that are at least one-third full-page ads interspersed throughout the stories, and it's really disruptive. I guess they have to finance them somehow. I also don't like it if I've bought a comic with fairly mild themes and they have horror or blood-and-gore type ads for something else in there. But I love the ads in the old comics. It's fun to see what they focused on back then, and it intrigues my sense of retro pop culture.

Of course, I forgot to mention "Archie" and "Wilbur" among the comics I saw the older, (age 9-14) girls reading.  But really, my experience was seeing that young girls read the cartoon-based and other children's comedy comics until 9 or 10, and then read teen comics and romance comics, but mostly moved on to teen TV and Film Star and pop Music Star conventional magazines, abandoning comic books altogether by 11 or 12.

[Quirky Quokka]

I'm also wondering if The Diamond industry would go to such lengths to retrieve industrial-grade, uncut, diamonds.  For cut and registered high grade diamonds, I could understand.

I wondered the same thing. Seemed strange to me that he would risk his life to retrieve some diamonds. But if they were industrial diamonds that were going to be used to make weapons during the Cold War, it makes it more understandable.

[Quirky Quokka]

I only saw them, as little girls, read the cartoon-based comics, and "Little Lulu", and when older (9-14), Romance and some Comedy comics (like Blondie, Dotty Dripple, Archie, Wilbur, and other "teen humour" comics. - That was the same for newspaper comics.  It was similar in The Netherlands, with younger girls reading the Disney, Marten Toonder (Thom Poes/Panda, etc., Suske & Wiske, and other cartoon-based comics, and moving on to reading books and teen magazines later(like "Tina"(for whom a good friend of mine writes).

Girls did like John Stanley's comic book version of title Lulu", and "Tubby" very much.  They liked how she was so clever in dealing with adults and boys.  They also liked Stanley's "Nancy" comics. from 1959-1962, when he took over the story writing and storyboarding for that Dell Comics series, making it more or less a clone of the previous comic book "Little Lulu".  I never saw girls or anyone else reading St. Johns' "Little Lulu" clone, "Little Eva".  But, it must have been reasonably successful, as it ran 27 issues, plus one Giant annual.  But, it never came to Canada, as far as I know. I always wondered about Rural Home's "Calling All Girls".  I saw it on the comics racks and shelves, but never saw any girls reading it, unlike their "Calling All Kids" series, which was quite popular in the mid and late '40s.  Of course, in the late '50s through the '70s, a lot of the younger girls liked the "cutesy" Harvey cartoony series, including Casper, Wendy, Hot Stuff, Stumbo, Baby Huey, Little Audrey, Little Dot, Spooky, Little Lotta, etc.  But they grew out of them, and all other comic books by ages 9 and 10.

Growing up in Australia, we didn't have access to all of those titles, or at least I didn't see them in the 60s and early 70s when I was a kid. But we did have a lot of those humour comics and cute comics. I loved the Blondie comics in the newspaper, though never saw a Blondie comic book. I loved Archie and the gang, and still do. One of my friends and her siblings had a huge stash of comics they let me borrow, and I remember they had a lot of those titles like Casper, Wendy, Little Dot, Richie Rich etc, though I wasn't so much into those ones. I was probably a bit older when I discovered them and they were aimed more at little kids. I liked  the TV tie-ins. Archie cartoons were on TV and that might be what got me into Archie. Also loved the Hanna-Barbera ones like The Jetsons and the Flintstones.

[Quirky Quokka]

I find the ads in a lot of contemporary comics to be really intrusive. I've bought a few 32-page comics recently that are at least one-third full-page ads interspersed throughout the stories, and it's really disruptive. I guess they have to finance them somehow. I also don't like it if I've bought a comic with fairly mild themes and they have horror or blood-and-gore type ads for something else in there. But I love the ads in the old comics. It's fun to see what they focused on back then, and it intrigues my sense of retro pop culture. 

I absolutely agree with you about all of that!
When it comes to many of the ads in comics on this site, they can be sometimes more entertaining than the comics themselves. And often the ads are totally inappropriate in the context of the particular comics themselves. And the ads create a cultural context for the comic stories themselves. 
I've also come to realize that one of the reasons why comic books on the US model are still not particularly respected, is because of the standard model of a regular monthly title, and + 50% ads.
Compare this with the French Model, where they are published more like books, no internal ads, or rear cover ads, and stand-alone books or series that are not on a regular monthly or weekly basis. In other words, no deadlines for the creators, who can take their time and create more satisfactory work.   

Yes, the old ads are like a time capsule. I also have a few magazines from the 50s and 60s that I've picked up in second-hand stores, and I love the ads. It's interesting to see what's changed over the time.

Re the amount of ads, it can be a bit of a rip-off when you buy a comic book and then discover there are so many ads and so little story. I've bought a few of those in the last year. But I was pleasantly surprised recently when I bought 'Superman Space Age, Book 1' - an 80-page comic published this year but set in the 1960s. No ads at all. But then it's going to be a three-parter and the full book will be released next year, so maybe that makes a difference.

[Quirky Quokka]

'Quirky; THE HARE BRAINED HYPNOTIST (1942) it pops up on youtube with Warners playing whack-a-mole and trying to take it off as soon as they find it. happy hunting.

Thanks Morgus. Found it! Hopefully you haven't sent any of your clients flying out the window 

[Quirky Quokka]

Re the subject of comics for girls and whether girls read them.
Huge subject.
They definitely do read comics now, as witness Cosplay and Star Wars, Star Trek and Marvel Movie Fandom.
The British market created a fairly big market for comics aimed at girls, usually the girls were teachers, schoolgirls in boarding schools, au pairs, tutors and private nurses getting jobs in foreign nations and mysterious castles. The books also gave many European and South American artists a good living.
I guess these comics carried on the tradition of books for girls that were popular in the early part of the last century, like the Nancy Drew books, and the Enid Blyton series like, 'the Naughtiest Girl' series.   
The Silver age [in the US] was the end for Romance comics and books like Millie the Model.
DC made an attempt to do new romance comics and also put out some gothic titles aimed at females, but unsuccessfully.   
Archie thrived. But what was the real intended audience for Archie comics?     

I've picked up a few of those annuals aimed at girls, and found more on this site. They often had short stories, but with comics interspersed. The stories were often set in boarding schools, but were sometimes more adventurous.

DC and Marvel also have a lot of comics especially aimed at the 8-12 market, and young teens, with some of those specifically aimed at girls, like Superhero High, the Kamala Khan version of Ms Marvel, Spider Gwen, Supergirl and Batgirl. I've been helping a 14-year-old girl with reading for a while now, and she loves comics and graphic novels, including Superhero High and Scooby Doo, plus comics by other companies like the Geronimo Stilton comics and 'How to Train Your Dragon' comics. I think a lot of the publishers also see the educational value of comics now, and Geronimo Stilton and his crew have been particularly strong on that.

But I am something of an anomaly among my friends. I don't know any women my age who read comic books, though some read graphic novels and go to ComicCon. Maybe we all read our comics in the closet - LOL It's only recently that I've been brave enough to read a comic in public. Not something typically done by women of a certain age.

As for Archie, I think it's always been aimed at a teen market, and maybe a bit more towards girls. Though they've diversified in recent years and now have classic Archie and the newer Archie that ties in which the TV show Riverdale. Do teen boys like it as well? I'm not sure.

[Quirky Quokka]

I saw the ads for the ladies wear, and remembered an old Hi and Lois cartoon. He’s reading a catalog and she’s standing behind him asking if he planned on buying a bra.

Wow, I haven't heard of Hi and Lois for years. They used to have a strip in the newspapers here and I loved them. A bit like Blondie.

[Quirky Quokka]

Britain has a long tradition of comics for girls and women.  Even before Bunty and the like, the story papers featured titles for girls alongside Magnet, Nelson Lee, Rover. There were many pocket libraries aimed at older girls and women. True Life is a great example of romance, crime, mystery, often with decent art. We have some on site.
https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=3560

I just had a quick flick through one of them. Looks like some great melodrama. Will have to have a closer look.

[The Australian Panther]

where could you get some nice good girl art to look at?

As for Archie, I think it's always been aimed at a teen market, and maybe a bit more towards girls. Though they've diversified in recent years and now have classic Archie and the newer Archie that ties in which the TV show Riverdale. Do teen boys like it as well? I'm not sure.

Confession time. Two words. Dan DeCarlo. If you were an  adolescent boy and not likely to be buying Men's magazines, Dan's Archie works, often with girls in Bikinis on the covers, were great eye candy. And he drew women very well. 
Co-incidentally I was just on the web looking at comics yesterday and came across the original few JOSIE comics that he created. Before 'the Pussycats' Melody was obviously based on Marilyn Monroe. Boys took one look and lost their minds. And she was an air-head. Nice girl but an air-head. 
He left Archie over a legal dispute about ownership rights for JOSIE. As was usual for comic creators in the US, he lost.
Dan DeCarlo (1916–2001)
https://illustratorslounge.com/cartoon/dan-decarlo-1916-2001/

 

[Quirky Quokka]

Confession time. Two words. Dan DeCarlo. If you were an  adolescent boy and not likely to be buying Men's magazines, Dan's Archie works, often with girls in Bikinis on the covers, were great eye candy. And he drew women very well. 
Co-incidentally I was just on the web looking at comics yesterday and came across the original few JOSIE comics that he created. Before 'the Pussycats' Melody was obviously based on Marilyn Monroe. Boys took one look and lost their minds. And she was an air-head. Nice girl but an air-head. 
He left Archie over a legal dispute about ownership rights for JOSIE. As was usual for comic creators in the US, he lost.
Dan DeCarlo (1916–2001)
https://illustratorslounge.com/cartoon/dan-decarlo-1916-2001/

Thanks for that and the link. That was an interesting article and very much the Archie style I remember. I've bought a couple of new Archie comics this year, and though the art is done in the same style, it's just not the same as the originals. I loved the Betty and Veronica ones. I picked up a few old 1970s Archie comics at a comic book store a while ago. Brought back some great memories.

[Captain Audio]

I'm also wondering if The Diamond industry would go to such lengths to retrieve industrial-grade, uncut, diamonds.  For cut and registered high grade diamonds, I could understand.

I wondered the same thing. Seemed strange to me that he would risk his life to retrieve some diamonds. But if they were industrial diamonds that were going to be used to make weapons during the Cold War, it makes it more understandable.

At around that time the USSR had developed a method of compressing industrial diamonds under millions of tons of pressure to mold them into a single thick lens for use on their Venus probes. The lens allowed unobstructed radar and radio signals that the thick pressure resistent hull would have blocked.