[MarkWarner]

This week it's a Superhero ... well a pocket sized version anyway. Up to now I have lumped Doll Man in with Bulletman, as the two most ridiculous Superheroes (Bulletman because of his completely camp costume and headgear).

Anyway, I really hope to have my uninformed opinion changed! The book is Doll Man #8 and the main story we are concentrating on is the first one: The Corpse of the Doll Man https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=14465.

[narfstar]

The art was very good on this story. The story was typically preposterous. For a guy who always selects criminals, where do the women and children on the island come from? He also has no qualms about shrinking Martha. This guy must really hate long hair. That seems to be the only "horrible" looking feature. He pays his dumb henchmen in candy so he must be really evil. At least he found a way to shrink little underwear on them when the rest of their clothes are gone. The comic book wonders like Hulk's purple pants.

Doll Man is extremely confident. Why not let them catch me I can just escape later. I agree that, other than the SA Atom, diminutive heroes did not make sense. The only advantage to being small would be sneaking around and he did not even do that.

On the island the little people sure do climb fast. Darrell lowers the ladder and they are immediately atop it. There are not enough of them to really swarm, and they are supposed to be weak, so they could easily have been kicked over.

But you know what? I enjoyed the GA goofiness.

[Corganoid]

Ah, yes, the Doll Man.  What can be said of him beyond the obvious? 

All that aside, this was quite a morbid story. The violence throughout was especially horrifying. Dr Vargo's shrinking process looked extremely unpleasant, but I did have to giggle to myself when they put the guy in a steam bath to shrink him. He's not a cotton shirt for crying out

What a smug thug Slick was.  Does he always go around boasting about how handsome and smart he is?  I loved the irony that he became an ugly and mostly mindless little guy.

That being said, this story was everything I love about classic comics...the fun and innocence of it all. Motto mention the junk science and

Did anyone else notice that Dr. Vargo looked a lot like Cain from House of Mystery?

[paw broon]

No, well no untill you mentioned it.
Mark, I don't think that I'm going to be the one to change your opinion, as the whole idea is a bit lame.  But, it's  Quality comic and they were often a bit above most others in terms of a house standard, so it is always worth having a look at any that turn up.  And, of course, Doll Man features Torchy.  Nuff said.
At present, I agree with most of what has been said. Off for another read through.

[RickDeckard525]

So women can't be criminals? And don't you think that they would have children after years on that island? Really, narfstar...

[narfstar]

A couple women with all those brainless men. What a wild place

[jimmm kelly]

Last year I started reading the Doll Man stories and I got about this far. I then decided that I should go back and read some other Quality comics to put Doll Man in context--and then I got distracted by other things. But I fully intend to get back to reading them all, even if it might take me some time to complete this reading project.

The idea that Doll Man and Bulletman should be singled out as MOST ridiculous seems utterly ludicrous to me. I've been ruminating on this sort of attitude of late and I could say a lot about it--but that would have my train of thought jumping the tracks pretty quick. So best not to discuss it here and keep to the rails.

The Doll Man stories in this issue are failry representative of the series by this point, although none of these stories struck me as being exceptionally good. There are other Doll Man stories that afford much more of interest. However this issue is remarkable for a couple of good reasons.

One reason being that this was the first issue of DOLL MAN QUARTERLY since 1943. I think this was because of paper rationing during the war. Quality had to be conservative about which features they granted their own titles--and so Darrel Dane had to make due with his featured series in FEATURE COMICS until he was finally able to stretch his legs in this issue of his own mag.

The other reason being that Bill Ward's Torchy begins her run as an ongoing feature in DOLL MAN with this issue (gaining her own short-lived title in a few years hence). This first story is relatively tame as future issues will expose much more of Torchy's charms.

It doesn't happen very often nowadays, but I remember from years gone by that clothes would sometimes shrink in the laundry--and not just a little but a lot. You would have a man-size T-shirt shrink to a size that could only fit a little baby. Or conversely a sweater would expand to fit an entire sorority. This seems to be one of the ideas that they are working with in the first story. And you see the same kind of thing fairly often in old time cartoons.

In the early Doll Man stories, Martha and her father both knew that Darrel was Doll Man. Given he lived so much of the time around them, there wasn't much of a way how they couldn't know. Darrel is hardly ever seen in his own apartment (I think he has an apartment, not a house) and you have to wonder if he and Martha aren't playing house. Her father seems not to really pay attention to anything except his scientific pursuits, so Martha and Darrel probably have the run of the place.

Also there's not a whole lot of difference between Darrel and Doll Man. It's rare that a story monopolizes on the whole secret identity question--the way that Superman comics have done--so it makes no sense that they retconned away the Roberts' knowledge that the two are the same. In or out of costume, Darrel seems like a classic adventure guy. It's interesting to consider what his back story might be. Martha herself has some dark secret we never found out about (but it was bad enough that she was being blackmailed).

Originally, Darrel used a drug to shrink his body down to six inch size. But this only lasted for a few stories as he soon was able to effect the change through pure will. In this issue we see that when he goes from being full-sized to doll-sized there's a panel that shows stars and planets. You don't see the actual shrinking process. The stellar show makes me think there's some kind of dimensional explosion that happens at this point.

The final story in the issue is my favourite of the three--and it seems more polished than the other two. It has a small mystery and there's some nice interplay between Martha and Darrel/Doll Man (again showing that the secret identity gambit did nothing for the series). The ending, with Darrel not remembering what name Martha used at the hotel, is a nice little comic touch. It's these slight characters bits that often set Doll Man apart from the rather routine super-heroes of the '40s.

[paw broon]

All in all, I quite enjoyed the whole comic - it's G.A., the art's well enough done, there are a couple of nasty bad guys and the hero comes through in the end.  It's the whole idea of Doll Man that has put me off over the years. A hero who becomes tiny always seems a bit useless and I notice that in one scene, Doll Man stays at his miniature size and hitches a ride on the back of a bus (in the 3rd. story) when he should simply have become Darrell Dane again and hailed a taxi.  Where the S.A. Atom scored as a shrinking hero was that he could become really small and use all sorts of ingenious ways to travel.  And he could adjust his weight .  Atom's adventures in sub atomic worlds were very imaginative and entertaining.   But, 20 years earlier, Doll Man is more like a miniature gymnast.  There is also the continuity problem that sometimes he seems to have the ability to punch someone unconscious and at other times states that his weight allows him to easily climb up a phone cable, and he couldn't punch someones lights out without weight behind the punch.  But he doesn't have the power to adjust his weight. (See page 22)  And while we're on that page, there is a nice panel right at the bottom.  I like that one.  Then again, I could have missed something so over to the rest of you to show me where I went wrong
For me, considering the quality of hero Quality published, Doll Man seems slightly lacking, my preferences being for Black Condor and The Ray - apart from anything else they were so well drawn for a while. 
But I'm a superhero nut and that's what Doll Man is and that alone makes me happy. Well, o.k. I admit it, I did enjoy Torchy.  Actually, that makes me think that, is this comic really for kids?  What with bondage, scanties, violence?

[jimmm kelly]

I'm surprised that other readers don't share the wish fulfilment fantasy of being tiny. That's something I always thought about as a little kid and still think about as an adult. There's also the fantasy of having your dolls (or action figures) come to life.

It's up there with flying and invisibility in my fantasy wishlist. I grant that the Atom made better use of this, but still I thought more people would see why Doll Man is an attractive idea. Plus it affords so many opportunities for visually interesting compositions--especially in the hands of a clever comic book artist.

[paw broon]

Oh yes, certainly visually interesting compositions but being tiny is not something I ever fancied - I'm not very big as it is.  I think I said this a while ago, that when I was wee boy and reading Marvelman, me and my pals would be out playing and every now and then the cry "KIMOTA" would go up.  Desperation to turn into Mighty Marvelman.  Nothing happened!
Also, I've never had action figures, apart from some tin soldiers and they all got quickly broken.  Tying them onto a handkerchief as a makeshift parachute and flinging them skywards wasn't really the best treatment.
Even today as a self confessed superhero nut, the only action figure I have is a small plastic Phantom figure which was given to me years ago.  I don't see the point of them and am continually arguing about them with my pal Clark.
Actually, I'm now interested in what powers, if any, the rest of us always fancied.  Me, apart from being Marvelman, I wanted a Hoppicopter, like Flip McCoy, The Floating Boy - most of you wont have a clue who he was but he appeared in The Topper.  Here is some info. from Peter Gray's blog.
http://petergraycartoonsandcomics.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/paddy-brennans-flip-mccoy-from-topper.html
  Lovely stuff, but later, he got a jet pack thingy that wasn't quite so attractive to me.

[jimmm kelly]

Up until I was nine years old, I was always the smallest boy in my class. In grade 4, the annex school kids came over to our school and there was an even smaller kid who knocked me from my position as smallest boy.

Instead of fighting against my size, I seem to have embraced it. I knew I could never be the tallest, but I could at least be the smallest. And there was a gap in our backyard fence that I could always fit through. Like the boy in THE TIN DRUM, I seemed to will myself to remain small and never grow big. I was kind of sad when I lost that designation as the smallest boy.

I don't have too many dolls or action figures, but I have a few. There was no such thing as an action figure when I was a boy. They were all dolls. In my mind, the difference between one and the other is that a doll is well-made, while an action figure is cheaply made. Also dolls tend to have clothes you put on them, while action figures have painted on clothes.

I always played out stories with dolls or whatever I could make by hand. I don't do that anymore (not much), but it's still something I treasure from childhood--which is why I keep the dolls and action figures I have.

[MarkWarner]

And we are off ... starting with a full page comic story advertisement "Volto from Mars". After reading it two new items have already been added to my to-do list. I need to google what Grape-Nuts are and who Hop Harrison was. I really hope this is not going to be a trend for the whole book!!

The first story, Doll Man certainly wins the prize for asking the stupidest question: "This must be Dr. Vargo's island! But why is the pier so high and the ladder kept way out of reach?" Blimey ...  you have just deliberately got yourself captured to find an island that the good Doctor is keeping his miniature people on ... go figure!!!

Well that was not too bad at all ... am not sure who is still running Dr. Vargo's museum, seeing as he was blown up and then swamped by a tidal wave, but hey-ho! My first ever Doll Man story and it was way better than I thought it would be. BTW the little people on the island reminded me of George Romero

[jimmm kelly]

The Vulto ad surprised me. When I was a kid, I would have thought nothing of Vulto's assumption that white people are good and non-white people are bad--since we were delivered the same message constantly on TV in the '60s. But if you look at the ad with hindsight, it makes no sense that this guy from Mars picks sides. If I've learned nothing else from STAR TREK, I've learned that nothing good can come from violating the Prime Directive.

[paw broon]

Perhaps it was something to do with the fact that the "savages" were brandishing rather lethal looking sharp thingies and seem to be chasing the couple in the canoe.  Seriously, I understand your point.
A pile of Volto pages here:-
http://voltoarchives.pbworks.com/w/page/9545487/FrontPage

[crashryan]

This turned out to be a fun read. I was struck by how good the art was, especially on the first story. The Quality house-style inking was subdued and lacked the stiff, clunky look of much Quality art. The stories were entertaining but, as others have noted, the secret-identity angle really got in the way. You have to wonder how bright Martha is when she's fooled every time, while Dr. Vargo figures out the Dane-Doll Man connection immediately (preview page 9). Not that he does anything with the knowledge. I wonder who's running Dr. Vargo's museum in the end. Maybe Martha saw an opportunity to make a quick buck. One minor quibble is that the shrunken men don't look particularly hideous. Physically they're more Charles Atlas than zombies. It would have been nice to see a few close-ups of their bestial faces. In long shots about all we can tell is that they need a barber.

Clearly the Silver Age Atom was inspired by The Doll Man. The SA character worked better because Broome and Fox's pseudo-scientific justifications gave his powers an internal consistency, even though it was all hooey. But editors in Doll Man's day didn't seem to feel a need for consistency. A character's powers could vary from story to story without anyone caring. The Doll Man's long run suggests the readers didn't care, either.

The Candy one-pagers were well-drawn but largely laugh-free. Poison Ivy was just plain weird. The text story was unusual in that the Chinese philosopher and the South Seas natives all spoke standard English. Nary a syllable of pidgin or baby talk!

I associate Volto with Frank Robbins, but this doesn't look like him. I always assumed the "Volto" lettering meant Volto spoke his own name while pointing to activate his power. Recently someone suggested it was instead supposed to be a sound effect, or some kind of cosmic voice triggered by Volto's using his abilities. Now there's an important issue to clarify.

I forgot to mention Torchy's "origin story." The artwork is easier to take than later Torchy stories because the ultra-fetishistic style Bill Ward developed strikes me as grotesque rather than erotic. Torchy doesn't spend as much time disrobing as she does in later stories but she makes up for it with the see-through lingerie shot. I was caught by surprise when the guy mistakes Torchy for a hooker. It suggests the editor was writing for adults reading the comic, not kids.

[bowers]

Doll Man is, indeed, a second-string hero, but still enjoyable. Heck, who wouldn't want to be able to hide in mail boxes or jump out of cuckoo clocks? Zolne's art was well up to the Quality standard - loved the strange perspective on the splash page. Joe Millard's script was pretty good, even with some inconsistencies, such as the shrinking clothes and why the museum was still open. This issue would also appear to be the debut of Bill Ward's Torchy Todd. Didn't know she was in Doll Man Comics- I had only seen, and enjoyed, her before in the pages of Modern Comics. It would seem she was a backup feature in both comics at roughly the same time, but I don't know if the same stories were reused or if each comic had it's own story. She also later got her own comic, which only lasted six issues. As for the Volto page, Grape Nuts contain neither grapes nor nuts, just a concoction of wheat and barley baked into a chunk sized mess, oozing sucrose. According to Wiki, the glycemic index is 71, more than table sugar! Little wonder it made Jim "feel like a mountain of energy". Anyway, I enjoyed this issue, so I'll probably need to download some more. I think at least part of the reason I'm drawn to GA comics is that they don't try to take themselves too seriously. Cheers, Bowers

[Drusilla lives!]

Been somewhat busy this past week, so I only got around to reading "Corpse of the Doll Man" and the Torchy story in this issue... not that I've ever read any other Doll Man stories/issues. 

Well, as for our featured Doll Man story I have to say I enjoyed it, but not enough to compel me to go back and read the rest of the issue.  Although this wasn't due to any intrinsic problem I had with the whole "shrinking man" concept (as others have already mentioned) or the Darrel Dane character (which I thought rather likeable). 

Perhaps it's just that once you've seen Cole's Plastic Man in action, which imo is so overwhelming visually (not to mention so "over the top" funny), there's not much reason to get all worked up about a hero who only shrinks down to doll size when needed.  Unless of course the stories are REALLY good.  By which I mean they really work to develop a bond between the reader and the characters beyond the primary gimmick/superpower in use.  Which I suppose is one reason why Mr. Fantastic still "works" as a character despite the prior existence of a comic book plastic man... but I digress.     

As far as artwork, it was pretty good imo, and I can see how Reed Crandall would fit in rather well here stylistically later on.   

Found Dr. Vargo's berating and bulling of his stooges both excessive and rather absurd.  I mean, who would work for this guy?... Nice to see he went out with a bang in the end.

Liked the Torchy story... had a laugh or two.  And it's always interesting to me to see how the artwork for a character changes over the years from its initial concept as an artist grows along with it (although a lot of the later Torchy work was penciled by Gill Fox). 

[jimmm kelly]

I recall Gil Kane and Murphy Anderson both saying in different interviews that they were influenced in their work on the Atom by the artwork on Doll Man.

Anderson made no secret of his admiration for Lou Fine, who was the second artist to draw Doll Man--in the second adventure--after Will Eisner drew the origin story. And Fine was the regular artist thereafter for about a year. It's understandable that Lou's work on Black Condor and the Ray commands a lot of interest--but both those features fell off the map after Lou Fine left them in 1943.

Kane was probably influenced a lot by Reed Crandall, who did a substantial amount of Doll Man art in '41 and '42 before his military service and then returned to the character once in awhile on the odd story or cover  between '46 and '52.

Of course, Crandall is not the same as Jack Cole. Cole's Plastic Man art benefits from his eye for the absurd--but Crandall was very good at doing forced perspective (something that I think Gil Kane picked up on).

If you don't count the Spirit, the leading features for Quality during the '40s seem to have been Plastic Man, Blackhawk, Doll Man, Uncle Sam and Kid Eternity. Maybe at another house, all of these would have been considered second banana heroes--but at Quality, the unusual concepts got more traction.

[narfstar]

I think the overall artistic standard was higher at Quality. Even second rate heroes were drawn well and stood out.

[Drusilla lives!]

... Kane was probably influenced a lot by Reed Crandall, who did a substantial amount of Doll Man art in '41 and '42 before his military service and then returned to the character once in awhile on the odd story or cover  between '46 and '52. ...

I wasn't aware that Crandall had worked on Doll Man early on... I did recall reading he had worked extensively on the Black Hawks though.  Perhaps that's why the art in this story seemed so Crandall-like to me.

[jimmm kelly]

I think the ealier issues of FEATURE COMICS with Doll Man suffered for Eisner and Fine using a cramped twelve panel (four tier) grid pattern for the layout (although Fine still manages to do some fun things within those constraints)--in issues 27 - 34. They ease up to a nine panel (three tier) grid with issue 35 and thereafter, which gives a little more breathing room.

John Celardo takes over the art with issue 38 and does his best to follow what Eisner and Fine had established on the series. When Reed Crandall comes on board with issue 44, he also uses this grid, but soon starts to play with it and open up the page to more experimentation. And he does a lot more with camera angles and perspective.

Just now looking again at some of the pages from those Crandall issues, I see in a lot of his stories he did the looking up the villain's nose as he gets hit shot--which is something I always associated with Gil Kane. [See FEATURE COMICS 48, pages 9 and 11 (pages 7 and 9 of the Doll Man story) for an early example of this: https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=13659 ]

I think it was Crandall's example that a lot of the other Doll Man artists--like Al Bryant--were trying to follow.

[paw broon]

That's a nice looking story. Thanks, jimmm.
But one of the other "miniature" heroes is Tinyman from the MF Captain Marvel series.  The difference in quality is apparent in these comics but doesn't stop me enjoying them.  Tinyman is in the last story, teamed up with Captain Marvel:-
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=36392

[jimmm kelly]

Yet another Captain Marvel? I never heard of this one. I'll have to check out some more of these comics when I have time.

[narfstar]

He is obscure SA so of course I have every issue. I did not know that MF also published a teen title called Henry Brewster until several years. I had to track those down and I have them all. Not all scanned yet though. Squarebound are not fun to scan

[twiztor]

a bit behind, but finally read this one.

gotta say, i liked the artwork, but the storyline was lamesville. his ability to turn small wasn't used whatsoever in the story, and other people being turned small was just a coincidence.
the dialogue was drab. not interested in any more Doll-Man stories.