sign in sign up
<<
Home , Bob Powell, Howard Nostrand, Inker, Lee Elias

HARVEY HORRORS HARVEY HORRORS COLLECTED WORKS BLACK CAT MYSTERY V O L U M E O N E COLLECTED WORKS COLLECTED BLACK CAT MYSTERY CAT BLACK

VOLUME

August 1951 - May 1952 1 Issues 30 - 35

Foreword by PS Artbooks Christopher Fowler Christopher Fowler - Original illustration by Graham Humphreys

8 English Idiot Child Falls For Sinister US Scam!

An Utterly Unhealthy Foreword by Christopher Fowler

Give me a break, I was nine year’s old for frig’s sake. I had fawn-coloured National Health specs held together with Elastoplast and a haircut that came courtesy of a Tupperware bowl. Kids’ Gap was not around to produce miniature outfits that would make me look like my Dad, and anyway my Dad wore his grey suit and tie on the beach, so I wouldn’t have wanted to look like him. I just wanted the stuff I saw in the backs of American . I wanted 100 magnets and figures, I wanted to sell ‘Grit’ and send away for the Charles Atlas Body-Building Course. And I had very specific needs about the comics themselves. I wanted to see fight on top of a giant hat. I wanted another issue featuring Red and Superman Blue. I wanted The Atom to tackle other carnivorous plants apart from a Venus Flytrap. I collected ’s bubblegum cards and every Marvel comic and Mad magazine, and even Cracked and Sick. I could tell Harvey Kurtzman from . I was more American than a kid from Kansas. Which made it all the more embarrassing that I was a skinny English Londoner. What we didn’t get in Greenwich was much in the way of horror. I needed the EC , but they were nowhere to be found. Instead we had strange black and white reprints of stories assembled randomly into cheap volumes. They looked like supermarket own brand products. To assuage my horror habit I had to rely on Famous Monsters Of Filmland, which was a bit lame and full of bad puns, except for the ads. I wanted the hand in a box that snatched your money, and rubber horror masks that made your face sweat, I wanted 10 foot inflatable pythons, giant weather balloons, and ‘sea monkeys’ that were actually dried brine shrimps, despite the fact that the artwork showed them sitting in armchairs reading newspapers and smoking pipes. I tried to work out how I could send away for 8mm reels of ‘The Giant Claw’, in which fighter jets fought a giant prehistoric bird. There were ads for ‘The Deadly Mantis’ and other lousy monster movies, Aurora horror model kits for which you could even get accessories to pimp your models of the Wolfman and the

9 Featuring artist (May 13th 1924 - 1984, USA)

When measured against the magnitude of work produced by Harvey’s bullpen of artists, Howard Nostrand’s portfolio appears somewhat modest. He spent only seven years in the industry, zealously pouring over his drawing board as comics once again flourished in that period from the late 40s through until the mid 50s, before briefly making a return in the 1970s. Any attempt to appraise his work in terms of mere quantity would be completely missing the point; an artist of Nostrand’s calibre can only truly be judged by the arresting display at work in his artistry. He was one of the most accomplished talents of his day, who for many years went almost unnoticed.

After only a single semester at the Art Career School, Between 1948 and 1950, the studio received regular the teenage Nostrand decided it was time to move on. Their assignments from Street and Smith. Powell’s team created curriculum had very little to offer him, but thanks to a friend some of the finest tales in the company’s memorable run of his father he found a position in ’s studio. This of Shadow Comics, and would do the same with Doc was in 1948 when Powell was looking for another to Savage. Nostrand would play his part in the creation of work alongside background artists George Siefringer and these stories, and went on to apply his fledgling craft in Martin Epp. In those first few months, he learned how to ink several titles published by Magazine Enterprises, which the layouts placed before him by his seniors, affording each included Red Hawk, Straight Arrow and Bobby Benson’s page the time and care to bring out the virtues in their crisp B-Bar-B Riders. Before Fawcett were forced to close their pencil work. Only when he had satisfactorily learned his doors, he revved his brush strokes and slammed his foot trade would he be handed the privilege of a blank canvas, on the gas for Hot Rod Comics and then high tailed it for a but never in his time under Powell would he be allowed to western adventure in the company of Lash LaRue. He then ink the faces of the characters in these tales. That remained went on to terrorise the youth of America with several chilling the responsibility of headman Bob Powell. His wealth of episodes for Ziff Davis’s Tales #1 (Winter 1951) and experience had taught him that the reader’s eye would be Weird Thrillers #3 (Spring 1952). When he had just turned drawn to the expressions of those who played centre stage twenty, he stepped into the den of the King of Comics, Victor in these fantastic tales, and did all he could to ensure they Fox. Fox left quite an impression on Nostrand, in the years intensified the story’s narrative flow. that followed his sentiment for the man was rarely restrained, Image kindly supplied by Heritage Auctions (HA.com) Image kindly supplied by Heritage Auctions (HA.com) Image kindly supplied by Heritage

Black Cat Mystery #46 October 1953 Black Cat Mystery #46 October 1953 12 Image kindly supplied by Heritage Auctions (HA.com) Image kindly supplied by Heritage

Black Cat Mystery #46 October 1953 13 Black Cat Mystery August 1951 - Issue #30

Cover Art -

Gateway To Death - Unknown Pencils - Vic Donahue Inks - Unknown

The Thing From the Grave Script - Unknown Pencils - Rudy Palais Inks - Rudy Palais

The Werewolf Must Kill Script - Unknown Pencils - Lee Elias Inks - Lee Elias

Information Source: ! A nonprofit, Internet-based organization of international volunteers dedicated to building a database covering all printed comics throughout the world. If you believe any of this data to be incorrect or can add valuable additional information, please let us know www.comics.org All rights to images reserved by the respective copyright holders. All original advertisement features remain the copyright of the respective trading company.

Privacy Policy All portions of the Grand Comics Database that are subject to copyright are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. This includes but is not necessarily limited to our database schema and data distribution format. The GCD Web Site code is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

18

22 23 24 25 26 27 HARVEY HORRORS COLLECTED WORKS COLLECTED Collect all 4 Volumes of Black Cat Mystery from PS Artbooks BLACK CAT MYSTERY CAT BLACK

Black Cat Mystery Black Cat Mystery Volume One Volume Two

Black Cat Mystery Black Cat Mystery Volume Three Volume Four VOLUME 1

PS Artbooks