DOUBLES: Doppelgangers, Mirrored Motifs, Before/After, & Total Plagiarism

[Doohickamabob]

Realistic Comics also spread comic-book love with its Realistic Romances title:

 

 

Realistic Romances #1 = "The Scarf of Passion" by Robert Bloch.

Realistic Romances #2 = "Chorus Girl" by Thyra Samter Winslow.

Realistic Romances #3 = "No Bed of Her Own" by Val Lewton.

Realistic Romances #4 = "Confidential" by Donald Henderson Clarke.

 

Notice that with many of these covers, such as R.R.#2/"Chorus Girl," the art was significantly cropped to make it more suitable for the younger comic-book audience. Goodbye to the creamy thighs... However, with painted art like on #4/"Confidential," it is already so stylized that no change is necessary.

 

 

Realistic Romances #5 = "Teach Me to Love" by Jack Woodford.

Realistic Romances #6 = "The Amorous Interne" by Edward Reltid.

Realistic Romances #7 = "As They Reveled" by Philip Wylie.

Realistic Romances #8 = "Nina" by Donald Henderson Clarke.

 

"The Amorous Interne" is my favorite from this group and I recently acquired a VG+ copy for a nice price on eBay.

[Doohickamabob]

Avon's title Romantic Love ran for 13 issues and has one of the most inconsistent sets of images of nearly any comic book title ever published. From one cover to the next, you don't know whether to expect a photograph, a painting, or even a painted photo. Avon's first issue was later reprinted under the "Realistic Reprints" label as Sparkling Love #1, and Romantic Love #3 also became a generic reprint:

 

 

Romantic Love #1 = "A Hell of a Good Time" by James T. Farrell.

Romantic Love #2 = "Career in C Major" by James M. Cain.

Romantic Love #3 = "Uneasy Virtue" by Dana Wilson.

[Doohickamabob]

These are some of the more recognizable covers from the Romantic Love run:

 

 

Romantic Love #5 = "Love for Sale" by John Wilstach.

Romantic Love #6 = "The Crystal Girl" by Stephen Longstreet.

Romantic Love #7 = "Virgie Goodbye" by Nathan Rothman.

Romantic Love #8 = "The Women in His Life" by E. Nash.

 

Notice on R.L. #6 how the man is holding his cigarette so close to the woman's neck, with the smoke rising right back up into his face! The cigarette ash is positioned to fall into the woman's cleavage. Also, notice how for R.L. #6, they cropped the image just enough to prevent the visibility of the woman's rear thighs. (I need to get my mind out of the gutter.)

 

 

Romantic Love #8 = "The Love Trap" by Vina Delmar.

Romantic Love #9 = "Help Wanted -- Male" by Thomas Stone.

Romantic Love #10 = "Iron Man" by W.R. Burnett.

Romantic Love #11 = "Frisco Gal" by Clarkson Crane.

Romantic Love #12 = "A Good Time Man" by E.P. Keating.

Romantic Love #13 = "Stories of Venial Sin" by John O'Hara.

 

R.L. #9 is one of my favorites of the bunch (in spite of the woman's duck lips), and I have yet to track down a copy of the comic. Anybody want to sell me one?

 

R.L. #10 is probably one of my least favorites, due to the unsettling way the man is staring at us, instead of reciprocating the affections of the dish hanging onto him. This "Iron Man" appears to have some things in common with Tony Stark.

[Doohickamabob]

Campus Romances is a strange idea for a comic title -- is it designed to be read only by women in college? Do college-age women really read comic books? It only lasted three issues so maybe not. Though issue #1 did get its own Realistic Reprint with a different-colored background:

 

 

Campus Romances #1 = "A Woman of Sin" by Ben Hecht, and later "Jealous Woman" by James M. Cain. Avon cannibalized from itself on an ongoing basis!

Campus Romances #2 = "Where the Girls Were Different" by Erskine Caldwell.

Campus Romances #3 = "Strange Desires" by Len Zinberg. (Notice they cropped her short-shorts right out of the image.)

 

Here are some "leftovers" from the romance titles/crossovers:

 

 

Reform School Girl = "Reform School Girl" by Felice Swados. Anybody got an extra copy around that they want to donate to me? (Of either the rare and valuable comic, or the rare and valuable digest?)

 

The comic titled "For a Night of Love" is an Avon one-shot adapting a story by Emile Zola. I have never seen a copy of this in person but it is one of the most pink, girly, bodice-ripper covers I've ever seen on a golden-age comic. The artwork is cannibalized from the paperback "Amorous Philandre" by Jean-Galli DeBibiena.

 

At bottom is another Avon one-shot, "Complete Romance" subtitled "Women to Love." The Realistic Comic version of this is just "Women to Love," and considered much more rare (I recently saw a copy on eBay go for a high price, considering it's an obscure romance title). Both covers come courtesy the paperback "On the Spot" by Edgar Wallace, and unfortunately both comics have been given the boobs-darkening treatment. Interesting side-note: The little man getting shot in the corner is re-used in the imagery of an Avon crime comic cover, which I am about to show you...

[Doohickamabob]

Enough romance already! Let's see some CRIME COVERS:

 

 

Even though "Crime on the Waterfront" is numbered 4 on the cover, I did not see any other issues in the Grand Comic Database, and I'm thinking maybe it was a one-shot that they numbered "4" to make it appear more successful, which was a marketing ploy many comic publishers (such as Ziff-Davis) started using in the early 1950s.

 

The cover is an attractive skewed triptych of images showing gangsters and criminals shooting or being shot by guns, with the sexy and vulnerable red-dress woman at the center composition.

 

The center image is from "Unconscious Witness" by R. Austin Freeman, and the right-hand image is from "On the Spot" by Edgar Wallace (which also forms the cover of Avon's "Complete Romance"/"Women to Love") romance comic.

 

I tried to find any paperback that contained the image of little man with the tommy gun, at the left. Never was able to figure out where that comes from. Anybody know?

 

NEXT UP: Avon's crime titles "Gangsters and Gun Molls" and "Murderous Gangsters." My feeling is they should have combined these into one title, "Murderous Gangsters and Gun Molls." They even have the same lettering font, so why not? For each of these titles, some of the issues' covers were painted and obviously from a paperback source, and some of the issues (not shown here) have comic-drawn covers:

 

 

Gangsters and Gun Molls #1 = "Four Boys, a Girl, and a Gun" by Wilard Weiner

Gangsters and Gun Molls #3 = "Flash Casey, Hard-Boiled Detective" by George Harmon Coxe.

Murderous Gangsters #2 = "The Blonde, the Gangster, and the Private Eye" by Dale Clark.

Murderous Gangsters #3 = "Murder in Her Big Blue Eyes" by Julius Long.

 

There is an interesting similarity (coincidence?) to the fact that two of these covers (which happen to be my two favorites) come from books with kooky titles like "Four Boys, a Girl, and a Gun" or "The Blonde, the Gangster, and the Private Eye."

 

[Doohickamabob]

More crime covers, including two based on "Little Caesar" books:

 

 

Police Lineup #1 = "The Green Ice Murders" by Raoul Whitefield.

Police Lineup #2 = "Little Caesar" by W.R. Burnett

Police Lineup #3 = "On the Spot" by Edgar Wallace (an earlier version of this paperback cover than the one seen in an earlier post with a crossover-comic cover)

Lucky Luciano and Murder, Inc. = "Little Caesar" by W.R. Burnett.

 

 

Prison Break #2 = "Blondie Iscariot" by Edgar Lustgarten.

Parole Breakers #1 = "She Posed for Death" by Russell Gordon

Parole Breakers #2 = both "Sinister Errand" by Peter Cheyney, and "Unfaithful" by John Baxter -- though in the latter case, the gun has been replaced with paper! The female on this cover is said to be inspired by screen actress Veronica Lake.

[Doohickamabob]

Finally, "The Saint" covers, and some assorted Western genre covers:

 

 

The Saint #7 = "The Saint in Action" by Leslie Charteris

The Saint #10 = "Friday for Death" by Lawrence Lariar

The Saint #11 = "Lady, the Guy is Dead" by edward Ronns.

The Saint #12 = "The Case of the Dark Hero" by Peter Cheney.

 

 

Wild Bill Hickok and the Border Outlaws #8 = "The Round-Up" by Oscar J. Friend.

Wild Bill Hickok and the Killer From Texas! #9 = Avon Western Reader #4

Jesse James Gang's Great Prison Break #5 = Avon Western Reader #3

Jesse James #6 = "Pardners of the Badlands" by Bliss Lomax.

Jesse James #7 = "Cattle War Buckaroo" by William Hopson.

Bad Men of the West (giant 128-page comic book) = "Gone to Texas" by John W. Thompson, Jr.

 

I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE IMAGES!

[goldust40]

Great work, Doohickamabob. I have a couple of the comics (Murderous Gangsters 2 and The Saint 11), but have never seen the paperbacks where the images were swiped from. Very much a fan of those crime covers.

[Sqeggs]

Enough romance already! Let's see some CRIME COVERS:

 

 

Even though "Crime on the Waterfront" is numbered 4 on the cover, I did not see any other issues in the Grand Comic Database, and I'm thinking maybe it was a one-shot that they numbered "4" to make it appear more successful, which was a marketing ploy many comic publishers (such as Ziff-Davis) started using in the early 1950s.

 

The cover is an attractive skewed triptych of images showing gangsters and criminals shooting or being shot by guns, with the sexy and vulnerable red-dress woman at the center composition.

 

The center image is from "Unconscious Witness" by R. Austin Freeman, and the right-hand image is from "On the Spot" by Edgar Wallace (which also forms the cover of Avon's "Complete Romance"/"Women to Love") romance comic.

 

 

 

This is great stuff. Thanks very much for compiling it for us.

 

One minor point: I'm a fan of the now largely forgotten Dr. Thorndyke mysteries written by R. Austin Freeman. Thorndyke was both a doctor and a lawyer and solved many of his mysteries using scientific methods. He was a proper upperclass Englishmen in the style of the Golden Age of British mysteries during the 1920s and 1930s and never used the Mickey Spillane-style automatic depicted on this cover. Nor, to the best of my recollection, did he ever encounter blonde bombshells. In fact, any one at the time who bought this paperback expecting a story somehow connected to the cover would have been sadly disappointed.

 

Trivia note: Freeman was the inventor of the "inverted" detective story where the reader is shown the murder at the beginning of the story and then watches as the detective tries to solve the mystery. An approach that, of course, became hugely popular in the Colombo TV series. The Unconscious Witness, though, was not one of his inverted stories.

[Kevin.J]

Great thread, just read the whole thing.

Fantastic covers and an interesting theme.

 

 

[Boba]

FICTION HOUSE SELF-PLAGIARISM, PART 1: CROC-O-MIRROR

 

I guess when you're turning out literally hundreds of jungle-themed comic books, after a while you just give up and create an exact replica of a cover you already published...

Great idea for a thread, and a lot of work required gathering all these wonderful examples.

This will be a terrific holiday read.

 

This example above astonishes me. I can't imagine why they would use the same illustration only flopped.

I mean besides mirroring the image they didn't even try to make it look different.

[Doohickamabob]

Great idea for a thread, and a lot of work required gathering all these wonderful examples. This will be a terrific holiday read.

Thanks, and glad to hear it is in the holiday reading/viewing plans. I had a lot of fun tracking these down and posting them.

This example above astonishes me. I can't imagine why they would use the same illustration only flopped. I mean besides mirroring the image they didn't even try to make it look different.

It is interesting to note, though, that they did make a significant adjustment to the man's hair. I wonder if the previous hairstyle was deemed too female?

[Boba]

This example above astonishes me. I can't imagine why they would use the same illustration only flopped. I mean besides mirroring the image they didn't even try to make it look different.

It is interesting to note, though, that they did make a significant adjustment to the man's hair. I wonder if the previous hairstyle was deemed too female?

That and they enlarged the figures a bit too

[Straw-Man]

 

 

[Sqeggs]

 

 

 

I think it may be in the forward to the Dark Horse reprints of the Green Lama that they mention that Raboy was a very slow worker. Under deadline pressure, he apparently relied on using tracings of his previous work.

 

In one of the interviews in the new book on Baker, the guy interviewed talks about how they compiled "swipe" files. Some of it was to avoid a trip to the library to see what a tank or a cruise ship or whatever would look like. But he mentions including stuff from other comic artists in the file. So, I would guess some of the file was used for shortcuts when composing scenes and figures. That was my take on what he was saying, at any rate.

[Doohickamabob]

This is great stuff. Thanks very much for compiling it for us.

 

One minor point: I'm a fan of the now largely forgotten Dr. Thorndyke mysteries written by R. Austin Freeman. Thorndyke was both a doctor and a lawyer and solved many of his mysteries using scientific methods. He was a proper upperclass Englishmen in the style of the Golden Age of British mysteries during the 1920s and 1930s and never used the Mickey Spillane-style automatic depicted on this cover. Nor, to the best of my recollection, did he ever encounter blonde bombshells. In fact, any one at the time who bought this paperback expecting a story somehow connected to the cover would have been sadly disappointed.

 

Trivia note: Freeman was the inventor of the "inverted" detective story where the reader is shown the murder at the beginning of the story and then watches as the detective tries to solve the mystery. An approach that, of course, became hugely popular in the Colombo TV series. The Unconscious Witness, though, was not one of his inverted stories.

Hey Sqeggs! Thanks for the cover-art insight and the trivia note. I didn't know that about Freeman. I am a big fan of "Columbo" -- I found those TV shows excellent to listen to while doing lots of visual detail-work. I think I've listened to the first 2 or 3 seasons without even watching them, but you don't really need to watch "Columbo" to understand it, because the writing is so friggin' great. I have to say that after listening to "Columbo" for a while, Peter Falk starts to become scary. The way he asks questions is guaranteed to drive a murder suspect NUTS, because Columbo always asks all his questions, starts to leave, and just as the murderer is breathing a sigh of relief, and Columbo is juuuuuuust about to close the door, he comes back for ONE MORE QUESTION... and that one more question is THE question that unravels the murderer's cover story... It's chilling, because you knoowwwww it's coming, and you kinda feel sorry for the suspect who thinks he's got his alibi sewn up and is going to get away scot-free. Nope.

 

Anyway, sorry for the diatribe there... But if you're a paperback fan you might like this story I just posted about a local paperback collector I met the other day.

[Doohickamabob]

Any relation to this woman? Maybe there is a rare genetic pelvic disorder that forces them into "wide stance" mode at all times.

[Boba]

Any relation to this woman? Maybe there is a rare genetic pelvic disorder that forces them into "wide stance" mode at all times.

True story about those bikini bottoms, they are being worn backwards.

They (who I don't recall) decided she looked sexier with the briefs on backwards.

 

 

"The skimpy look was achieved when the photographer, Morgan Kane, asked the model to turn her bikini bottom around and wear it backwards. The bathing suit was so revealing that, in some places, the poster appeared with painted-on shorts covering her derriere.

 

Read more: http://entertainment.time.com/2012/10/04/james-bond-declassified-50-things-you-didnt-know-about-007/slide/the-backwards-bikini/#ixzz2FRnr9eFM

[Boba]

I am a big fan of "Columbo" -- I found those TV shows excellent to listen to while doing lots of visual detail-work. I think I've listened to the first 2 or 3 seasons without even watching them, but you don't really need to watch "Columbo" to understand it, because the writing is so friggin' great. I have to say that after listening to "Columbo" for a while, Peter Falk starts to become scary. The way he asks questions is guaranteed to drive a murder suspect NUTS, because Columbo always asks all his questions, starts to leave, and just as the murderer is breathing a sigh of relief, and Columbo is juuuuuuust about to close the door, he comes back for ONE MORE QUESTION... and that one more question is THE question that unravels the murderer's cover story... It's chilling, because you knoowwwww it's coming, and you kinda feel sorry for the suspect who thinks he's got his alibi sewn up and is going to get away scot-free. Nope

I too was a huge fan of the show, and Peter Falk was one of my favorites.

You see a little of the Columbo style in his portrayal of the grandfather (and narrator) he played in The Princess Bride. Another great performance by Falk.

 

Now back to our regularly scheduled topic

[BB-Gun]

Any relation to this woman? Maybe there is a rare genetic pelvic disorder that forces them into "wide stance" mode at all times.

 

I guess the editors liked that pose. But it worked pretty well when they added a little action in the background and a slight response from Junior.