Virginia "Ginny" Hubbell 1 1

[Crimebuster]

Hello!

I'm looking for any information I can find about Virginia "Ginny" Hubbell, a long time comic book writer from the Golden and Silver Ageof Comics who apparently ghost wrote an unidentified number of stories for Charles Biro at Lev Gleason. 

Obviously, I'm a huge fan of Crimebuster and Boy Comics in particular. I've long touted Biro's writing as being highly underrated, as it's in depth character studies and subtle understanding of human emotion and motivation put those storie sona  different level from other comics I have read from the Golden Age. 

However, the more I read, the more clear it's becoming that some of not all of my favorite things about "Biro's" writing was actually done by Virginia Hubbell. 

In the book Ten Cent Plague, Lev Gleason artist Pete Morisi states pretty unequivocally that he didn't think Biro was capable of writing the material put out under his byline, and says that Hubbell wrote almost all of it. He makes a point specificaly of noting that she was a student of human nature, while Biro couldn't have cared less. 

An online article about Hubbell by Brian Cronin mentions that around 1951, a newspaper article about a play Hubbell had written noted that "...She produces on an average of six complete stories a month for Dare Devil Boy Comic magazines, good practice she says, for learning to tie up a plot with no loose ends."

Her obituary - which as far as i can tell is the main source for her wikipedia entry - said that "Under the name Virginia Hubbell she wrote much of the later content of Charles Biro's Daredevil and Boy Comics, as well as the notorious Crime Does Not Pay."

 

What I really want to find out is when she started writing Boy Comics in particular, and which issues and stories she worked on. So far, I haven't found any specific information, or any theories even. From these sources, though, it seems that she at least wrote "the later content" in Boy Comics, and based on the newspaper article, apparently had been doing this at least as early as 1951. 

I can see a few clear break points in the writing on Boy Comics that are possible jumping on spots for Hubbell as a ghost writer. There's a drastic change in direction with #107 where Crimebuster stops being a crime fighter in the city and goes off to a rural college.

That issue certainly qualifies as "later content" but it isn't cover dated until January 1955. Another candidate would be one of my favorite issues, #60, which had a cover date of December, 1950. This gives Chuck a new "costume" where he loses the last superhero trappings of the book, while also bringing back his arch enemy Iron Jaw from the dead. 

But I think it's possible that she could have been writing the series much earlier. Several references to Hubbell insist she worked on Crime Does Not Pay, and for me there's a clear uptick in writing quality on Boy Comics around #30 or so when the book goes into longer form crime stories that really dive into the motivations of the characters involved. That would put her on the title as far back as 1946 or earlier, though. 

 

One final note: some of this information was mentioned in Alter Ego #162 recently; in there, they also quote another Lev Gleason artist, Bob Fujitani, as saying that Biro wrote a fair amount at first, but when the line expanded he couldn't write as much and began using ghost writrs that he would sign his name to. He cites Bob Bernstein as another writer who worked on both Daredevil and Boy Comics without credit, which further muddies the waters. Biro has himself said that he had to write less when Lev Gleason told him to double the size of the line, which Biro was editing by himself. This expansion seems to have happened around 1948, when the company began rolling out a slew of new titles - so that's another clue. 

 

Anyway, if anyone has any information about Hubbell's work, or any other suggestions for when she started writing on these various titles, I would love to hear it!

[telerites]

20 hours ago, Crimebuster said:

Anyway, if anyone has any information about Hubbell's work, or any other suggestions for when she started writing on these various titles, I would love to hear it!

Have you thought about sending an email to Roy Thomas?  He might be able to answer some questions.  Or to connect with whomever wrote the article.

He answered some questions for me about Charles Sultan a while back.

Edited June 26, 2020 by telerites

[thunsicker]

Did you try GCD?  It identifies 63 stories written by her.

[Electricmastro]

6 minutes ago, thunsicker said:

Did you try GCD?  It identifies 63 stories written by her.

Her full name appears in Whack #3 too.

[pemart1966]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virginia_Hubbell

[Crimebuster]

2 hours ago, telerites said:

Have you thought about sending an email to Roy Thomas?  He might be able to answer some questions.  Or to connect with whomever wrote the article.

He answered some questions for me about Charles Sultan a while back.

 Good idea, I will contact Alter Ego - this was part of Michal T. Gilbert's regular column, so he may know more. 

[Crimebuster]

1 hour ago, thunsicker said:

Did you try GCD?  It identifies 63 stories written by her.

 

I have looked though it; its incomplete and has guesswork, but it's a good starting place!

A couple things from her work on Boy Comics and Daredevil jumped out to me. I had speculated in my original post that one possible jumping on point if she ever wrote the Crimebuster strip in Boy Comics may have been around issue #30, as I think there's a change in writing around this period. So I was interested to note that the earliest Boy Comics story that GCD credits her with is in fact from #30 - though it's on the Swoop Storm backup. 

The other thing I noticed is that she's credited with most of the stories on the Sniffer strip in Daredevil, and it's guessed she did the last several Iron Jaw and Sniffer strips in Boy Comics. That suggests another possible point where she may have taken over the Crimebuster strip, if she ever did so. Sniffer moved from Daredevil to Boy Comics with Boy Comics #80 (going from memory here) where he appeared as an antagonist in the Crimebuster story for a rare three issue arc in #80-82. Following that story, Sniffer and Iron Jaw took over the lead and cover spots from Crimebuster, where they stayed for the next 15 issues or so. There was clearly a shakeup by Biro as editor in #80, as that issue also debuts another new backup feature, Rocky X. It would make sense if Hubbell wrote at least the three part storyline with Crimebuster and Sniffer together, especially assuming she was still writing the Sniffer strip when it was in Boy Comics as she had when it was in Daredevil.

One other thing that makes it a little hard to figure is that Biro was notoriously proprietary about Crimebuster, insisting on drawing the character's head for the covers - my understanding is, he'd often have other artists do the cover, but then he'd paste his dwaring of the head over it, much like when Kirby's Superman had his head replaced. I think Biro may have done this at times inside the book as well. So given his connection to the character, it's possible that Biro continued to write the Crimebuster strip himself even after turning the rest of the stories over to other people; or possibly at points he gave plots to Hubbell or other writers to work off of, sort of Marvel Method. 

Edited June 26, 2020 by Crimebuster

[telerites]

2 hours ago, Crimebuster said:

 Good idea, I will contact Alter Ego - this was part of Michal T. Gilbert's regular column, so he may know more. 

I assume for Alter Ego you would use twomorrow@aol.com

Gilbert has a Facebook page - https://www.facebook.com/michael.t.gilbert