Masked Reprints

[dhfh]

Hey guys,

Thought you might be interested in a couple of discoveries I've made (if you didn't already know about them, that is) that have to do with some comic material that was either a reprint under a different feature name or made with recycled artwork:

The first of these two types is a story from the "Tailspin Comics" one-shot.  The "Firebird" feature is actually a retitled, recolored, and slightly retouched (specifically the splash page) reprint of the Blackout story from Cat-Man Comics #24 ("The Valkyrie" story).  The text looks like it's exactly the same in both stories, except that the name "Blackout" has been replaced with "Firebird" everywhere--and this is especially great since in the site's current, incomplete copy of Cat-Man #24, the Blackout story is missing the last 2 pages.  So it looks like with this "Firebird story" we should be able to find out how it ends anyway!

The specimen of the second type is in certain respects even more interesting--or at least more unusual.  A while ago I was looking at "Strange Terrors" #6, and noticed that the story within entitled "Carnival of Death", was a recolored and rewritten reprint of the first Green Knight story (from "Dynamic Comics" #2).  The artwork panels are the same but the entire story has been rewritten from scratch to try and match the events depicted--with somewhat dubious results.

At the moment I don't know if either of these issues feature any other re-used stories/artwork, but I think it rather probable.

Anyway, I thought that anyone who wasn't already aware of these might find them interesting.


Cheers,

--DHFH

[Yoc]

Thanks for the info DH, I'll add your comments to the Catman 24 and Tailspin book descriptions.

[OtherEric]

I need to take the time to look at this more properly, but the conversion on the Carnival of Death/ Green Knight looks fascinating, in a very weird way.  Thanks for spotting this.

[jfglade]

 I'm familiar with the Green Knight story, but I haven't seen the Carnival of Death story, so I will have to look it up. Obviously, it must deal with vampires (or a singular vampire, as the case may be). The Green Knight story doesn't work as the story of a mystery man, but it might as flat out horror story. I'm glad you spotted that one story had been transformed into another.

[jfglade]

 Finally got around to looking up the "Carnival of Death" story, and was amazed to see that it wasn't adapted so much as it was simply reprinted with vastly different coloring and a few changes in the speech balloons. That the Green Knight story provided no clue to who he really was, why he was masked and carrying ancient weapons, or much of anything else, the reprint was even more mysterious for not at least naming the Green Knight.... something, anything really. I was hoping the story had actually been adapted so it made more sense, but if anything it was even more muddled and confusing.

[erwin-k]

Ajax/Ferrell was very good at this sort of thing. Of course there may have been legal reasons why the Lone Rider stories got reprinted as just "The Rider." (Not to mention the issues published under the Comics Code Atrocity that had Indians attacking with sticks because the heads of the tomahawks had been whited out. Real laughers.)

But sometimes they would take a story and typeset a different title for it. Then the Indian hero would change from Swift Arrow to Golden Eagle. Or some such.

And MLJ did some recycling of scripts. In one case they redrew a Hangman epic as a Black Hood story without taking into account the differences in the characters' civilian jobs. So Kip Burland stumbles into the middle of an armed robbery. In his police uniform, no less. But he ditches his uniform and perfectly legal pistol to tackle gun waving thugs bare handed. What ever happened to "Halt, or I'll shoot?"