The cruel and harsh world of COMIC BOOK PAPER DOLLS

Oh how cruel they were! How evil to have done this! Have they no shame?

Hyperbole? Perhaps, but you take a look at the evidence before you let them off the hook for this crime against little kids who just wanted to play with the paper doll.

Now, imagine you've saved up your 10 cents in 1959 and bought the latest issue of Laugh featuring Archie and his friends. Lo and behold also included was a Katy Keene storyline. And is it just me, but is it doubtful that Katy and sis came from the same DNA?


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So you turn the page and there are all these wonderful clothes for a paper doll. The only problem is which came first? The doll or the clothes? The doll is on the preceding page, the clothes on the following verso.


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Hmmmmm...didn't anyone at HQ see this coming? If the kid cuts out the clothes the doll is gone. If the kid cuts out the doll the clothes are gone. Sneaky, very sneaky. But wait, there's a simple solution. Cough up another 10 cents to some unknown ranch in Santa Barbara and a fictitious character will send you the doll and clothes even though you're already holding them in your hand. They even state:

Readers Note: All these fashion cut-outs fit the sis doll on the preceding page!

Yeah, yeah, but you've stuck your little reader in a Twilight Zone episode. How would I have solved this? I'd have traced the clothes, used my crayolas to color them, then cut out the dang busted doll. I'd have been a happy, though slightly irritated, camper.

And I'd have thought the extra clothes on the last page of the story were just super keene. But I still wouldn't buy that sis has any chance at all of growing up to look like Katy. I'm thinking we need to see the milkman, the Fuller Brush salesman, and the paper boy.


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KEN BALD, comic book artist

In which photo-play did actor Dan Dailey, actress Anne Baxter, actress Betty Grable, and illustrator/comic book artist Ken Bald all appear together? You're looking at it. Only one of these "stars" is left, Ken Bald.

This comic appeared in the April 1949 Photoplay magazine.

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Unless you're a fan of comic book art, you might not be aware of Ken Bald:

Kenneth Bruce Bald (born August 1, 1920) is an American illustrator and comic book artist best known for the Judd Saxon, Dr. Kildare and Dark Shadows newspaper comic strips. Due to contractual obligations, he is credited as "K. Bruce" on the Dark Shadows strip

Early life and career
Ken Bald was born in New York City, New York and raised in suburban Mount Vernon, New York. He attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn for three years, then joined the Englewood, New Jersey studio of Jack Binder, one of the early comic-book "packagers" who would supply complete comics on demand for publishers entering the new medium. Beginning in 1942, during the 1940s period fans and historians call the Golden Age of Comic Books, Bald, via Binder, began drawing backup features for the prominent Fawcett Comics.

Creator credits were not routinely given during this era, and while historians have tentatively identified Bald as both penciler and inker of the 14-page Bulletman story "The Terror of the Iceberg" in Fawcett's Master Comics #26 (May 1942), his earliest confirmed credit is penciling the 16-page Captain America story "Ali Baba and His Forty Nazis" in Captain America Comics #32 (Nov. 1943), published by Marvel Comics precursor Timely Comics.

Going on staff at Timely, Bald drew stories of such superheroes as Captain America, the Sub-Mariner, the Blonde Phantom, the Destroyer, and Miss America variously through comics cover-dated July 1949. He both wrote and drew a number of Millie the Model humor stories in the comics Georgie and Patsy Walker, and at least drew the teen-humor character Cindy in Georgie and Judy Comics and Junior Miss.

Bald penciled the first appearance of the Sub-Mariner spin-off character Namora, in "The Coming of Namora" in Marvel Mystery Comics #82 (May 1947), but it is unclear if he helped create the character; the cover, which was sometimes created first, featured Namora draw by Bob Powell. Similarly, Bald drew Timely's single issue of The Witness (Sept. 1948), starring a character co-created by writer-editor Stan Lee, but the cover for which was drawn by Charles Nicholas. Bald, with an unidentified writer, co-created Timely the superhero Sun Girl, who starred in a three-issue series cover-dated August to December 1948.

His other comic-book work included the character Crime Smasher in Fawcett's Whiz Comics in the 1940s, and many anthological horror/suspense stories in American Comics Group's Adventures into the Unknown, The Clutching Hand, Forbidden Worlds and Out of the Night from 1949 through late 1954. Also for ACG, he co-created the adventure feature Time Travelers in Operation: Peril #1 (Nov. 1950)

Personal
Bald and his wife, Kaye, have five children. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

To see more of Ken Bald's work:

marvel.wikia.com

coollinesartwork.com

comicartfans.com

comicbookdb.com

allthingsger.blogspot.com

His papers are archived at Syracuse University Library.

Throughly NOT MODERN MILLIE

Anyone out there remember the hair magazines from the 1960s? Nothing but hair. Haircuts. I remember looking at them, but never bought one. And imagine subscribing to a magazine that each month delivered page after page of haircuts. I never understood this. Wouldn't one issue a year suffice? Were there really people each month who tried a new hairdo? I know hair was a big deal to teenage girls, but a whole monthly magazine to hair. Oh heavens, maybe it's still being published.

Well, if you read Modeling with Millie you'd be aware that they had various pages devoted to reader "ideas." Yeah, uh huh, sure. Let's here it for Linda Medo of Tampa, Florida for her number 5 design "Shimmering Shadows." So how exactly did they send these ideas in? Did they rip a page out of one of the hair magazines or did they do a drawing? No indication as to what you were to send.

I give you the reader suggestions from the February 1964 issue of Modeling with Millie.

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The final artwork was signed by S. Lee and Stan G, also known as Stan Lee and Stan Goldberg.

Stan Lee (born Stanley Martin Lieber; December 28, 1922) is an American comic book writer, editor, actor, producer, publisher, television personality, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics.

In collaboration with several artists, most notably Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, he co-created Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, the Avengers, Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor, Daredevil, Doctor Strange, and many other fictional characters, introducing complex, naturalistic characters and a thoroughly shared universe into superhero comic books. In addition, he headed the first major successful challenge to the industry's censorship organization, the Comics Code Authority, and forced it to reform its policies. Lee subsequently led the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation.

*****

Stan Goldberg (born May 5, 1932 in New York City) is an American comic book artist best known for his work as a flagship artist of Archie Comics and as a Marvel Comics' 1960s colorist, who helped design the original color schemes of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four and other major characters.

And by the way, the name of the publisher of Modeling with Millie...Male Publishing Corporation located at 655 Madison Avenue, New York. Seriously? Male Publishing? Did I never notice this before? So while they were publishing Millie for teenage girls they were also publishing girlie magazines for horny teenage boys and men. Must have made for interesting office parties. So how many women did they actually employee and how were they treated? There's a story in here somewhere.