Author: DOuG pRATt

Toth’s Angel and Ghost

My first exposure to “comic book art” wasn’t in comics, but from the syndicated Space Angel cartoon series on TV.

Alex Toth (pronounced with “toe”) was the artist behind Space Angel. Toth hired Doug Wildey to help produce the series, and Wildey in turn hired Toth to help him with Hanna-Barbera’s Jonny Quest. After Quest, Toth designed H-B’s less ambitious animated series, Space Ghost.

I loved this stuff when I was a kid, and I still love it. Space Angel had a 6-page promotion in the children’s magazine Jack and Jill.

I borrowed those scans from a Facebook post by author Ken Quattro, who wrote Invisible Men, a history of Black comic book creators.

https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Men-Artists-Golden-Comics/dp/1684055865

The Narrow Margins

With so many midterm elections too close to call between the Democratic and Republican candidates, I’m watching The Narrow Margin. Directed with great tension by Max Fleischer’s son Richard, Charles McGraw is perfectly cast in a rare leading role. There is no music, except in bits from a record player that becomes an important plot device. This one is really, really good. Really!

Two thoughts about the possible influence of The Narrow Margin on other movies with action aboard trains. Jacqueline White begs a comparison to Eva Marie Saint in North By Northwest, seven years later. It’s almost as if Hitchock had Saint watch White’s scenes and instructed her, “do it exactly like her.” The big fight scene between McGraw and one of the thugs reminds me very much of the life-and-death struggle between Sean Connery and Robert Shaw in From Russia With Love, more than ten years later. If I can think up a comparison with the train scenes in A Hard Day’s Night, I’ll update this post. 😉

Me Tue

The week before last I dropped my ballot into the box in front of town hall. There were no self-appointed “ballot watchers” who have swallowed the con man-in-chief’s lies.

The guy in this video who says, “Go back to same day voting and paper ballots” should be reminded of Florida’s “hanging chads” in the 2000 election. Even where voting is done the way he wants I’m sure he would convince himself there was “something wrong” with the process.

One of the big Republican talking points this year is crime. Yes, let’s talk about crime. In particular the school shootings resulting from the “all guns all the time” mentality that holds the country hostage.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/local/school-shootings-database/