MASK COMICS #1 (FEBRUARY-MARCH 1945)

I have no idea why this comic book is titled Mask Comics, but it surely does have a unique cover.  It's a catch-all anthology title with a mix of mystery, suspense, horror, humor, biography, and whatever fits.

In "Name Your Price for Slaughter," People thought Tim Dolan would not make a good cop -- too much book learning.  But then a government engraving expert is kidnapped and soon counterfeit money begins flooding the city.  Police know that shady, zoot-suit wearing Silver John Fallow is the brains behind the counterfeiting ring but cannot prove it.  It's up to Tim Dolan to use his book learning to nail silver john and to rescue the kidnapped engraver.

Bonnie Heather, a hapless Bettie Page lookalike, somehow never does anything right.  Bonnie gets a job as a cook for a rich family, the Von Nuysers, in "The Adventure of the Exploding Spaghetti."  Yes, Bonnie's spaghetti somehow explodes and fouls a robbery attempt.  bonnie is the hero and gets a bonus.  We, the readers, get to see Bonnie's well-formed legs.

"I Don't Want to Die" has a bored and despairing Ethan Cavendish, who thought his wife had died in a airplane crash, decide to pay a man to kill him.  But when the deed is supposed to be done, he finds that his wife survived and coming home to him.

"Count Boris Strikes Back."  A two-page text story.  Count Boris was 'the man they could not hang."  Martha was the lady sword-swallower at the same sideshow.  Jealous because Boris's act was upstaging hers, she decides to get rid of him.  But Cupid is lurking in the background.  (Boris, as illustrated, looks like a Chas Addams character.)

"Murder on Park Avenue" features millionaire playboy sleuth Calvin Colt, as he tries to solve the murder of Laura Deane, who died while playing a game of "Murder."  A lot of people wanted Laura dead, but who fired the poisoned African blow gun dart?

"There's One Born every Minute."  A three-page biography of P.T. Barnum.

"The Touch That Failed" covers an episode in the career of Harry Houdini.

"Heroes of Legend" explores the myth of Damon and Pythias.

And a one-pager covering the "Legend of the Gordian Knot."

"Escape Into Darkness."  Norman Price, novelist extraordinary with little or no scruples, was "born to be driftwood."  Price is now resorting to stealing plots from others.  Hoping to fond inspiration, he goes undercover as a Bowery bum, but gets caught up in a robbery attempt and arrested.  It's up to the man he cheated to save him...

"...Death of You" A fantastic World War II story that begins in the years before the was.  Jerry Todd and his pal Hal Sawyer are looking forward to college.  Jerry decides to sell his old jalopy -- which everyone was saying would be the death of him --  to a junk dealer, but not before scratching their initials on the motor.  Time passes.  Pearl Harbor is attacked and Jerry and Hal both enlist in the Marines.   The two are in a pacific jungle where the Japanese are laying a shrapnel barrage loaded with scrap iron.  Hal gets a premonition, which Jerry poo-poos, reminding him that back home they used to say the old jalopy would be the death of them but they were alive anyhow.  An explosion kills them both.  The shell fragment that killed them was made from scrap metal sold to the Japanese a long time ago; etched in the metal were the initials J.T. and H. S.   Two things to point out.  One, Jerry Todd was the main character in a series of sixteen juvenile books published between 1924 and 1940 under the house name "Leo Edwards"; he is not the Jerry Todd in this story,  Two, the Japanese are demeaned by being called "little brown monkeys," "scheming little Nipponese," and "squints" -- understandable because there was a war going on, but it still leaves a bad taste in the mouth of today's reader.

As I said a mixed bag.  It was if the publishers did not know (or care) what the comic book was.  Still, the cover art with its woodcut effect is great.

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