Mary Worth: 1943 Career Girl Drama - a Blackthorne Publishing Collection

Anyone that has ever read the "funny pages" from a newspaper is more than likely familiar with the name Mary Worth. The name is pretty much synonymous with the soap-opera-style comic strips, such as Rex Morgan, M.D. and Apartment 3-G, among others.  The strip began in 1938, although sources indicate the strip started even earlier than that in a previous incarnation as "Apple Mary," which had its beginnings in 1934.  "Apple Mary" was a strip created by Martha Orr, with art and lettering by Dale Conner and Ruth Belew, respectively.  When Orr left the strip in 1941, and this is when Allen Saunders took over the writing, and Ken Ernst came in to take over the art.  By 1940, the strip was already using "Mary Worth's Family" as a subtitle, and when Saunders and Ernst took over, it eventually transitioned to simply Mary Worth.  There is, of course, disputes regarding whether "Apple Mary" really was a precursor to Mary Worth, but respected sources, including Saunders himself, indicated it was.

 

In 1986, Blackthorne Publishing was doing a number of collection of comic strips under the "Comic-Strip Preserves" banner, including Betty Boop, Brenda Starr Reporter, and others.  One of those was Mary Worth, with, unfortunately, only had this one book.  Labeled a "1943 career girl drama," the book features a storyline that ran from October 1943 through April 1944.  A number of things surprised me about the strips as I sat down to read them.  First, the name of the strip alternates between "Mary Worth's Family" and simply "Mary Worth."  Second, and probably most surprising, is the fact that the title character actually features very little in this story!  She plays heavily in the first few strips, as she heads to Elm City where Bill Biff is to have found them a place to live, and she shows up in the last few panels to bid some of the major characters farewell, as two of them head out on military duty.  Otherwise, she is only seen in a few strips, and usually those scenes are simply as a plot device to move the characters in a certain direction!  This is a far cry from the strip I remember glancing out now and again as I was growing up, where the elderly woman was always sticking her nose into everyone's business and offering advice, whether it was solicited or not!

 

This sixth month tale is, in reality, the story of Gypsy Monez, a professional dancer from New York City.  She happens to be on the same train as Mary Worth, and she sneaks into Mary's cabin, asking her to hide her from the men that are looking for her.  Mary (and the reader) knows there is more to the story, so it goes without saying that Mary helps her sneak off the train at Elm City.  Mary opens up her new home to the young actress (over the objections of Bill Biff, who is upset to be put out of his own room!).  Soon enough, Gypsy is directing the charity benefit to support the war effort - there is only one catch - she must use the chairwoman's son in the leading role!  Gypsy is unsure until she meets the boy, who turns out to be a handsome young man.  The two quickly hit it off, but as with any good story there's a snag.  An unscrupulous man discovers by accident the secret Gypsy is keeping from everyone and threatens to expose her if she does not date him instead.  As her feelings for Bud (the chairwoman's son) grow stronger, she eventually walks away from the man blackmailing her - a decision she is sure to regret.

 

The story takes a romantic tangle of a turn when Bud's older brother comes home on leave from his service in the armed forces.  He happens to be on the same train Gypsy is on after spending time in New York City (no, I'm not going to spoil her reasons for being there - let's just say, it has to do with the resolution of the first half of the story), and, of course, the two hit it off, neither suspecting who the other really is.  Once home in Elm City, though, Rick is the one to realize his new love is actually his brother's fiance-to-be.  He tries to bow out, but his feelings for Gypsy and hers for him are too much.  Luckily, another young lady happens to come to town, and she catches Bud's eyes - and with a little help from Mary Worth, the entangled lives become untangled, and we end up with two very happy couples. Well, happy that is, until the final panel, when both Rick and Bud head off into the service for their country!

 

Again, it is odd (to me, at least) that the title character appears so little in the strip.  While I didn't necessarily expect to see her in every panel, I did expect her to have a much larger role than simply an advice giver every couples of weeks or so, and matchmaker for a few strips.  We can't even go so far as to say "Mary Worth's Family" is an appropriate title, since the characters involved in this story are not a part of her family at all.  I am now curious to learn when did Mary Worth take a much more active and consistent role in her own strip? 

 

The art, by Ken Ernst, is enticing, and he gives each of his characters very distinctive looks that make them easy to identify without being named repeatedly.  His rendition of Gyspy is pretty spot on, since she is meant to be a seductive beauty - he even manages to give her clothing that only accentuates her sexy side - when she tries to wear "normal" clothes that would be appropriate in Elm City, it comes across very unnatural.  Unlike Mary Perkins, On Stage (another strip that I have been reading in collected editions),  this strip does not always concern itself with detailed backgrounds; in fact, a number of panels have no backgrounds at all - the characters simply appear against empty space.  This does not detract from the storytelling, though.  In some cases, it actually gives more focus to the character(s) speaking, so the reader is not distracted looking at what is in the background.

 

I will admit - I took a look online to see what the strip looks like today - and it is a FAR CRY from these strips from the 1940s!  While I loved June Brigman's work on Marvel's Power Pack back in the '80s, her work on the current Mary Worth strips does not hold a candle to Saunders' work represented in this collection.  It is a shame no one has collected more of these early years of Mary Worth.   I'm aware there is a mass-market paperback collection out there, as well as a comic collection published by a company called Argo; and there are several issues of a Harvey-published comics; but that is so little compared to eighty years of daily newspaper strips!  Someone needs to get work preserving these strips for future readers!

 

As a side note - I'm not really sure where the "career girl drama" banner on the cover comes from.  Mary Worth is definitely not a career girl, so the only thing I can figure is that it is referring to Gypsy Monez, who settles down in Elm City and opens a fashionable clothing store for the women about town. 

 

RATING:  9 autographed photos of Gyspy Monez out of 10 for an interesting trip back in time to the simpler times of comic strip tales filed with romance, drama, and lessons learned!

Street Wolf - a Blackthorne Publishing comic mini-series

The year was 1986, and I had been reading and collecting comics for just seven years.  I had only discovered the joy of comic book stores a few years prior, having spent my early years of collecting buying comics off the spinner racks at local convenience stores or on the magazine shelves in Waldenbooks and B. Dalton in the mall.  My fascination with direct market books (those comics marketed solely to comic stores and not sold in regular stores, by independent companies such as Pacific Comics, Eclipse Comics, First Comics, and countless others) was growing, and I was picking up any number of books from these companies that caught my eye.  I can remember seeing this particular book on the shelf, but as it did not have a female lead (of which nearly all the books I was buying had), I passed on it.  Besides, at the time, I had never heard of Blackthorne Publishing, and I was nor sure about the quality of their books.

 

Fast-forward nearly 40 years later (I cannot believe I'm actually writing that!!!!), and while on vacation recently, I happened across all three issues of the Street Wolf mini-series for just fifty cents each - so I said, what the heck. By this time, I was aware that Blackthorne Publishing was a small company that tried to fill the gap when Pacific Comics went under; however, Blackthorne was known more for their newspaper strip reprints, as well as their countless licensed 3-D books moreso than any original material.  Street Wolf is one of their few original series published, and after reading it now, I have to wonder if they might have survived had they published more quality work such as this.

 

Street Wolf is the name given to Nathan Blackhorse, who is a vigilante of sorts, waging a one-man war against crime in a "violent city" (unnamed in the three-issue series).  Writer Mark Wayne Harris does not open up with any origin story, and in fact, over the course of the three issues, readers learn very little about Blackhorse.  We see that he is an expert in martial arts and that he is well-versed in hand-to-hand combat.  We also discover that his mother passed away, but he refuses to talk about his father.  Other than that, Blackhorse is a mystery, which gives the character and the stories a certain mystique that leaves you wanting for more.  In the first two pages of the first issues, we are not only introduced to Street Wolf himself, but also to Joyce Prescott, a newspaper reporter intent on writing a story about the famous (or infamous, depending on who you ask) local hero.  Prescott quickly learns that Blackhorse has no interest in glory or fame, and he does what he does for the sole purpose of helping others.  In fact, she learns this first hand by the end of page five after he rescues her from being attacked by some thugs.  

 

The story follows Prescott as she pursues Blackhorse, her goal changing from getting a story to simply getting to know the man.  This is where we learn about his mother dying while he was just a young child, and he reveals to her (and the readers) that he was adopted by a woman named "Rose Tyler."  Now, I have to stop for a moment here, because when I read that name, I chuckled, since "Rose Tyler" was the name of the first companion Doctor Who encountered when the British television series started up again back in 2005 (nearly 20 years after this book was published!).  That's a funny coincidence - unless Russell T. Davies happened to read this comic and was inspired to name his first companion after Street Wolf's adopted mother!  (Yeah, I know, the likelihood of that are ... well, next to nothing!)

 

Harris did not shy away from writing about very controversial and sensitive topics when he wrote this series.  The stories address child prostitution, drugs, street gangs, and corrupt men who will kill to keep their power.  There are some horrific moments in the series (such as when a young boy who witnesses a crime is murdered by one of the gang members in order to prevent him from going to the police!), and there are no punches pulled.  In this aspect, the series reminds me a lot of Max Allan Collins' Ms. Tree series, which ran from 1981 to 1993 through four different publishers - but which was never afraid to tackle some of the most topical issues of that day.  Thus, Street Wolf could easily be considered a contemporary of Ms. Tree, addressing a lot of the same issues and not shying away from the gruesome nature of the real world.

 

The villains in these stories are true nasty pieces of work, and with the exception of one, they all get their just desserts in the end (although not always by Blackhorse's hand).  The one villain who does not face justice is one that has a direct connection to one of the main character - a rather shocking connection, I might add, that sadly never gets a follow-up.  Perhaps if the series had come back for a second run, we might have gotten to see how the characters would have reacted when faced with this villain's true identity - but, alas, we never got that chance.

 

The art and cover for the books are provided by Dennis Francis.  Francis seems to have had much more of a career in comics than Harris, having worked at Continuity Comics, DC Comics, Eclipse Comics, Valiant Comics, and, of course, Blackthorne Publishing.  Francis' work on Street Wolf is outstanding - the black and white art in the book is not extremely detailed, such as George Perez' or Phil Jimenez' work, but it is gritty and fits the mood of the book perfectly.  Francis also did work on a number of 3-D books for Blackthorne, as well as his own created comic, Starlight Squadron.  

 

It's a shame Harris and Francis were never able to continue this series.  I think it gave readers a nice break from all the typical super-hero fare of the day, and it provided engaging stories with characters who felt real and for whom you immediately developed an affinity.  But, as with so many comics from the '80s and '90s, Street Wolf had its five minutes of fame and is now relegated to the fifty-cent and dollar back issue bins at comic shops and comic conventions.

 

RATING:  8 bouncing basketballs out of 10 for a comic filled with hard-hitting stories and heart-wrenching moments, and a lead character that outshines the likes of Marvel's Punisher and DC's Vigilante.