mhdantholz
" PLEASE CASH IT ! " - BIG TOWN ( DC ) # 40 August 1957 Cover: Gil KANE & Joe GIELLA
PHOTO: Financial District, Lower Manhattan, New York ca.1930
www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=34300&page=29
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" PLEASE CASH IT ! " -
BIG TOWN ( DC ) # 40 August 1957 Cover: Gil KANE & Joe GIELLA
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Big Town @ Wikipedia
Big Town is a popular long-running radio drama series which was later adapted to both film and television and a comic book published by DC Comics.
Comic book
DC's Big Town comic book ran 50 issues, from January, 1951 to March-April, 1958. The comic book was edited by Whitney Ellsworth, and the contributing artists included Dan Barry, Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, John Lehti, Manny Stallman and Alex Toth, with most of the later scripts written by John Broome.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Town
****
Big Town ( DC )
# 1 January 1951 - # 50 March-April 1958
Publication Notes
Actual editors: Jack Schiff (#1-2); Julius Schwartz (#3-50).
Script and art credits confirmed by copies of DC editorial records received by Gene Reed from E. Nelson Bridwell in 1986. Changes in the handwriting on the editorial records indicate that Schwartz start keeping the records with one story in issue #3 and all records thereafter. This would indicate that Schwartz took over and finished work on issue #3 and assumed full assignment of script and art and editorial with issue #4.
Notes
Licensed title based on the radio and television shows.
****
Big Town # 40 @ Classic Comic Books ( mikegrost.com )
# 40 (July-August 1956) The Casebook of Unsolved Mysteries
The Casebook of Unsolved Mysteries (1956). Panelists on a TV show moderated by Steve Wilson try to solve a mysterious bank vault robbery.
This story resembles "The Impossible Alibi" (1953). In both, Steve is a member of a prominent institution made up of crime experts, who re-examine and try to solve old mystery cases. In both, the institution itself is fascinating. Details about it furnish the opening of the story. Big Town often focused on "admirable things about America". It showed its readers the wonders of New York City, and life in a great metropolis. Institutions like these are part of the life of an advanced civilization. The young readers of the magazine could learn about exciting aspects of modern life.
****
Big Town @ @ Classic Comic Books ( mikegrost.com )
All Big Town stories are written by John Broome, with art by Manny Stallman, unless otherwise noted.
Big Town starred Steve Wilson, a talented newsman. Although Steve was the editor of the daily newspaper the Illustrated Press, he seemed to spend most of his time as a reporter, tracking down big stories.
The tales took place in a city named Big Town, which was clearly a thinly fictionalized version of New York City. Big Town was a detective comic book. Nearly all of the stories in Big Town had an element of crime. However, in many of the tales the crime element was fairly downplayed, with greater concentration on the life of a newspaperman, and the glamorous world of Big Town itself in the 1950's. Even in the pure detective tales, the creators were far more interested in the reporter detectives and their efforts to solve the case, than in the crooks.
Big Town was a popular radio program (1937-1951) and TV show (1950-1956). The comic book lasted a year and a half longer than the TV show, then folded. The phenomenon of a program existing in several different media forms - radio, TV, comics - is today called "convergence". Some pundits describe it as a feature of today's world, when most of the media are controlled by a few corporations.
But in actual fact,, a large number of DC's pre-Silver Age comics of the earlier 1950's were based on TV programs. Even Superman was a TV series during much of the 1950's. I have no statistics on how profitable this was for DC. Were these TV-tie comic books lucrative? Or were they a desperate attempt by the comic book industry to keep afloat in tough times? These are questions for which I have no answer.
By contrast, the Silver Age revival of super-heroes around 1958 led to comic books that were much more divorced in content from the rest of the mass media. Silver Age super-hero comics were largely a world unto themselves, utterly different from the TV shows and paperback books of their era.
Big Town was never noir. During the Broome years, the tales were optimistic. This was not the smug optimism sometimes associated with the 1950's.
Big Town was among the most realistic of comic books. "Realism" is a loaded word, one with many meanings. Big Town focused on non-science fiction stories about honest people who lived in modern day New York City. It was partly in the tradition of such prose mystery story collections about typical New Yorkers as William MacHarg's The Affairs of O'Malley (collected 1940) and Ellery Queen's Q.B.I. (1950 - 1953).
New York City itself was considered a fascinating subject in those days, and people wanted to read about the fascinating lives of people who lived there. These people did not have to be criminals or sleazy to be interesting; rather, readers wanted to know about the actual inhabitants of the city.
During its early issues (#1-13), Big Town was scripted by a huge variety of writers. Most of these pieces are not very good, although a few were excellent, especially the handful of scripts by France E. Herron and Robert Kanigher. From issue #14, many of the scripts were by John Broome, who had occasionally contributed scripts before; he eventually became the sole scriptwriter of the magazine. In #17, the magazine got its permanent artist, Manny Stallman. There is little discussion in this article of the early, poorer quality scripts.
****
COVER GALLERY >> Big Town
AND
comicbookdb.com/title.php?ID=17964
AND
www.atomicavenue.com/atomic/TitleDetail.aspx?TitleID=15064
AND
" PLEASE CASH IT ! " - BIG TOWN ( DC ) # 40 August 1957 Cover: Gil KANE & Joe GIELLA
PHOTO: Financial District, Lower Manhattan, New York ca.1930
www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=34300&page=29
****
" PLEASE CASH IT ! " -
BIG TOWN ( DC ) # 40 August 1957 Cover: Gil KANE & Joe GIELLA
****
Big Town @ Wikipedia
Big Town is a popular long-running radio drama series which was later adapted to both film and television and a comic book published by DC Comics.
Comic book
DC's Big Town comic book ran 50 issues, from January, 1951 to March-April, 1958. The comic book was edited by Whitney Ellsworth, and the contributing artists included Dan Barry, Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, John Lehti, Manny Stallman and Alex Toth, with most of the later scripts written by John Broome.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Town
****
Big Town ( DC )
# 1 January 1951 - # 50 March-April 1958
Publication Notes
Actual editors: Jack Schiff (#1-2); Julius Schwartz (#3-50).
Script and art credits confirmed by copies of DC editorial records received by Gene Reed from E. Nelson Bridwell in 1986. Changes in the handwriting on the editorial records indicate that Schwartz start keeping the records with one story in issue #3 and all records thereafter. This would indicate that Schwartz took over and finished work on issue #3 and assumed full assignment of script and art and editorial with issue #4.
Notes
Licensed title based on the radio and television shows.
****
Big Town # 40 @ Classic Comic Books ( mikegrost.com )
# 40 (July-August 1956) The Casebook of Unsolved Mysteries
The Casebook of Unsolved Mysteries (1956). Panelists on a TV show moderated by Steve Wilson try to solve a mysterious bank vault robbery.
This story resembles "The Impossible Alibi" (1953). In both, Steve is a member of a prominent institution made up of crime experts, who re-examine and try to solve old mystery cases. In both, the institution itself is fascinating. Details about it furnish the opening of the story. Big Town often focused on "admirable things about America". It showed its readers the wonders of New York City, and life in a great metropolis. Institutions like these are part of the life of an advanced civilization. The young readers of the magazine could learn about exciting aspects of modern life.
****
Big Town @ @ Classic Comic Books ( mikegrost.com )
All Big Town stories are written by John Broome, with art by Manny Stallman, unless otherwise noted.
Big Town starred Steve Wilson, a talented newsman. Although Steve was the editor of the daily newspaper the Illustrated Press, he seemed to spend most of his time as a reporter, tracking down big stories.
The tales took place in a city named Big Town, which was clearly a thinly fictionalized version of New York City. Big Town was a detective comic book. Nearly all of the stories in Big Town had an element of crime. However, in many of the tales the crime element was fairly downplayed, with greater concentration on the life of a newspaperman, and the glamorous world of Big Town itself in the 1950's. Even in the pure detective tales, the creators were far more interested in the reporter detectives and their efforts to solve the case, than in the crooks.
Big Town was a popular radio program (1937-1951) and TV show (1950-1956). The comic book lasted a year and a half longer than the TV show, then folded. The phenomenon of a program existing in several different media forms - radio, TV, comics - is today called "convergence". Some pundits describe it as a feature of today's world, when most of the media are controlled by a few corporations.
But in actual fact,, a large number of DC's pre-Silver Age comics of the earlier 1950's were based on TV programs. Even Superman was a TV series during much of the 1950's. I have no statistics on how profitable this was for DC. Were these TV-tie comic books lucrative? Or were they a desperate attempt by the comic book industry to keep afloat in tough times? These are questions for which I have no answer.
By contrast, the Silver Age revival of super-heroes around 1958 led to comic books that were much more divorced in content from the rest of the mass media. Silver Age super-hero comics were largely a world unto themselves, utterly different from the TV shows and paperback books of their era.
Big Town was never noir. During the Broome years, the tales were optimistic. This was not the smug optimism sometimes associated with the 1950's.
Big Town was among the most realistic of comic books. "Realism" is a loaded word, one with many meanings. Big Town focused on non-science fiction stories about honest people who lived in modern day New York City. It was partly in the tradition of such prose mystery story collections about typical New Yorkers as William MacHarg's The Affairs of O'Malley (collected 1940) and Ellery Queen's Q.B.I. (1950 - 1953).
New York City itself was considered a fascinating subject in those days, and people wanted to read about the fascinating lives of people who lived there. These people did not have to be criminals or sleazy to be interesting; rather, readers wanted to know about the actual inhabitants of the city.
During its early issues (#1-13), Big Town was scripted by a huge variety of writers. Most of these pieces are not very good, although a few were excellent, especially the handful of scripts by France E. Herron and Robert Kanigher. From issue #14, many of the scripts were by John Broome, who had occasionally contributed scripts before; he eventually became the sole scriptwriter of the magazine. In #17, the magazine got its permanent artist, Manny Stallman. There is little discussion in this article of the early, poorer quality scripts.
****
COVER GALLERY >> Big Town
AND
comicbookdb.com/title.php?ID=17964
AND
www.atomicavenue.com/atomic/TitleDetail.aspx?TitleID=15064
AND