mhdantholz
" STEVE WILSON, UNDERWORLD DECOY ! " - BIG TOWN ( DC ) # 47 October 1957 Cover: Gil KANE & Joe GIELLA
PHOTO: Ritz Bar New York City, 1934
Tables For LADIES. Martinis thirty-five cents, sidecars sixty cents.
Photo: J.A. MacDonald
www.marketworks.com/StoreFrontProfiles/DeluxeSFItemDetail...
****
" STEVE WILSON, UNDERWORLD DECOY ! " -
BIG TOWN ( DC ) # 47 October 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 # 47 @ Classic Comic Books ( mikegrost.com )
# 47 (September-October 1957)
The Diamonds of Peril; The Man with the Million-Dollar Memory; Steve Wilson, Underworld Decoy
The Diamonds of Peril (1957). When a scientist is kidnapped, the woman who works for his telephone answering service notices something is wrong. During the last issues of Big Town, Broome started including more women characters in the stories. This might be partly to make up for the absence of Lorelei Kilbourne, who disappeared after #39. Most of the stories in Big Town were heavily male oriented. The presence of sympathetic woman characters might be part of a strategy to attract more girl readers to the magazine. Most of DC's non-romance titles of the early 1950's seem heavily designed to appeal to boys.
The Man with the Million-Dollar Memory (1957). Steve's friend, young TV quiz show champion Fred Garrett, is kidnapped by crooks who want to exploit his photographic memory.
"The Man Who Bombed Big Town" (1957) had two plots, which interacted with each other, one involving pure detection of a crime. This tale is constructed similarly. Steve Wilson uses detection to track down his friend's whereabouts and rescue him, while the crooks are trying to force the innocent Fred to use his memory powers, something he admirably resists doing. The two stories are more evenly balanced here, with each taking up about half the story. Each sub-plot shows pure logic, constructed in an admirably consistent way. Each is based in a single approach, as the tale itself points out in its memorable finale. Steve and Fred talk about the case at its end, analyzing its inner structure, and drawing morals from it. This self-analytical finale is delightful. It is intelligent and insightful.
All of the detection stories are ultimately about the human mind. The use of reasoning by the characters is more important than any external details of the plot. There is something good about this emphasis on the interior of human beings. It recalls Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1848), which also shows the interior mental life of humans.
Fred Garrett's TV quiz show appearance has turned him into a celebrity in just two months. This is typical of the over-night celebrities in Broome tales. Once again, this leads the new celebrity to danger.
Steve Wilson, Underworld Decoy (1957). Steve is kidnapped by crooks, and forced to be a decoy in an underworld scheme.
This story offers an intriguing variation on the detection theme. In most of the detection tales, it is the reporter good guy who does the detection, trying to solve a mystery. Here, in the first half of "Underworld Decoy", it is the crooks who are doing the detection. Their kidnapping of Steve is part of a scheme on their plot to track down a missing mobster. Broome shows the same sort of imagination and careful logic with this crooks' scheme as he does with the detective work performed by his heroes.
During the second part of the tale, Steve turns the tables, and starts doing detective work on his own, tracking down the crooks in the case.
This story contains Larry Drum, another crook who wants to go straight. Broome always treats such characters with great sympathy. He will have a definitive treatment of this theme in his Mr. Element stories, such as "The Mightiest Punch of All Time" (Flash #153, June 1965).
****
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
" STEVE WILSON, UNDERWORLD DECOY ! " - BIG TOWN ( DC ) # 47 October 1957 Cover: Gil KANE & Joe GIELLA
PHOTO: Ritz Bar New York City, 1934
Tables For LADIES. Martinis thirty-five cents, sidecars sixty cents.
Photo: J.A. MacDonald
www.marketworks.com/StoreFrontProfiles/DeluxeSFItemDetail...
****
" STEVE WILSON, UNDERWORLD DECOY ! " -
BIG TOWN ( DC ) # 47 October 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 # 47 @ Classic Comic Books ( mikegrost.com )
# 47 (September-October 1957)
The Diamonds of Peril; The Man with the Million-Dollar Memory; Steve Wilson, Underworld Decoy
The Diamonds of Peril (1957). When a scientist is kidnapped, the woman who works for his telephone answering service notices something is wrong. During the last issues of Big Town, Broome started including more women characters in the stories. This might be partly to make up for the absence of Lorelei Kilbourne, who disappeared after #39. Most of the stories in Big Town were heavily male oriented. The presence of sympathetic woman characters might be part of a strategy to attract more girl readers to the magazine. Most of DC's non-romance titles of the early 1950's seem heavily designed to appeal to boys.
The Man with the Million-Dollar Memory (1957). Steve's friend, young TV quiz show champion Fred Garrett, is kidnapped by crooks who want to exploit his photographic memory.
"The Man Who Bombed Big Town" (1957) had two plots, which interacted with each other, one involving pure detection of a crime. This tale is constructed similarly. Steve Wilson uses detection to track down his friend's whereabouts and rescue him, while the crooks are trying to force the innocent Fred to use his memory powers, something he admirably resists doing. The two stories are more evenly balanced here, with each taking up about half the story. Each sub-plot shows pure logic, constructed in an admirably consistent way. Each is based in a single approach, as the tale itself points out in its memorable finale. Steve and Fred talk about the case at its end, analyzing its inner structure, and drawing morals from it. This self-analytical finale is delightful. It is intelligent and insightful.
All of the detection stories are ultimately about the human mind. The use of reasoning by the characters is more important than any external details of the plot. There is something good about this emphasis on the interior of human beings. It recalls Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1848), which also shows the interior mental life of humans.
Fred Garrett's TV quiz show appearance has turned him into a celebrity in just two months. This is typical of the over-night celebrities in Broome tales. Once again, this leads the new celebrity to danger.
Steve Wilson, Underworld Decoy (1957). Steve is kidnapped by crooks, and forced to be a decoy in an underworld scheme.
This story offers an intriguing variation on the detection theme. In most of the detection tales, it is the reporter good guy who does the detection, trying to solve a mystery. Here, in the first half of "Underworld Decoy", it is the crooks who are doing the detection. Their kidnapping of Steve is part of a scheme on their plot to track down a missing mobster. Broome shows the same sort of imagination and careful logic with this crooks' scheme as he does with the detective work performed by his heroes.
During the second part of the tale, Steve turns the tables, and starts doing detective work on his own, tracking down the crooks in the case.
This story contains Larry Drum, another crook who wants to go straight. Broome always treats such characters with great sympathy. He will have a definitive treatment of this theme in his Mr. Element stories, such as "The Mightiest Punch of All Time" (Flash #153, June 1965).
****
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