Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: golden age, Matt Baker
In Seven Seas Comics #4, Matt Baker’s South Sea Girl stars in a film which appears to level to the character’s movie inspirations.
Although the title appears uncommon to us at present, Seven Seas Comics was impressed by the South Sea Island movies of the Nineteen Thirties-Forties. Movies that includes a lovely sarong-wearing South Sea Island woman had been virtually their very own style within the decade main up to the debut of Matt Baker‘s South Sea Girl in Seven Seas Comics. And if one can level to a root inspiration for Baker’s South Sea Girl, it might definitely be actress Dorothy Lamour. The actress starred in so many common South Sea Island movies that she grew to become referred to as “The Sarong Girl.” Such movies included John Ford‘s The Hurricane (1937), Her Jungle Love (1938), Typhoon (1940), Aloma of the South Seas (1941), and Rainbow Island (1944).
Seven Seas Comics #4 appears to lean into South Sea Girl’s film origins, because the story facilities round a film producer set on filming a film on South Sea Girl’s residence, the volcanic Vanishing Isles. “Vanishing islands” sometimes refers back to the real-world phenomenon of everlasting islands that disappear below the ocean at excessive tide, however South Sea Girl’s Vanishing Isles had been shrouded in mist and troublesome to seek out, maybe not not like Skull Island of King Kong fame. Seven Seas Comics #4 has likewise been volcanic and troublesome to seek out, with the CGC 9.2 Davis Crippen copy going for $81,000.00 earlier this yr. One of the most well liked Matt Baker comics of latest occasions, there is a very handsome copy of Seven Seas Comics #4 (Universal Phoenix Features, 1947) CGC FN- 5.5 Off-white pages up for public sale within the 2023 August 17 The Matt Baker Comics & Comic Art Showcase Auction #40233 at Heritage Auctions.
In the story of Seven Seas Comics #4, the film producer, maybe impressed by the pipe-smoking John Ford himself (although he seems to be extra like Iger within the story), is compelled to cope with a temperamental star till the true South Sea Girl steps in to play the position in probably the most genuine manner potential. Written by Manning Lee Stokes, it is a typical Baker story that balances whimsy and hazard with a lot of alternatives to let Baker’s good woman artwork model shine.
Stokes wrote the South Sea Girl tales and a number of other others within the Seven Seas Comics collection. Interestingly, in addition to his work in Seven Seas Comics, his solely recognized comics work is writing The Case of the Winking Buddha, with paintings by Charles Raab and printed by St. John in 1950. Like its way more well-known companion, It Rhymes with Lust by Matt Baker and authors Leslie Waller and Arnold Drake and printed in the identical yr, The Case of the Winking Buddha was a digest-size graphic novel. And like It Rhymes with Lust writer Leslie Waller, Manning Lee Stokes would go on to change into a prolific novel author. While producing an unimaginable vary of work from the late Forties by way of the Nineteen Seventies. Stokes wrote a number of installments of the Sixties paperback reboot collection of the seminal dime novel and pulp character Nick Carter.
Seven Seas Comics may be thought-about a turning level or level-up in Matt Baker‘s profession. The collection started a few yr and a half after his comics debut on Sheena in Jumbo Comics, and his model had advanced considerably in the direction of the shape that may make him a legend in subsequent a long time. Baker’s work on the character South Sea Girl in all six points of this collection, and on the covers of its closing 4 points, was the start of the next profile for Baker’s Good Girl inventive talent. His notorious work for Fox Feature Syndicate ramped up simply as Seven Seas Comics was concluding.
While Seven Seas Comics was produced (and initially printed) by Samuel “Jerry” Iger‘s personal Universal Phoenix Features, problem #4 lists the writer as Leader Enterprises within the indicia, with Iger and Ruth Roche listed as government editor and managing editor, respectively. Leader Enterprises was primarily the writer of trade-focused newspaper publications resembling The Civil Service Leader and Fashion Trades, amongst others. Leader Enterprises writer Jerry Finkelstein based political information outlet The Hill in 1994. If this problem had been printed in the course of the WWII, one would possibly logically conclude that this association took place to achieve entry to Leader’s paper quota, however such quotas had been halted on the finish of 1945. Still, paper shortages lingered for years after the warfare, and Seven Seas Comics wouldn’t be the one Matt Baker-related publication that had some uncommon publishing preparations for this purpose.
However, the listed common supervisor on this problem, N.H. Mager may be the connective glue between Universal Phoenix Features and Leader Enterprises. Mager entered the newspaper syndication enterprise working as managing editor of National Newspaper Service, a syndicated information service that launched in early 1937 below the management of Martin B. Iger. This is across the identical time that Jerry Iger and (at the moment) Will Eisner‘s Universal Phoenix was ramping up to offer comics to Editors Press Service’s Wags publication. I couldn’t discover a definitive relationship between Martin B. Iger and Jerry Iger on the time of this writing because of the issue in monitoring Nineteenth-century family tree information outdoors the U.S., however there would appear to be so much of connectable dots right here. As for N.H. Mager, he spent most of his profession within the advertising and commerce present discipline, which Leader Enterprises additionally dabbled in.
Seven Seas Comics collection is a vital early second in Matt Baker’s profession, and problem #4 has been experiencing some volcanic beneficial properties in they eyes of collectors in recent times. One of probably the most sought-after Matt Baker comedian books, there is a very handsome copy of Seven Seas Comics #4 (Universal Phoenix Features, 1947) CGC FN- 5.5 Off-white pages up for public sale within the 2023 August 17 The Matt Baker Comics & Comic Art Showcase Auction #40233 at Heritage Auctions.
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