In The Days of the Mob/Spirit World Ad - 1971

I just found this ad in an old issue of The Phantom Stranger, which is where I found all the ads DC did for King Kirby's two aborted magazine projects. Did DC figure that PS had an older audience who would be more interested in these?

It's interesting that DC mentions that they are sold out of the two magazines(then why did they cancel them so abruptly?), so they are going back to press on them. Pretty unusual, no?

In The Days of the Mob #1 Cover Rough by Jack Kirby

This was just run in the latest issue of The Jack Kirby Collector(#49)--Jack's cover rough for In The Days of the Mob #1. One of the reasons I subscribe to JKC is that they manage to find this amazing stuff.

As you can see, he had most of it pretty well done in his head(no surprise there; this is Jack Kirby we're talking about here), and the finished cover looked pretty close to this--the one exception being the old-timey "Comics" tag at the end of the title, eventually dropped.

In The Days of the Mob #2 Cover Sketch

Ok, one more piece of Kirby Obscura before we move onto something else. I found this wonderful little item in another issue of The Jack Kirby Collector--Jack's sketch for the cover for the never-published In The Days of the Mob #2. Since we've already seen a lot of material for #2 as finished work, I assume the cover was the last thing to be worked on before DC pulled the plug.

I have to admit, the headline "The Planned Assassination of Thomas E.Dewey!" makes me chuckle. It's hardly "This Man...This Monster!", but I still wish DC has published it.

In The Days of The Mob Poster - 1971

I was digging through my issues of The Jack Kirby Collector by TwoMorrows, and I came across a small article on Kirby's black and white magazine work, In the Days of the Mob and Spirit World, in JKC #32.

In addition to the article, it shows the two promotional posters DC sent out to news vendors to promote the magazines! They are extremely rare and way cool, so I'll be showing them off here and tomorrow. Considering what a financial flop the magazines were, it's amazing to me that any copies of these posters are still around.

In The Days of the Mob #2 - "Murder, Inc!" Page 10

And that's it! Thanks to DC for eventually publishing this(sort of), and of course to Jack "King" Kirby!

In The Days of the Mob #2 - "Murder, Inc!" Page 9

In The Days of the Mob #2 - "Murder, Inc!" Page 8

In The Days of the Mob #2 - "Murder, Inc!" Page 7

What a kick-ass page!

In The Days of the Mob #2 - "Murder, Inc!" Page 6

In The Days of the Mob #2 - "Murder, Inc!" Page 5

In The Days of the Mob #2 - "Murder, Inc!" Page 4

In The Days of the Mob #2 - "Murder, Inc!" Page 3

In The Days of the Mob #2 - "Murder, Inc!" Page 2

In The Days of the Mob #2 - "Murder, Inc!" Page 1

I was digging through my collection of Amazing World of DC Comics prozines today and forgot about this little gem from the August, 1974 first issue--"Murder, Inc!", the first story from the unpublished second issue of Jack Kirby's In The Days of the Mob b/w magazine!

The story runs ten pages and is really a thing of beauty. I'm presenting this more as a curiosity, but if anyone would like, I'll post the rest of the story(in order) in successive posts. Lemme know!

In The Days of the Mob Advertisement - DC Comics

As you can see, DC put a little more effort into advertising Kirby's In the Days of the Mob than they did for Spirit World. This ad actually makes the book look exciting and action-filled, like one would expect from Jack Kirby!

I had always thought that each month's books contained all the same advertising, so when I went through my 1971 Justice League of Americas (the only book I have every issue of) and I couldn't find the ad, I wondered where the heck it might've appeared.

On a whim, I looked through my issues of The Phantom Stranger from that year (I love those Wein/Aparo PS comics) and, lo and behold, here was this ad in #14, the August 1971 issue. Maybe DC assumed that The Phantom Stranger's readership was a tad older than their other superhero titles, so that would be a better spot to advertise a magazine aimed at those same people?

In any case, I'm so glad I found I this--I find that I enjoy the ads for the stuff I like (like treasury comics) just as much as the stuff itself! I don't think DC ever did another ad for this book, but if someone knows of one, please drop me a line!

In The Days of the Mob - Hampshire Distributors LTD...aka DC Comics!

The roaring 30's come alive!

This is one of the oddest magazines in my collection, and maybe even in all of b/w comics. In The Days of the Mob was one of two one-shot publications (the other being Spirit World, which we'll cover next) produced, conceived, and (mostly) executed by Jack "King" Kirby for Hampshire Distributors Ltd., aka DC Comics.

Why, exactly, DC didn't put it's famous name and "DC Bullet" on these books is still somewhat of a mystery; even the recent, excellent article on these oddities--in TwoMorrow's Back Issue! #10--couldn't answer that riddle.

After the beautifully designed grabber of a cover, the magazine opens up with the inviting words "Welcome to Hell!" as Warden Fry (!) invites you to take a tour of his maximum security prison that looks an awful lot like Hades. He introduces you to one of its most infamous residents, Ma Barker, which leads to the main story "Ma's Boys", all about the criminal gang, written and drawn by Kirby.

Warden Fry continues his Cain-esque tour of the prison, and reveals that big-time mobsters like Arnold Rothstein and Dutch Schultz also reside here. After they start fighting amongst themselves, he helps keep them in line with the help of a flame-thrower! Warden Fry doesn't mess around.

Next is "Bullets for Big Al!", the story of, you guessed it, Al Capone! Before we get to the next feature, a text piece about crime in that era called "The Breeding Ground!" we're presented with a full-size, pull-out "wanted" poster of John Dillinger! Then there's a text story from Kirby compatriots Mark Evanier and Steve Sherman, called "Funeral for a Florist!" which is, according to them, "A factual account in the tradition of ace reporters of the thirties!"

"Kansas City Massacre", again by written and drawn by Kirby, is about Pretty Boy Floyd, and it leads to the final feature "Method of Operation!", which leads off with the cheery phrase "Not all our inmates are dead!" (good to know, Warden). And then as a weird counterpoint to all the death and mayhem in the previous forty-five pages, we get "Killyjoy Was Here", two pages of crime humor by Sergio Aragones!

The inside cover promises us a second issue of Mob, on sale August 15th, 1971 (one day before I was born!), but sadly that never arrived. Apparently DC was less than enthused about the sales of these definitely-unusual comic magazines, and cancelled them before Kirby went any further.

Which of course is a damn shame, since Kirby was trying with these magazines to explore different formats and different material, hoping to capture a different audience than was reading comics at the time. You could argue why he thought comics about deceased murderers would do that, but given the King's track record it certainly seemed like he deserved the benefit of the doubt. It's too bad DC didn't give In the Days of the Mob at least a few more issues to see if would've led somewhere.
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I thought this would be the perfect moment to plug another comics blog, this one called Guns in the Gutters, run by Crimeboss Christopher Mills. Apparently CM was a fan of this blog (oh, so he's the one) and it (at least partially) inspired him to do his own blog devoted to one of his favorite kinds of comics, crime comics! I think that's just great (there should be at least one historical/fan blog for every genre of comic--humor, romance, funny animal, whatever!) and GITG is a lot of fun.

Go check it out, or it's two in the hat for you!