Vince Napoli on Where Comic Horror Comes From in Beware 12, at Auction

Posted in: Comics, Heritage Sponsored, Vintage Paper | Tagged: pre-code horror

Weird Tales artist Vince Napoli’s story in Beware #12 is about a comic horror artist who finds new inspiration during a creative dry spell.

With a little over 25 known credits in the comic book industry from 1951 to 1955, Vince Napoli is not the first name that comes to mind when it comes to Pre-Code Horror comic book art. But Napoli is considered an important pulp illustrator of the 1930s through the early 1950s.  Best remembered for his work during the formative 1930s era of Weird Tales, Napoli also contributed to pulps including Astounding Science Fiction, Marvel Science Stories, and Planet Stories among others.  He was an experienced hand when it came to stories of the fantastic and horror by the time he briefly entered comics in the early 1950s, which is part of what makes his story My Daddy Should Have Listened in Beware #12 so interesting.

As My Daddy Should Have Listened opens in Beware #12, the son of a comic book artist brags to his classmates that his dad draws the best horror monsters in comics. We soon learn that the creator has one an award for the “best horror scripts” at the annual “comic book artists’ banquet” for two years running.  But now he seems to be in a creative dry spell, and worries that artists like Ed Goldfarb, Bob Baer, Harry Harrison, Ernie Bache, and Steve Kirkel (all artists who worked for Youthful Publications) are surpassing him.  Then, his son meets another boy who shows him real monsters, and the story takes its course from there.

Youthful Publications was part of a constellation of publishing companies with loose connections to DC Comics founder Harry Donenfeld. Donenfeld, best remembered for becoming a co-owner of DC Comics, had his hand in a number of other comic book publishers throughout the 1940s and early 1950s.   One principle of the company, William Friedman, had acted as Donenfeld’s lawyer on numerous occasions, while another, Adrian Lopez, had previously co-founded a magazine publisher with Donenfeld.  With publications that included adult satire, cheesecake magazines, and romance and horror comics, and the unique Stamp Comics. Comic book titles sometimes shifted between various parts of this constellation, and the Pre-Code Horror title Beware was one of these.  With 18 issues published between Youthful Publications (three issues), Trojan Magazines (14 issues) and a single Comics Code era issue from the unrelated Merit Publications.

American Weekly Magazine once said of Napoli, “He is not a malicious cartoonist, like many of the Surrealist artists. He says he sees beyond the limitations of human character and personality.”  Napoli saw beyond those limits frequently as a pulp and comic book artist, and there’s a Beware #10 and 12 Group (Youthful Magazines, 1952) Condition: Average GD featuring his work up for auction in the 2024 June 9-11 Sunday, Monday & Tuesday Comic Books Select Auction #122424 at Heritage Auctions.

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