Number 2366: Catman vs his readers and Dr Macabre

Catman #28 (1945) is considered scarce by Overstreet. I don’t know why, specifically. Perhaps by the time it reached newsstands and comic book racks (approximately April, 1945), the racks were full of too many comic books and it got lost in the jumble, or maybe Catman, being a costumed hero, was getting boring to readers. During that era the readers were fickle, and apt to drop comics that used to excite them and then after a while bored them. The issue even has an L.B. Cole cover, which I have always thought, based on Cole’s poster-like illustrations, to be foolproof in attracting buyers. Maybe not. The cover has a skull, no less, which has been gold for periodical sales since the beginning of publishing. Images of sex and/or death, the rule for big sales. So why no big sales for this issue? It has been 74 years since it was published, so we’ll never know for sure.

Something I do know: the Catman lead story is drawn by Bob Fujitani (signed “Fuje” in that time of war with Japan), who brought his usual craft and dynamics to the story.

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