Time for two more of the obscure, even spurious comic books based on popular TV shows which Western Publishing Company issued in the sixties and seventies under the Gold Key (and sometimes Whitman) labels. These two are so difficult to find that some people have accused those of us who write about them of perpetrating some sort of hoax on an unsuspecting public…
There were eight issues of the Hawaii Five-O comic book, all produced out of Western's New York office. Paul S. Newman wrote the first, second and fifth issues and the rest were reportedly scripted by George Kashdan. All of the artwork was done by Luis Dominguez who did such fine art for Western's Boris Karloff and Twilight Zone titles. Above is the cover of #3 which contained the story, "The Beachcomber Burglar," in which Steve McGarrett matches wits with a daring daylight thief who is stealing things apparently not for their value but to tweak McGarrett. He leaves behind clues and the entire "game" distracts McGarrett and his men as they struggle to figure out where he will strike next. My favorite moment in the story is when McGarrett is sitting in his office late at night, staring out the window as Danny Williams walks in. You can almost hear the serious tones of actor Jack Lord as he asks, "What kind of man would steal fifteen crates of cat toys?" Danny absently jokes, "Someone who's distracted by shiny objects" and that jars McGarrett's thinking and causes him to realize that the Beachcomber Burglar's crime spree is intended to distract. A shipment of $20,000,000 in untraceable currency is being transported to a bank on Oahu and if Five-O follows the Beachcomber's leads, they will be miles away from there at the time of the delivery. "That has to be it, Dan-O," he shouts as he calls for his car and back-up units. And sure enough, when Beachcomber Bob shows up to steal the money, figuring McGarrett and his men are off on another island, there they are. A very clever tale.
Three issues of Dragnet 1969 and one more of Dragnet 1970 (continuing the numbering) were published out of Western's Los Angeles office with scripts by Don R. Christensen and artwork by Doug Wildey. Doug told me that he was allowed to visit the set on the Universal lot and to sketch Jack Webb and Harry Morgan from life. "It was not a big deal," he said. "Webb's face didn't change much no matter what he was doing." The first issue (pictured above) presented a story called "The Big Puzzle" in which Joe Friday and his partner Bill Gannon investigate a string of murders all occurring within a two-hour period on the same afternoon. The three victims were all killed in the same manner and obviously by the same murderer…but there was no apparent connection between them. Friday's gut tells him that the key to finding the culprit is to figure out why those three people were killed. He and Gannon investigate all their lives and can't find anything…until he realizes what they had in common. I won't ruin the story for you by telling you what it is but Wildey drew a great sequence showing Friday and Gannon, once they figure out the pattern, racing to prevent Murder #4!
More of these in a week or so.