Nurses as Objects in Comics: Dogface Dooley 3 - "The Tattooed Sergeant"

This 1952 Magazine Enterprises comic book, Dogface Dooley 3, has a cover that swipes one of Stan Lee's standard Nellie the Nurse gags, with the thermometer exploding as the patient (here Dogface Dooley) experiences a rising temperature in response to the visual stimulation offered by a sexy-looking nurse in a tight uniform. As is often the case, the cover is somewhat misleading, as the event depicted bears no resemblance to what actually happens in the stories inside. There is, however, one story that does include nurses, and certainly lives up to the reputation for objectification of nurses established by the cover.

It's not a particularly flattering image of soldiers either, but it is a funny book after all. The full comic has been uploaded to the Digital Comic Museum and is available at http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?dlid=14203.

Nurses as Objects in Comics: Joe Yank 12 - "The Battle of the Sexes"

Joe Yank was an early 50s Standard title of a kind of war comedy genre. Private Joe Yank and Sgt. Mike McGurk are the two main characters. I just acquired this comic, but I'm using pages from the scan available in the Digital Comic Museum. In this story, "Battle of the Sexes" by Ross Andru, we have a perfect example of image discrimination coupled with sexist exploitation of the female form. You'll also note the misleading cover, which depicts a scene that is not part of the actual story. What happens is McGurk gets hospitalized, and in the ward he encounters a nurse who doesn't fit the usual comic book stereotype of the pinup. With little else to do, and with a score to settle with Joe Yank, McGurk hatches a plan to make the Private experience some serious discomfort. He exploits the plain nurse's eagerness to find a man, and her unattractive features, to carry out his scheme.

Joe Yank turns up at the hospital to visit McGurk, and his first encounter with the nursing staff feeds his expectations, based on the kind of nurse image typically promoted by the male mind indulging in fantasy. This softens Joe Yank up for McGurk's ruse, and he buys it, hook, line, and sinker.

Joe Yank goes on his date, only to find he's been had. All he can think of from the moment he  meets the man-hungry homely nurse is how to get away, and in the end he has to resort to some extreme measures.

I know it's a comedy designed most likely for male military readers, but I can't help feeling that there's something not right about the way the unattractive woman is made fun of and is also humiliated. Not all women and not all nurses look like Marilyn Monroe.

Kind of an unusual nurse tale that raises some interesting questions about attitudes towards women in the early 1950s.

Crime... and Medicine... Do Not Pay!

My proposal for a book chapter on the image of nurses in Containment Era comics was accepted by the editors with a deadline of August. So now the writing has to begin. I've already collected together a good number of actual romance comics with nurse stories, as well as some scanned issues from various sources, so there's more than enough material. I had wondered about buying a copy of Crime Does Not Pay 132 (March 1954) that I'd seen on eBay, with this 'tough dame' nurse cover by Charles Biro. Luckily I thought, "Why don't I check the Digital Comic Museum to see if they have a scan of it?" and bingo! One thing of note on the cover is the stereotypically red-headed nurse, wearing high heels in the operating theater, who's also handy with a gun! That's my kind of gal!

With this cover I was expecting the story to be something like that Marvel Night Nurse issue, featured recently on Jacque Nodell's Sequential Crush, where a gangster is receiving treatment in the hospital, a rival mobster comes to bump him off, and the nurse gets between the two, insisting that he'll kill the patient over her dead body. This crime cover may even have been the inspiration for the Night Nurse story, but alas, this issue is one of those where the actual story contents don't match the expectations generated by the cover illustration. The story and art are credited to Dick Rockwell by the Grand Comics Database. Instead, what we have is a rich patient in his last days, and a ne'er-do-well doctor obviously not getting paid the big bucks that medical men get nowadays. Envious of the old man's wealth, the doc cooks up a scheme to relieve the elderly citizen of some of his accumulated cash. Gaining his trust, the doctor acts as scribe for his will, for which the patient awards $50 in gratitude for this simple task (he could have bought 500 new comics with that much cash back then!). The doc isn't satisfied with fifty, and adds a couple of zeros after the patient has signed the will, deliberately avoiding contact with the old man's attorney Ed Harris.

At this point in the story the nurse character breezes in and out providing her care in the expected fashion.

Subsequently, with his plot in danger of being exposed, Dr. Burton does what any down-on-his-luck graduate of medical school would do - he bumps off his patient while the nurse is out of the room. She's suspicious though, and when Burton offers her $1000 to keep quiet, she knows he croaked the old guy and wants $3500 to keep schtum. Unfortunately for her she should have blown the whistle instead of thinking she stood to gain from the doctor's impropriety. He leads her along, her mind so bewildered by the thought of all that cash that she doesn't realize the danger she's in until it's far too late. One strangulation, a taxi ride with the body wrapped in a rug, and quick deposit in the mortuary later, Burton again thinks he's in the clear. What he doesn't know is that attorney Ed Harris is wise to him, having sent his assistant Tom Whitaker to spy on his conversation with the nurse. Tom's inability to read the circumstances allowed the doc time to kill the nurse, but a bit of further investigation reveals the doc's plan. The nurse's disfigured corpse is identified in the morgue, and ex-G-man Harris heads Burton off at the train station. Burton's for the chair, but the poor nurse paid a heavy price for giving in to temptation and exhibiting highly unethical conduct for a self-sacrificing angel.

The cover states that the contents of the book are all true crime stories, but this doctor is a little unbelievable - how on earth did he qualify with the kind of outlook he has? But then I guess it takes all sorts. Same with the nurse. This story is one of those that makes me thank Wertham, though, despite regretting that his testimony eventually resulted in the loss of the great EC. I'm not a fan of the crime genre, and this tale does slight the medical profession big time. As far as the image of nurses that this promotes - to begin with she's the polite and helpful provider of care we expect, but all of a sudden she transforms into an unscrupulous wannabe moll, abandoning her professional code of conduct seemingly at the drop of a hat. As such there is the suggestion that nurses will engage in extremely unethical conduct if the opportunity arises to benefit financially from doing so. Yuck!

Romance Comic News: Golden Age Comic Downloads Reincarnated

Following its year (at least) of server problems, the UK's Golden Age Comic Downloads site, the world's #1 source of public domain golden age comic scans has been reincarnated as the Digital Comic Museum, and you'll be relieved to know that it functions normally.