>book "The Dream Life" is a reference to a comic book called "John Wayne Action
>Adventures" which began publication in the late 1940s and lasted for about 3
>years.Does anyone know about this? Was Wayne presented as himself, i.e., a
>movie
>star, or did the comics project some other sort of image for him?


The comics featured stories of the type that Wayne might have starred in as
movies; in other words they didn't feature John Wayne the actor/star but
John Wayne the detective, cowboy, whatever.  (At least based on my limited
experience; the originals are a bit pricey for casual reading and have
rarely if ever been reprinted.)  Don's recommendation of the Overstreet
guide for comics is good since it's been the main source for a couple of
decades.  However the recent Standard Catalog of Comic Books (published by
Krause) is stronger on bibliographic information.

There were a fair number of these celebrity comics up until the US market
went mainly to superheroes in the 70s.  Usually they featured comics (Jerry
Lewis) or Western actors (Roy Rogers, Gabby Hayes!) who had a fairly
well-defined image.  Others used people like Boris Karloff for marketing
purposes but not in the stories.  I think they're a part of the star system
that's ready for further exploration since even comics writers tend to
ignore these.


Lang

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"War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." - Ambrose Bierce

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