The BulletProof Coffin Issue 1 by David Hine and Shaky Kane

#1 $3 .99

THE BULLETPROOF COFFIN

in onth m T NEX

THE F O O R P T E BULL COFFIN walk theat dead be with

the shield of justice

YESTERDAY’S MEN, TOMORROW’S HEROES

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The story of Golden Nuggets Comics and the team who made them great.

Nuggets Comics have become a legend of popular culture, and yet that legend is based on a handful of titles created by just two men. Although Golden Nuggets published dozens of monthly comics in the nineteen-forties and fifties, the majority were bland ripoffs of established characters. It was only when the company hired Shaky Kane and Dave Hine that the readers really began to sit up and take notice. The story goes that the company was originally set up by a group of ‘businessmen’ to launder dirty Mob money but within a couple of years, riding the popularity of Pulp magazines, the business was turning a profit of its own.

Golden Nuggets Publishing churned out Crime, Romance, Western and Men’s titles like the notorious Naked Hollywood…

Naked! and Spicy War Stories. olden

By the mid-fifties they had switched entirely to comics and the company was desperate for writers and artists who could work fast and cheap. Kane arrived in 1955 with, according to office receptionist Fleur Stoneberg, “a bad attitude, a mouth like a five-dollar whore and the talent of a Michelangelo.”

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disappeared into obscurity. Occasionally illustrated pamphlets would appear – pseudo-religious rants that have been described as “Scientology meets Ayn Rand”. More recently there were rumors that he was producing pornographic comics under the pseudonym Destroyovski, financed by an eccentric Russian oligarch. But the man himself was rarely seen and no new comic book work was officially produced by Kane for more than three decades.

Soon he was the company’s mainstay, cranking out a hundred pages of art each month, but it wasn’t until that fateful day in the summer of ’56 that the legend really began. Here’s how Kane himself described their meeting, decades later in an interview with Esquire magazine: “Hine? Yeah, I remember him.

Turned up at my door with a folder under his arm. Looked like a vacuum cleaner salesman. Said he was a writer, wanted to work in comics. Said he had ideas.

I set him straight. I draw the comics, I told him. The kids buy comics for the pictures. You fill up the word balloons.

This ain’t literature. Just make sure you spell the words right.”

O

ver

the

following

years

the two men created a string of classics: Red Wraith, The Unforgiving Eye, Ramona Queen of the Stone Age, Coffin Fly and The Shield of Justice as well as anthology titles like Voodoo Romance, Sinister Detective and Tales from the Haunted Jazz Club.

This was the heyday for Golden Nuggets and for a while they rivaled even Big 2 Publishing in popularity. In 1962 Big 2 Previously published in

made their move. TV was killing the market for comics and many smaller companies were going to the wall. Big 2 knew there wasn’t room for both of them and they made Golden Nuggets publisher and majority shareholder, Jimmy ‘Scarface’ Moroni, an offer he couldn’t refuse. They bought Golden Nuggets for double its market value. Bad news for the company’s employees and worse new for Kane and Hine. Within months Big 2 cancelled all but a half-dozen romance and humor titles. Kane and Hine were shown the door. There would be no room at Big 2 Publishing for their brand of weird horror and twisted heroes.

‘The Comic Scene’ (Morris, Allwood, Smith and Smith productions)

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Meanwhile Hine endured years of poverty and alcoholism before eventually returning to Big 2 Publishing. Kane in his Esquire interview described his former partner as “A sell out! He went crawling back to beg them for work and he’s been churning out crap for them ever since.” Hine’s work for Big 2 has had a mixed reception, many former fans regretting his willingness to produce blatantly commercial superhero stories including the mediocre but high-selling Z-Men: Final Meltdown.

What few people know is that one cold winter night in the late nineties, Hine turned up blind drunk on the doorstep of Shaky Kane’s Brooklyn apartment, dressed in a crudely stitched Coffin Fly costume. Tormented with guilt over his betrayal of their art, he vowed to make good by working with Kane on a new series of comics that would recapture the glory days. Few have seen the results of this new collaboration. There have been solo ventures like Hine’s Strange Embrace and Kane’s Monster Truck and A-Men, with print runs so low they are now highly soughtafter rarities. Many of the new

comics featured characters from Golden Nuggets, characters whose copyright almost certainly belongs to Big 2 Publishing. These books are so rarely seen that many doubt their existence. However, we have been able to obtain artwork from a reliable source, which we have reproduced here, although we are unable to verify its authenticity.

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is that Image Comics will this year be publishing The Bulletproof Coffin, which purports to fill in the gaps in the checkered history of Kane and Hine. This 6-issue series even carries the names of Shaky Kane and David Hine as the creators, although in a telephone interview Hine denied any involvement with any of the projects attributed to him. “The Bulletproof Coffin? What kind of crappy name is that for a comic book?” He also denied that he was unhappy with his work at Big 2 Publishing. “Big 2 has been very good to me. I regret the depraved and immoral work I did for Golden Nugget Comics. That was a youthful aberration.

Big 2 publish wholesome entertainment and I’m proud to be associated with them. Apparently someone has appropriated my name with the bizarre idea that it will help publicize these degrading publications. I have my lawyers looking into it and believe me, I will sue the ass of whoever is responsible. As for Shaky Kane, the man was always a degenerate. I haven’t seen him in 20 years.

Hell, I thought the poor jerk was dead.” hat is certain

Shaky Kane has once again retreated behind closed doors, although there have been rumored sightings of an elderly man answering Kane’s description at recent Comic Conventions. This magazine has made numerous attempts to contact Kane to get his side of the story. The only response we have had is a garbled message left on the office answering machine.

Most of it was indecipherable.

Here’s what we were able to make out: “I’m not a comic artist. I’m an artist who happens to make comics. Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, they were artists who made comics. Most of those jokers out there are comics who make art… (garbled)…Zombie Mystery, that’s what the kids want…(garbled) bullet with that f***er Hine’s name on it…(garbled) ) …have some watercolors, landscapes, I’ll give you a good price…(garbled)…well, screw you…have a good day…”

holy fly paper!

and what moves men to kill and to love and to dominate and to create. It’s a brilliant book.”

com i c s s ho u l d b e g oo d

issue #25

THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE ELEPHANTMEN

®

elephantmen

Paste this whole page onto cardboard and cut out the STEVE NEWMAN figure along with the COFFIN FLY costume and accessories.

Dress him up and let the fly guy take pride of place on your club house hobby shelf.

“this is a comic about society itself,

“A great jumping on point!” weekly comic book review

e

um

vol

03 d an g e ro u s l i a i s on s

featuring david hine, shaky kane, dave gibbons, doug braithwaite, gary erskine and many more!

volume

03

dangerous liaisons

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312 pages!

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“Frankenstein and Planet of the Apes converge in these original, multi-layered stories.” on e s hot pr e s e nt s

LOOK OUT FOR FURTHER GOLDEN NUGGET GIVEAWAYS IN FUTURE ISSUES OF THE BULLETPROOF COFFIN.

elephantmen vol. 1: wounded animals hardcover $24.99 • softcover $16.99

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dustjackets available elephantmen vol. 2: fatal diseases at comicrazy.com hardcover $34.99 • softcover $24.99

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