Powerhouse Pepper and Lena the Hyena
Wolverton's humor feature Powerhouse Pepper, about a superstrong if none-too-bright boxer, appeared in various comic books published by Timely Comics, the 1930s and 1940s precursor of Marvel Comics, from 1942 through 1952.[5] The strip was characterized by alliterative, rhyming dialogue, screwball comedy and throwaway gags in background. The Timely titles, such as Joker Comics, Gay Comics and Tessie the Typist, debuted a number of his spin-off characters and features, including Flap Flipflop, The Flying Flash (who later appeared in Charlton Comics' Jack in the Box #13), Leanbean Green, "Cartoon Crime Mystery" featuring Inspector Hector the Crime Detector, Doc Rockblock, "Picture Poems about Peculiar People", "Funny Boners", Dauntless Dawson, "Hothead Hotel", "Bedtime Bunk", "Foolish Faces" and more.
Five issues of a Powerhouse Pepper comic book were released in 1943 and 1948 by Timely,[5] but not all the covers were by Wolverton and many interior pages were also not devoted to Wolverton strips.
In 1946, Wolverton won a contest to depict "Lena the Hyena", the world's ugliest woman, a running gag in Al Capp's Li'l Abner newspaper strip where Lena remained unseen beneath an editorial note stating her face had been covered to protect readers.[6] Capp, responding to popular demand, announced a contest for artists to submit their interpretations. Among 500,000 entries, Wolverton's was the winner;[7] it appeared in a Li'l Abner daily and Life magazine. Wolverton's fame briefly led to Life and Pageant printing his caricatures. The Lena portrait typified the unique "spaghetti-and-meatballs school of design" style he employed regularly thereafter.[3]
In the 1950s, Wolverton produced 17 comic-book horror and science-fiction stories for Marvel and other comic-book publishers, including one story by author Daniel Keyes, which led to him being "hailed for creating uniquely grotesque monsters".[8] Among these tales were "The Brain-Bats of Venus" for Mister Mystery #7[9] and "Where Monsters Dwell" in Marvel's Adventures into Terror #7,[5] the title of which was later used for a 1970s Marvel reprint series.
