Showing posts with label Arnold Roth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arnold Roth. Show all posts

Thursday, November 28, 2024

Holiday Reading Room EVERY DAY IS A HOLLY DAY "Thanksgiving Day" & HUMBUG "Like How to Carve Turkey"

A look at Thanksgiving...including before it was Thanksgiving!
Note there is a historically-inaccurate aspect below...
Interestingly, this page from Brevity Inc's one-shot giveaway Every Day is a Holly Day (1956) plays up the fallacy that turkeys were served at the first Thanksgiving, when the primary dish was eel!
In fact, Benjamin Franklin wanted the wild turkey to be America's official bird and you don't eat your official bird!
Why is this comic entitled "Every Day is a Holly Day" instead of "Every Day is a Holiday"?
Because it was given away to kids by grocers who sold Holly Sugar!
Illustrated by John Rosenberger, it's a unique pamphlet covering a number of American holidays, including both Lincoln and Washington's Birthdays (before they were combined into "Presidents' Day"), Mothers' Day (though not Fathers' Day), Flag Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and a couple of holidays we've largely abandoned...Pan-American Day and American Indian Day!
Now, let's switch from reverence to sarcasm, with a never-reprinted one-pager by Arnold Roth from Humbug Publications' Humbug #5 (1957) covering a major culinary conundrum...
Happy Thanksgiving!

Sunday, December 29, 2019

Holiday Reading Room HUMBUG! "Humbug Award for Fake Santa Clauses"

...well, here's a far more cynical take on the matter, courtesy of artist Will Elder from the appropriately-titled Humbug #6 (1958)!
The writer is probably Elder or editorial staffers Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis, Al Jaffee, or Arnold Roth.
Any guesses?

Monday, December 16, 2019

Monday Madness HUMBUG "A CHRISTMAS CAROL"

Here's one of the koolest adaptations of Dickens' classic story...
...and most people don't even know it exists!
Note: the interior pages were two-color instead of the usual comic book-style four color.
The next-to-last page of the story is from the one-color inside front cover, while the final page was the four-color back cover of the magazine!
Illustrated by Arnold Roth, it's never been established who wrote this tale from Humbug! #6 (1958)!
It could be Roth, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Al Jaffee, or even all of them in a collaboration!