Friday Fun RIOT the Complete "Why Izzit?"

Appearing in Atlas' Riot #5 and #6 (1956)...

...these never-reprinted features by writer Stan Lee, penciler Dan DeCarlo, and inker Rudy Lapick...

...were designed as fillers for use at any point the book's page count came up short!

Were more created...but never used?

Or are these four pages all that exist?

I suspect we'll never know the answer...

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Sincerest Form of Parody

Friday Fun HOMER THE HAPPY GHOST "Meet the Neighbors!"

What if Stan (the Man) Lee had written Casper the Friendly Ghost?

Well, he did!

Sort of...

Due to the success of Casper in both animation and comic books in the early 1950s, numerous companies jumped on the friendly phantom bandwagon with clones barely different enough to avoid copyright and trademark infringement lawsuits!

Writer/editor Stan Lee and artist Dan de Carlo presented Atlas Comics' take with this never-reprinted 1955 premiere tale which combines Lee's snarky Catskill vaudeville humor with de Carlo's polished animation-style artwork!

Homer the Happy Ghost ran until 1958 (22 issues, plus a 2-issue spinoff, Adventures of Homer Ghost)!

In 1968, Atlas' successor Marvel (you might have heard of them) signed a new distribution deal freeing them from the sixteen-title per month limit they had during most of the Silver Age under the previous contract.

Lee brought back Homer in reprint form, hoping to run new material if the book sold well.

Whether it was due to poor sales or Harvey Comics (which was at its' peak with over two-dozen Casper titles) finally laying the copyright/trademark law down, this incarnation only lasted four issues without ever getting to run new stories!

Homer hasn't been seen since!

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Harvey Comics Classics Volume One

Casper the Friendly Ghost
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Frightening Friday Fun CHILLING ADVENTURES IN SORCERY AS TOLD BY SABRINA "Boy Who Cried Vampire"

The now-cancelled CW series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina was not the first time the "Teenage Witch" did actual horror...

... in 1972, she hosted her own series of horror stories told in the Archie "vein" as you can see in this never-reprinted (in color) terror-tale...

Now there's an ambiguous ending if ever I heard one...

In 1971, the Comics Code Authority loosened its' regulations regarding monsters, allowing limited use of "classic" creatures including vampires, werewolves, and zombies.

While DC and Marvel went monster-happy, unleashing new strips and several new titles, Archie Comics' response was this book with an unusual combination of horror writing and Archie house-style art, which tended to conflict with the theme of the stories!

To be fair, writer Frank Doyle, penciler Dan DeCarlo, and inker Rudy Lapick tried their best with this tale from Chilling Adventures in Sorcery as Told by Sabrina #1 (1972), but it just doesn't work.

After two issues, the series was revamped (pun intended) into a more-traditional horror title with non-cartoony art by Gray Morrow and associates, dropping Sabrina as the hostess.

It survived nine more issues.
Speaking of survival, reruns of the TV version of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina can be seen on Netflix!

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Chilling Adventures in Sorcery

(which reprints this story...but in black-and-white) 

Friday Fun JETTA OF THE 21st CENTURY "Jet-Heeled Prom" and "Zingbats"

Like most comics of the era, Jetta of the 21st Century had text stories...

...to qualify for second-class (magazine) mailing rates!

The text stories featured other characters from the "Jetta-verse"!

Written by "Dixon Wells" (a pen-name used only for Jetta text stories), this never-reprinted piece from Standard's Jetta of the 21st Century #7 (1953) would've made a pretty good comic story.

Perhaps it was scripted by Dan DeCarlo?

Also included in this final issue of the series was this one-pager totally-unrelated to the "Jetta-verse"...

No credits are available for this short, which probably was meant for one of Standard's sci-fi comics, Lost Worlds or Fantastic Worlds!

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Dan DeCarlo's Jetta

Friday Fun MY GAL PEARL "Football"

In the mid-1950s, there were a spate of "dumb blonde" comics...

....inspired by the radio/TV series My Friend Irma and Marilyn Monroe in such films as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like it Hot!

This was one of Atlas (later Marvel) Comics' contributions to the genre!

Who says "vaudeville is dead"?

Certainly not writer Stan Lee and artist Dan DeCarlo in this never-reprinted tale from My Girl Pearl #1 (1955)!

There's lots more of this sort of thing...from almost every comic company of the era.

And you'll be seeing examples from them in the coming weeks!

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Pin-Up Art of Dan DeCarlo

Friday Fun TIPPY TEEN "Kiss and Tell"

In the 1960s, besides sci-fi and superhero comics, most of us also read "teen humor" comics...

...like Tower's Tippy Teen #17 (1967), which featured this tale that starts off with the heroine reading a romance comic.

(Talk about meta...)

If the plotting and art style on this tale from Tippy Teen #17 (1967) reads like an Archie Comics story, that's because many Archie writers and artists (who were freelancers) including Sam Schwartz, Harry Shorten, and Dan DeCarlo, also worked on Tippy strips for the short-lived Tower Comics' in the 1960s!
BTW, this story was reprinted several years later...but with the clothing and hairstyles updated to the 1970s, and the lead character changed!
Be here next Friday to see it!

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Tippy's Teen-In™

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Friday Fun JETTA OF THE 21st CENTURY "What a Specimen"

To celebrate the long (and well-deserved) holiday, it's futuristic fun with Dan DeCarlo's Jetta!

The 21st Century ain't what they thought it would be in 1953...

"Leaping Electrodes!"

"Now we're cookin' with uranium!"

"Go atomize yourself!"

"This is simply electronic!"

Why aren't we all talking like this?

This tale from Jetta #6 (which was actually the second issue) was written and penciled by Dan DeCarlo, but it may not have been inked by him.

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Jetta of the 21st Century™

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Friday Fun JETTA OF THE 21st CENTURY "My Cosmic Hero"

With hope that the CoronaVirus pandemic will start winding down soon...

...let's look at a typical evening at the drive-in (whose popularity has soared due to the aforementioned pandemic), supposedly set in the early 21st Century (aka NOW)...as presented in 1952!

(I'm still waiting for my flying car!)

If the art style looks familiar, it's the work of Dan DeCarlo, who helped establish the iconic "look" of Archie Comics!
Dan actually started at Atlas Comics (the 1940s-50s predecessor to Marvel Comics) doing a variety of humor strips before beginning a long-term run on various Archie titles in 1951.
Even then, he continued to work for a number of other publishers, including Standard Comics, who asked him to create, write, and illustrate a teen-humor series.
(Every publisher had at least one of them!)
Exactly whose idea it was to set it in the "far future" of the early 21st Century is unknown, but the resultant strip, though extremely derivative of Archie, was unique in the teen-humor genre for it's Jetsons-style setting and "futuristic" slang.

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Dan DeCarlo's Jetta