Showing posts with label Friday Fun. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Friday Fun. Show all posts

Friday, November 21, 2025

Friday Fun ALL-NEW COMICS "Mummy Madness"

If You Like Slapstick Abbott & Costello-Style Comedy...

...you'll love this never-reprinted one-shot feature from Harvey's All-New Comics #5 (1943)!
The team of Huff & Guff, produced by Bob Powell's art studio, were obviously patterned after Bud Abbott & Lou Costello, and were meant to be an ongoing feature.
Sadly, the response to them must have been absolutely minimal, since no further stories about them ever appeared!
Bob Powell and his assistants remained prolific contributors to numerous publishers (including Harvey) in every genre from romance to horror to humor to Westerns and more, through the 1940s and 50s

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Friday, November 14, 2025

Friday Fun ABBOTT & COSTELLO COMICS "Comics Convention!"

Like Jim Starlin, Roy Thomas, Berni Wrightson, and numerous others... 

...writer/artist Grass Green was part of the first generation of fanboys-turned-pros in the 1960s.
What few people knew was that Grass was one of the few Black fanboys!

While he occasionally worked in mainstream comics, as shown in this never-reprinted tale from Charlton's Abbott & Costello Comics #16 (1972), Green found his greatest professional success as the first Black underground/alternative comix writer/artist!
From the early 1970s to the late 1990s, Grass did quite a bit of work for Kitchen SinkRenegadeRip Off, and Fantagraphics' Eros imprint.
Sadly, Grass passed away from lung cancer in 2002.
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Friday, November 7, 2025

Friday Fun HARRY HOTDOG "Peevy Over TV"

He's not a dachshund, but a generic canine with no self-control...
...who just can't understand what's going on with the then-"newfangled" tech known as "television"!
For those under 70, when TV was introduced to the American public in the early 1950s, it featured news, old movies, and low-budget original programming which this never-reprinted story from Magazine Enterprises' Hot Dog #1 (1954) aka A-1 #107 satirizes!
If you're wondering why the comic has two titles and numberings, let me explain...
Like Dell's Four Color ComicsA-1 was an anthology title which served as a tryout platform for various concepts, so it had both the strip's numbering and the title's numbering.
That way, if the strip didn't sell well, the publisher wouldn't have to pay for another second-class mailing permit (which was required for each title published) for a new series!
Numerous ME series were published this way, including Cave GirlI Am a CopTrail ColtManhuntGhost Rider, and Thun'da!
This issue was the first of four Harry Hotdog-starring issues!
Writer/Artist George Crenshaw began as an animator for Walt Disney, then MGM before going to comic strips and books.
Besides being a longtime "ghost" on Dennis the Menace, he created his own long-running strip, Belevdere, about (surprise) a dog...but not an anthropomorphic one like Harry!
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Friday, September 19, 2025

Mort Drucker's "Disguised Humor" and the DC Comic YOU DIDN'T KNOW EXISTED!

Can you name what DC Comic this never-reprinted page appeared in?
Hints:
It was during the period Drucker was also working for MAD!
It was during the Silver Age of Comics!
(I didn't say they were great hints!)
Obvious Trivia: Mort would go on to illustrate a number of the Man of Steel's media incarnations in MAD, including Christopher Reeve's movie version and the tv series Smallville.
The answer is...
DC's Teen Beam #2 (1968)!
Yeah, it doesn't look like a comic, but it was comic-sized, and DC produced it!
From '66-'69 several comics companies took a shot at doing mixed-format comics/teen mag titles...
Tower's Teen-In
Charlton's Go-Go
Harvey's Pop Comics
Warren also tried their hand with two b/w mag titles...
Freak Out, U.S.A.
and
Teen Love Stories!
Oddly, Marvel, once noted for their tendency to jump on trends, didn't do one of these!
DC advertised their attempt with this...odd...ad...
...featuring the comic/mag's mascot character Teeny and, presuming it would appeal to the target teenage girl audience, a grungy hippie!
The first issue featured Teeny introducing articles about various heart-throbs...
...but no other comics-type material!
The incredibly-popular mag they based the title on...
...immediately threatened a trademark infringement lawsuit!
So, DC hastily-altered the title in their ads and the book's logo to Teen Beam...
...and added comic pages along with the articles!
It didn't help, since distributors, unwilling to anger the insanely-hot Tiger Beat, refused to rack the title!
(as the ad points out, you had to ask for it, since it was now, as they used to say "under the counter" along with porn magazines!)
The second issue was the last!
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Friday, September 12, 2025

Friday Fun HARVEY "Saps on Skates!"

This Ain't the Movie Rollerball...

...which wouldn't even come out until three years after this never-reprinted story from Marvel's Harvey #4 (1972)!


Written and laid out by Stu Schwarzberg, finished pencils and inks by Henry Scarpelli!
Stan Lee wrote and Stan Goldberg illustratd the first couple of issues, then turned it over to Schwarzberg as writer and Scarpelli as artist for the remaining four issues!
Trivia: Marie Severin did touch-ups on Scarpelli's first issue to keep characters "on-model".

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Friday, September 5, 2025

Friday Fun SNAFU "Ebenezer Freezer Food Plan and Munching Society"

As Unemployment Rises and Stagflation Takes Hold...

...perhaps this solution, presented in the never-reprinted MAD magazine clone Atlas' Snafu #1 (1955) could be the answer!



Likely written by editor Stan Lee and definitely-illustrated by versatile workhorse Joe Maneely, this feature holds up as well as anything EC's MAD crew could produce!

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Friday, August 29, 2025

Friday Fun HARVEY "Playing Post Office!"

We Suspect a Lot of Millennial (and Younger) Readers...

...will be confused by the plot (and even the concept) of this never-reprinted story from Marvel's Harvey #2 (1970)!




Written by Stan Lee and illustrated by Stan Goldberg (doing s superb Dan DeCarlo imitation), this book and Mille the Model were Marvel's last attempt at trying to hold onto the teen humor market that Archie Comics had dominated since the mid-1960s.
By 1973, both books were gone from the newsstands, and Stan Goldberg, as well as his successor, Henry Scarpelli, had moved over to Archie, where they were kept very busy until they retired!

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