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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Archie's Rivals in Teen Comics

1940s-1970s

An Illustrated History
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Friday "Fun" HEE-HAW "Cornfield Chatter"

With Don da Con now Dictating Receivers of the Kennedy Center Awards...

...we are sincerely-surprised the cast of this surprisingly long-running rural "humor" anthology TV series isn't included in the first batch!

Both these two-page spreads are from Charlton's Hee Haw comics derived from the syndicated TV series.

These examples of the show's "humor" were written and illustrated by Frank Roberge and based on an ongoing skit featuring the entire cast (plus guest stars) in a cornfield popping up and doing jokes and one-liners!
The series ran a surprising twenty-six seasons from 1969 to 1995, though the comic only lasted for seven (never-reprinted) issues!

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Hee-Haw

The Complete Collection

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Friday Fun KOOKIE "Playmate"

John Stanley & Bill Williams' Short-Lived Strip About 1960s Urban Eccentrics...

...featured not only the 18 to 25 "young adult" crowd, but older, equally-eccentric characters!




John Stanley (script/layouts) and Bill Williams (pencils/inks) did three humor series for Dell in the early 1960s, Kookie, Around the Block with Dunc & Loo (later shortened to just Dunc and Loo) and Thirteen Going on Eighteen.

While the first 9 issues of the last (29-issue) series have been reprinted in a superb collection (see below), neither Kookie (2 issues) nor AtBwD&L/DaL (8 issues) has ever been reprinted...which is a great loss to pop culture as far as I'm concerned!
Note: Though Stanley did the layouts on the stories, the painted covers to Kookie were entirely Bill Williams' work!

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Thirteen Going on Eighteen

by John Stanley (& Bill Williams)
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Friday Fun MARVIN MOUSE "Not-So-'Honest John' "

The creator of Prince Namor: the Sub-Mariner, Bill Everett, was an amazing writer/artist...

 ...who could do almost anything he was asked to do.

Unfortunately, funny animals, weren't exactly his "cup of tea"!

This never-reprinted tale from Atlas' Marvin the Mouse #1 (1957) was scripted by Stan Lee and illustrated by the aforementioned Bill Everett.

I believe Everett was instructed to make the characters as different as possible from other cartoon mice such as Mickey and Mighty, which resulted in rodents who looked more like rats than mice!

Bill had shown a knack for humor as shown HERE and HERE, but this was a major disappointment!

A caption at the end of the book read "And remember, every issue Marvin Mouse magazine brings you the best in laughs, adventure, and fun ... don't miss a single issue!"

No problem!

The book ended up a one-shot and the already-completed stories intended for #2 became filler in the backs of other humor titles.

(Editor Stan Lee was very frugal and didn't let anything go to waste!)

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Sincerest Form of Parody

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Friday Fun COOL CAT "See You in the Funnies"

We Love it When Comics Go  (Sorta) "Meta"...

...in this case, characters being spied upon by a comics creative with his own ulterior motive!

This never-reprinted tale from Prize's Cool Cat V9N1 (1962), written and illustrated by Jack O'Brien may confuse many readers younger than Baby Boomers (1946-1966) who don't realize the extensive variety of subcultures that existed during the 1960s.
Cool Cat's parents are beatniks.
Cool Cat himself is a hipster/slacker.
The cartoonist, though a creative, is a square, supposedly not as "artistic" as a beatnik or hipster.
Note: there are no hippies at this point.
They didn't come along for another several years.
Trivia: Though this is V9N1, it's the second of only three Cool Cat issues, none of which have ever been reprinted in any form!
The numbering was continued from Black Magic, created by Jack Kirby & Joe Simon in 1950.
Writer/artist Jack O'Brien began his comics career in 1943, doing work for everyone from Charlton to Parents Magazine Press to Dell to Harvey to Timely (Marvel's predecessor).
His first work for Prize was in 1952, and he continued freelancing for them until 1965, switching over to their b/w MAD magazine clone SICK when the four-color comic line was cancelled in 1963.
His new last work appeared in 1976.

Friday Fun BLAST! "Ethics" & "I Know Him From Somewhere!"

Over a Month Ago...

We brought you never-reprinted examples of Stan Goldberg's amazing Dan DeCarlo-esque artwork from the short-lived MAD magazine clone BLAST!

Here's the last two we could find!

Note: Richard Nixon had four brothers: Harold, Donald, Arthur, and Edward.

Four of the five Nixon boys were named after historic British kings.

None of his siblings looked like Richard!

Enjoy!

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Sincerest Form of Parody

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Friday Fun SUPERMAN GOES PLOP!

From DC's Plop! #5 (1974)...

Easily one of the funniest gags about Clark Kent/Superman and Lois Lane ever told!

Though the writer of this short is unknown, the art is by long-time DC artist Murphy Anderson!
Trivia: The piece was actually conceived and illustrated as a one-pager, as shown in the original art below!

Note that the original panel six, showing Clark climbing back through the office window is omitted in the final version!
Blue pencil/marker didn't show up under the cameras that were used to shoot line art as film or photostats, so, while it looks a little tacky, it was common practice to mark corrections/alterations using them directly on original art!
(Nobody in those days was concerned about reselling original art to collectors/fans!)
The feature been reprinted twice since Plop!, but only in digest-sized comics, which muddy a lot of the detailed Sergio Aragones background art!

See Superman the Movie!

Friday Fun CRACKED and CRAZY BiCentennial Features

MAD is Easily the Most Famous of the b/w Comic Parody Magazines...

...but there were others who were no slouches when it came to satire and parody, starting with this never-reprinted feature from Marvel's Crazy #19 (1976)...

Written by Michael Pellowski and illustrated by Tony Tallarico.

Now, let's look at the other major MAD competitor, with this three-pager written and illustrated by Don Orehek from Major Magazines' Cracked #137 (1976)...

Finally, another Cracked feature, this one from #136 (1976) by writer/artist Su Gumen which demonstrates how "media bias" works!

Hope you liked these 49 year-old flashbacks to the Bicentennial!

And I pray America's still around for her 250th Birthday next year!

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Sincerest Form of Parody

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Friday Fun P.S. The Batman Meets the ORIGINAL Bat-Man...or Is It ORIGINAL Man-Bat?

"But...We're Practically Brothers!"

A never-reprinted cartoon from Mercury Press' P.S. #2 (1966)

This immediately-followed the nostalgia article "Guys in the Trick Suits" about Golden Age comic books from the same magazine that we ran last Friday!

Friday Fun P.S. "Guys in the Trick Suits"

During the Era of Batmania (In the 1960s)...

...mass market magazines oriented towards the over-30 crowd (who apparently had forgotten their childhoods only a decade or two earlier), sought an explanation as to the appeal of comic books to the under-30 crowd.

P.S., a short-lived magazine (only three issues) dedicated to nostalgia, brought in William F Nolan, a noted science fiction writer with numerous teleplays and short stories to his credit.

You've read his piece, written and published just after the Batman TV series debuted in January, 1966.

What do you think of his look back at his childhood during the Golden Age?
Note: A year after this, Nolan, in collaboration with George Clayton Johnson, wrote the novel Logan's Run.