Friday Fun THE BEST(?) OF GROOVY

Of course, "best" is a relative concept!

Next Week:
Beginning a month-long presentation of
horror humor!

Friday Fun GROOVY "Misery Loves Company" & "More Misery Loves Company"

Last week, we told you about Groovy, a weird Marvel "comic" from 1968...

...now we're going to show you the only ongoing feature from the book...excerpts from a cartoon book series called Misery by writer/illustrator Suzanne Heller!

There were four books between 1964 and 1970, Misery, More Misery, Misery Loves Company, and Misery for Everybody which detailed...well...misery...as experienced by a 'tween/teen, with the protagonists getting older in succeeding books.

Heller's strip was cover-featured on both the second and third (final) issue.

These were reprints of Heller's material which had already run in other non-Marvel magazines owned by Marvel's publisher Martin Goodman.

Next week, we'll show you what we consider to be the best of the other cartoons in Groovy!

Friday Fun GROOVY: The Marvel Comic You NEVER Saw!

Until the 1970s, Marvel Comics was owned by Martin Goodman, who also published lots of non-comics magazines!

In 1968, Marvel switched newsstand distributors and could finally expand the number of titles it had on the racks and spinners from only 11 per month to...whatever the market could bear!

Publisher Martin Goodman decided to do "corporate synergy" decades before it became a buzzword!

He would take comic panels from his b/w magazines, color them, and package them in a comic book-sized anthology!
Note that, despite being distributed with Marvel's comics, none of the Marvel creative crew worked on this project!

What could go wrong?

A lot!

Groovy was racked with the comics, since it was comic book-sized!

But the adult audience (who bought the material in magazines) rarely (if ever) even looked at comics racks and spinners!

Even adding a Marvel logo to the cover didn't help sales.

#3 was the final issue!

Next Friday, we'll provide some examples of the material that appeared inside.