Friday Fun TALES CALCULATED TO DRIVE YOU BATS "Hip Van Wrinkle"

There is nothing more frightening to a beatnik, hippie, or hipster...

...than to be considered "establishment" or "uncool"!

This tale from Archies's Tales Calculated to Drive You Bats #5 (1962) demonstrates that "kool" is all a matter of perspective!

Best-known as the creator of Li'l Jinx, writer-artist Joe Edwards masterfully-adapted to the Dan DeCarlo-esque "house" style of Archie Comics to become one of their (almost-always anonymous) mainstays for decades, from the Golden Age (1940s) through the Modern Age (1980s).
Consider that when he wrote and illustrated this tale, he was already in his 40s (as were almot all comic creatives at that time), not a young adult and "with it", as they said back then!
Does it still read as "legit"?
Think about it...

Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics

Visit Amazon and Order...

Best of Archie's Mad House!

Friday Fun TALES CALCULATED TO DRIVE YOU BATS "Rocky the Stone Man"

It's summertime, so let's go to the beach...

...and see how it's not best to change to please others!

While the artist of this tale from Archie's Tales Calculated to Drive You Bats #6 (1962) is unknown, the writer is George Gladir.

Archie Comics kept at least one MAD-style humor anthology going from the late 1950s (after MAD switched from four-color comic to black-and-white magazine) through the 1960s.

Though Tales Calculated to Drive You Bats! expired after only seven issues, it's sister title, Archie's Mad House (which initially-featured various Archie characters as hosts of the stories), survived to 1981!

Support Atomic Kommie Comics

Visit Amazon and order...

Best of Archie's Mad House!

Friday Fun TALES CALCULATED TO DRIVE YOU BATS "Tin Pan Folly"

"Tin Pan Alley" was the name for a group of influential music publishers/licensors...

...mostly located on West 28th Street between 5th and 7th Avenues in NYC due to the cheap rents at the time.

This Joe Edwards-written and illustrated story from Archie's Tales Calculated to Drive You Bats #5 (1962) points out many in the music industry thought rock-and-roll was just a fad.

Yet here we are in 2020 and rock-and-roll, though altered and enhanced, is still the predominant form of popular music!

It also shows that music companies thought (and still think) performers are interchangeable!

Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics!

Visit Amazon and Order...

Sincerest Form of Parody

Trump Reading Room TALES CALCULATED TO DRIVE YOU BATS "Monster Crisis"

It's fascinating how this story from 1962 can relate to present-day America...

...as the Idiot in the White House creates similar economic problems in real-life!

George Gladir wrote and Orlando Busino illustrated this tale from Archie's Tales Calculated to Drive You BATS V1N2 (1962) in an era when excessive tariffs and other such protectionist claptrap had been minimized after learning the hard way they didn't work!
Unfortunately, it seems we're destined to learn that lesson again...the hard way!

Please Support Atomic Kommie Comics

Visit Amazon and Order...

Unquotable Trump

Sh*t My President Says:

Illustrated Tweets of Donald J Trump

MAD About Trump

A Brilliant Look at Our Brainless President

Reading Room TALES CALCULATED TO DRIVE YOU BATS "Ghost Town"

Every few years, Archie Comics attempts to expand their audience...

...by taking stabs at other genres besides teen humor.

In the case of the 1961-62 title, Tales Calculated to Drive You Bats, it was doing comedy versions of monsters and aliens.

But after six issues, the sales indicated that wasn't what the audience wanted.

So, #7 (1962) took a different approach, presenting four tales like the sci-fi/fantasy stories currently running in comic competitors' anthologies like Tales to Astonish and Strange Adventures...but using the same "house style" art as the rest of the Archie Comics line!

Did it work?

Well, there was no issue #8 of Tales Calculated to Drive You Bats...

(Note: there was a one-shot giant-sized reprint issue published during the "camp" craze in 1966.

It didn't sell any better...)

Archie tried the idea of serious stories with Archie-style art one more time with Chilling Adventures in Sorcery as Told by Sabrina in 1972.

After two issues, the title dropped Sabrina as narrator-host and became Chilling Adventures in Sorcery, then Sorcery and switched over to using artists like Gray Morrow and Alex Toth for the remainder of its' 11-issue run.

BTW, the artist of this tale, Joe Edwards, was one of the most prolific of all the Archie Comics illustrators, with several thousand (yes, you read that right, thousand) covers, single/two-page strips, and stories to his credit, including almost all the ones featuring his creation, L'il Jinx!