Friday Fun RIOT "Mother Goosepimple's Nursery Rhymes" Parts 1 & 2

Atlas Comics' numerous 1950s MAD comic clones...

...gave the company's creatives a chance to flex their artistic muscles in ways rarely-seen by their readers!

This never-reprinted short from Atlas RIOT #5 (1956) gave amazingly-versatile artist Joe Maneely a chance to show his rarely-seen humorous side.

The second, final, also never-reprinted installment in this series features an artist who already had a rep doing humor, John Severin, best known for his serious Western and War comics work at Harvey and EC!

He was also brother of EC Comics colorist Marie Severin, who later became Marvel's resident caricaturist (among her many other talents)!
I suspect this was going to be an ongoing series featuring rotating illustrators, but since Riot was cancelled as of this issue (6) in 1956, we'll never know!
BTW, if the writing style for both stories feels "familiar", that's because it was by snarky Stan (the Man) Lee!

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Sincerest Form of Parody

Easter Reading Room EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Jack Rabbit and the Beanstalk"

The only thing even vaguely Easter-related in this Walt Kelly-written and illustrated story...

...is the fact Jack Rabbit is selling Easter Eggs to make ends meet!

Accept it, and enjoy the obvious adaptation and the guest characters from other nursery rhymes and fairy tales!

This never-reprinted tale from Dell's Four Color Comics #220: Easter with Mother Goose (1949) winds up our holiday-themed posts for the season.

Hope you enjoyed reading them as much as we did producing them!

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder LITTLE MERMAID...the REAL Story!

The new live-action film opening Friday...

...and the 1989 animated Disney version that inspired it are not quite what Hans Christian Andersen wrote!

There are a couple of comic book versions that retell the tale far more accurately!

This is one of them...

It's definitely not the usual "and they lived happily ever after" ending, eh?

Illustrated by Marv Levy, this short appeared in the Ziff-Davis 100-page one-shot Hans Christian Anderson (1952).
If you'd like to know more about the comic story and the comic itself, click HERE for info about the astounding origin of the comic and how it ties in to a live-action version of the fairy tale!
And, if you'd like to see a different, longer, even more detailed (but less accurate) version of this fairy tale, click HERE!

Monday Madness CHRISTMAS WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Christmas Problem of the Woman in the Shoe"

We presented a Yuletide story of the classic Old Woman Who Lives in a Shoe HERE...

...but it wasn't Walt (Pogo) Kelly's first visit to the unique domicile filled with children!

Written and illustrated by Kelly, this never-reprinted story from Dell's Four Color Comics: Christmas with Mother Goose #90 (1945) was Walt's first take on the concept!

Which one do you think is better?

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Monday Madness CHRISTMAS WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Christmas in the Shoe"

Walt (Pogo) Kelly was Dell's go-to creator for light-hearted kids' stories...

...as this tale from Dell's Four Color Comics #201: Christmas with Mother Goose (1948) amply demonstrates!

Kelly was expert at doing sequels to classic fairy tales, often inserting them into situations never conceived of by the original storytellers, yet making them "feel" totally-natural, as if they were "lost" stories by the original creators!
BTW, this was not the only time Kelly put the characters in a Christmas tale!
You'll see the other one next week!

Note: this was reprinted once, in a magazine, Western/Golden's Christmas Annual #8 (1975), 

This is the only issue which included comics.

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Monday Madness THE THING "Cinderella"

You've seen "dark" versions of fairy tales on TV and movies...

...but comics handled similar material going back to the 1950s, the heyday of horror comics!

(Illustrated by Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko, no less!)

This tale from Charlton's The Thing! #12 (1954) sure ain't like the Disney version, eh?
The Thing was the snarky, but unseen, host of the comic series in the vein (as it were) of EC's Crypt Keeper.

He was no relation to either the movie character The Thing from Another World (whose film came out in 1951, just before this comic debuted), or the Fantastic Four's super-strong team member.

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Friday Holiday Fun CHRISTMAS WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Christmas Alphabet"

Nobody did Christmas-themed comics better than the legendary Walt (Pogo) Kelly...

...as this never-reprinted piece from Dell's Four Color Comics #201 (1948), one of the annual Christmas with Mother Goose anthologies, proves!

Yeah, it is difficult to find something Yuletide-related that begins with "Z"...any suggestions?

Christmas with Mother Goose was an ongoing annual from 1945 through 49.

It apparently ended when Walt Kelly left Dell to work full-time on his new Pogo newspaper strip.

But Dell continued to do Yuletide annuals with a Frosty the Snowman series from 1951 to 1961 as well as continuing an already-ongoing line of Kris Kringle-themed Santa Claus Funnies running from 1944 through 1961!

(In early 1962 Dell Comics broke up into two companies, the already-established Dell, which had really just handled distribution, and Gold Key Comics, which had handled the editorial and art production chores, but not newsstand distribution.

This left Dell, which had to build a comics editorial division from scratch, without the resources to continue the Christmas-themed annuals.)

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Great Treasury of Christmas Comic Book Stories