Friday Fun HENRY BREWSTER "Movie Madness"

"Teen Humor" Used to Be a Lot More Than Just Archie Comics...

...as this never-reprinted tale from  MF Comics' Henry #4 (1966) attests!

Golden/Silver Age icon Bob Powell was going for a far different look in this, his final ongoing comic book series, than we were used to seeing...

...while at the same time, deliberately avoiding the Dan DeCarlo Archie Comics "house style" almost everybody else was using for their "teen humor" books!

Sadly, the Henry Brewster series only lasted seven, never-reprinted, issues, which were entirely packaged (scripts and art) by Bob Powell and his studio!
This particular tale is from MF Comics' Henry #4 (1966).
Note: After MF Comics folded, Powell became Art Director at Prize's Sick magazine until he passed away in 1967.

Friday Fun FAST WILLIE JACKSON "Jabar in 'No Way Out' "

In the 1970s, there was an Archie-style comic aimed at Black audiences...

...from the publishers of the Golden Legacy series which featured factual stories about Black historical figures!

Though it looks like it, Fast Willie Jackson was not published  by Archie Comics, but by Black-owned publisher Fitzgerald Publications who had previously published the Golden Legacy non-fiction comic series about Black history.

Fast Willie was their entry into the mass-market comics market.

Though not Comics Code-approved, it received newsstand distribution, and sales were climbing for each successive issue.

Unfortunately, it reached break-even only with the seventh (and final) issue, when other matters caused Fitzgerald Publications to cease producing new material for an extended period.
When Fitzgerald briefly resumed publishing, Fast Willie was not among the titles.

Written by publisher/editor Bertram Fitzgerald, illustrated by "Gus LeMoine".

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Black Comics

Politics of Race and Representation
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Space Hero Saturdays SPACE MOUSE "Master Mind" & "Believe It or Not"

This short-lived, but entertaining, series was uneven...

...with some stories, like this one from the back cover of Avon's Space Mouse #1 (1953) featuring the heroic character as a thief, obviously adapted from a different strip...

...and this one, from the inside cover of Avon's Space Mouse #3 (1953) showing him both in "hero mode" and cleverly breaking the "fourth wall"!

Writer/artist Frank Carin was an experienced pro who started as an animator the Fleischer Brothers and TerryToons, then moved over to comics in the early, writing and/or illustrating several hundred stories and covers for everybody from Timely/Atlas to Magazine Enterprises, to Nation-Wide, to Harvey, to, of course, Avon, and finally, to Gold Key!

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Fleischer Story

A History of the Cartoon Studio in the Golden Age of Film Animation

(covering the studio where Frank Carin got his start)
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Friday Fun RIOT "Advertisements"

Several people have complained my post about Bill Everett's Marvin the Mouse was too harsh...

...but I submit these never-reprinted pages from Atlas' Riot #5 & #6 (1956) demonstrate Everett could do humor...and in a variety of styles!

Spoofing actual ads from Kleenex, Wildroot Cream Oil, Ford Motors, Westinghouse Electronics and TWA (I have no idea what the bike ad relates to), artist Bill Everett demonstrates his mastery of the page, even imitating the art style of Little Lulu's creator Marjorie Henderson Buell!
The mystery of why his work on Marvin Mouse was, to put it mildly, substandard may never be discovered!
Trivia: Atlas was a bit of a trend-follower, rather than a trend setter, as it became in the Silver Age as Marvel!
Trying to capitalize on EC's success with MAD, Atlas launched four different satire/parody anthologies...Crazy, Riot, Snafu, and Wild, only one of which lasted to seven issues!

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Fire & Water

Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner, and the Birth of Marvel Comics
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Friday Fun JETTA OF THE 21st CENTURY "Atom and Evil"

Dan DeCarlo defined the look of teen humor comics for half a century...

...which is an appropriate point to make as we re-present a series from the 1950s that looks at teen life in the early 2000s!

Written and penciled by Dan DeCarlo and inked by Fred Eng, this story from Standard's Jetta of the 21st Century #7 (1953) has the "feel", both in writing and art, of an Archie tale!

At this point, Dan was freelancing, working for Standard, Atlas (later Marvel) and Archie!

Archie co-creator Bob Montana's version still set the visual standard for the company's flagship character, but DeCarlo was given leeway to adapt the characters to his art style, which would become the defining "look" for the entire line by the late 1950s, and remain so until the mid-1990s, when they stared to experiment with more realistic, and even anime-inspired art!

Ironically, Archie Comics published a series about Archie and his gang set in the far future...

...from 1989 to 1991, which combined then-current fashions with the same retro-tech look as Jetta!

Though based on DeCarlo's design concepts, Dan didn't do any covers or art for the 16-issue series!

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Dan DeCarlo's Jetta
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Friday Fun FROM HERE TO INSANITY "Inside Mr America"

When I Think Weird, I Think Wolverton!

And, if you didn't before, you'll agree after reading this never-reprinted feature!

The amount of detail he put into this 2-pager from Charlton's From Here to Insanity V3N1 (1957) is astounding, considering...

a) the low (even for comic books) page rates Charlton was paying!

and

b) the usually-poor printing Charlton was infamous for!

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Basil Wolverton Reader

Friday Fun YAK YAK "How to Win Friends"

Sometimes, we need to get away from current events...

...and just enjoy a good laugh, courtesy of legendary writer/artist Jack Davis!

From Dell's Four-Color Comics #1186 (1961)

Dell gave MAD mainstay Jack Davis his own title in the Four Color Comics series, to do with as he pleased.

The series, Yak Yak (subtitled "A Pathology of Humor") only ran two issues, but they were pure Davis, who wrote, penciled, inked, and colored the whole project as well as providing painted covers for both issues!
It's never been reprinted, except for excerpts here and there.
Hopefully, somebody will do so in the near future...

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Art of Jack Davis
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Friday Fun SPACE MOUSE "Reservation to the Moon!"

Sometimes the heroic Space Mouse ventured into outer space to fight menaces...

...sometimes the menaces commuted to Earth!

And, sometimes, very rarely, there is no menace...just misunderstood alien visitors!

Writer/artist Frank Carin told this never-reprinted tale of misinterpreted Moon-people motives in Avon's Peter Rabbit #31 (1956)!

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Golden Treasury of
Klassic Krazy Kool Kids Komics
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Easter Reading Room EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Hickory and Dickory Help the Easter Bunny"

Though the rodent duo in this tale are named after the classic nursery rhyme "Hickory, Dickory, Dock"...

...the nursery rhyme featured only a single, anonymous, mouse...and there's no one named "Dock" in this story, either!

Walt (Pogo) Kelly scripted and illustrated this story from Dell's Four Color Comics #220: Easter with Mother Goose (1949), which was the mouse duo's second (and last) appearance!
The first was several months earlier, in Dell's Four Color Comics #201: Christmas with Mother Goose (1948), where they assisted (as you might have guessed) Santa Claus!
You'll see that one this Christmas...

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Walt Kelly's Fables and Funnies

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