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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Friday the 13th Fun TIPPY'S FRIEND GO-GO "Egg-Head in Friday the 13th"

One of the better Archie clones of the 1960s was Tippy Teen, who had both her own book...

...and two spin-off titles featuring a Riverdale-like ensemble of supporting characters who had their own features, including Egg-Head...who was called that only because he wore glasses and looked like a nerd!

If the story doesn't make much sense, the fact it was from Tower's Tippy's Friend Go-Go #15 (1969), which was the last book of the series and the company was already winding down to close the doors a month later, might have loosened the editorial standards a tad...

You'll note the art appears exactly like the Archie Comics "house look"!

That's because the Tippy Teen books were illustrated almost entirely by moonlighting Archie artists, though which particular one did this tale is unknown!

BTW, Egg-Head was not the only Tower Comics character to bear that name!

One of the original members of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Squad (a non-superpowered backup team for the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents) was named...Egghead!

I'm not sure how "well-trained" and "highly-skilled" the "super-brilliant strategist" was since he died in his second appearance...

Friday Fun PETER RABBIT "Trouble on the Moon!"

As Artemis prepares to launch, we wanted to present a Moon-themed Space Mouse story...

but all we could find was this strip also by Space Mouse's writer/artist/animator Frank Carin!

This never-reprinted tale from Avon's Peter Rabbit #30 (1955-6) isn't based on the classic Peter Rabbit character created by Beatrix Potter.
Avon Comics had been running a comic since 1947 reprinting the similar Peter Cottontail newspaper strip by Harrison Cady (based on books by Thornton Burgess) under the name Peter Rabbit Comics.

Perhaps due to not wanting to pay to license the Harrison Cady strip, the series was rebooted with a totally-new, very Americanized, contemporary version of the character, as of #7 (1950), which continued until #34 (1956).

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Golden Treasury of
Klassic Krazy Kool Kids Komics
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Friday Fun ROWAN & MARTIN'S LAUGH IN "Five Year Plan for the Moon" & "...as Used by Our Astronaughts in Space!"

Though largely-forgotten today...

Wraparound cover of #12

Artist Unknown

...this 1960s comedy-variety TV series was ground-breaking in a number of ways.

Besides the show's anti-Establishment content, which was always a source of contention with NBC network censors, it had an amazing amount of tie-in merchandise...including a MAD-style magazine!
In 1969, with the first Moon landing about to occur, the mag took a couple of looks at the space program...

...and...

By the time these features appeared in the final issue of Laufer Publishing's Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (#12 in 1969), the use of images of the actual performers from the show had been reduced to the cover and a couple of one-pagers based on long-running gags like the "Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award".
Laufer Publishing was best-known for the legendary 1960s-70s teen magazine Tiger Beat!

Here's a Kool video about the magazine, which Baby Boomers remember fondly!

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MEOW!

My Groovy Life with Tiger Beat's Teen Idols!
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Friday Fun AMAZING ADVENTURES "Adonis 2-PX-89"

 This week's Valentine's Day-oriented entry is a weird combo of sci-fi and humor...

Art by Allen Anderson

...which was probably written by the man who created the Clark Kent/Superman/Lois Lane love/hate triangle...

This cover-featured story from Ziff-Davis' Amazing Adventures #4 (1951) was illustrated by Henry Sharp who, during his decade in comics, illustrated only sci-fi or war stories!

Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel was the editor of the Ziff-Davis comics line, and wrote many of the stories that appeared in it, so it's not unreasonable to assume this tale, which contains many plot aspects common to those tales of Superman and Lois Lane, was scripted by the same writer!

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Secret Wars Secret Love
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Friday Femme Fun MODELING WITH MILLIE "Mille the Marvel"

If you think Marvel and DC are rebooting their characters more frequently than ever...

...you've never followed the many incarnations of Millie the Model from 1945 to the present!

This particular story is from the early Silver Age "romance comic" phase of her career.

This never-reprinted story from Marvel's Modeling with Millie #54 (1967); written by Gary Friedrich, penciled by Odgen Whitney, and inked (uncredited) by Frank Giacoia; was Millie the Marvel's only appearance.

It was also the final issue of this particular title.

Over at her ongoing "sister" title, Millie the Model, the character returned to her previous Archie Comics-influenced format, once more becoming a teen-humor title without ongoing storylines.

Trivia: From 1945 to 1973, there was always at least one Millie title from Atlas/Marvel, for a total of five different series, plus annuals, a couple of one-shots, an ongoing series in Comedy Comics, and a spin-off series for her rival, Chili!
Her main title ran for 207 issues, and was, until Fantastic Four #207 came out in 1979, Marvel's longest-running character-named book!
(Books with longer runs like Mighty Thor, Incredible Hulk, and Captain America had different names [Journey into Mystery, Tales to Astonish, and Tales of Suspense, respectively] before becoming "character" titles.
Millie's flagship title was always Millie the Model!)
Millie was rebooted several times going from a romance/humor hybrid to Archie-style humor to romance/soap opera and finally back to Archie-style humor with changes to the characters' ages, professions, and relationships at each stage.
Millie Collins, despite being shown as outside the Marvel Multiverse in this tale, has appeared as part of the mainstream Marvel Universe in several titles, including the "Wedding of Reed and Sue" in Fantastic Four Annual #3 (along with Marvels #2), Dazzler #34, Sensational She-Hulk #60, and the Models, Inc mini-series.
In the 1980s, a middle-aged Millie appeared in the Star Comics mini-series Misty, about the teen-age daughter of Millie's brother!
(The best thing about this Trina Robbins-produced mini-series was the retro look and use of readers' designs for the characters' clothes.)
Millie was scheduled to be rebooted in 2003 as a teen-age tennis player in a manga-style mini-series called 15-Love.
When the project was finally published in 2011 (yeah, eight years later), the lead character was Millie's teen-age niece (though Millie herself did appear briefly)!
In 2009, Millie and her Silver Age supporting cast were the 20-something title characters in the mini-series Models, Inc.
The series also features Johnny (Human Torch) Storm, Spider-Man, Dr Strange, Patsy (HellCat) Walker, Tigra, Night Nurse, Mary Jane Watson, and real-life fashion expert Tim Gunn, re-establishing the Mille characters in the Marvel Multiverse...but nothing's been done with them since!

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15-Love
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Models, Inc
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Friday Fun ABBOTT AND COSTELLO "Soup to Nuts"

From the Late 1930s to the Late 1950s, the comedy team of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello...

...were multi-media stars, appearing in movies, radio, TV, and...comic books!

This feature from St John's Abbott and Costello Comics #7 (1949), illustrated by Lily Renee and Eric Peters, was typical of the sort of stuff you'd see (or hear) in their other media appearances!
The comic ran for 40 issues, from 1948 to 1956, including a 3-D issue!
But that wasn't the end of four-color fun for the pair!
With their old movies and 1950s TV series proving to be popular on syndicated TV, Hanna-Barbera revived the duo as an animated series in 1967 with Bud Abbott providing his own voice.
(Costello had passed away in 1959).
This resulted in a new comic book series from Charlton using the cartoon as a springboard for a 22-issue run from 1968 to 1971!

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Lily Renee, Escape Artist

by

Trina Robbins
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