Thursday, March 14, 2024

Easter Reading Room EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Quangle-Wangle's Hat"

There's something different about the story in today's post!

Can you deduce what it is?
Read carefully...
Figure it out?
1) This never-reprinted piece by Walt Kelly from Dell's Four Color Comics #185: Easter with Mother Goose (1948) is a poem, not a fairy tale, nor a nursery rhyme!
2) Unlike most of Kelly's Easter and Christmas-themed tales, it has no holiday story element except the introduction by the Easter Bunny and Easter Chick!
3) Plus, the source poem is quoted verbatim, without any editorial changes at all!
As far as I've been able to ascertain, this is the only time this occurred in any of Kelly's holiday-book projects!
Mind you, Walt did run things like Clement Clarke Moore's "Night Before Christmas" unedited/uncut (several times, in fact), but those were already Yuletide-oriented!
The poem's author was writer/artist Edward Lear, whose work was a curious mash-up of the literary styles of Roald Dahl and Dr Seuss, which made him the late 1800s-early 1900s most beloved and extensively-read children's author!

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

Wednesday Worlds of Wonder WOLFF "City in the Clouds"

We Have Already Seen...

Note that, though we are presenting the Wolff tale from New England Library's Dracula #10 (1972), this cover is from #9, so we present it now, since it shows a character that appears in this story, but not the previous tale!
...Wolff and Katerina have escaped from the clutches of the sorceress Sadya to Katerina's sorcerer father's kingdom.
Will Wolff survive Sadya's vengeance?

Find Out...
Next Wednesday!
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Tuesday, March 12, 2024

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

Monday, March 11, 2024

Monday Madness CRAZY, MAN, CRAZY "Pocket Book Covers"

How do we get today's would-be readers to actually read the "classics"?

Do what artist Vince Fodera and an unknown writer suggest in this never-reprinted two-page spread from Charlton's MAD Magazine clone Crazy Man Crazy V2N2 (1956)...

BTW, "pocket books" were how what we now call mass-market paperbacks were referred to until the 1960s!
In fact, the first American mass-market publisher to use the format (in 1939) was named "Pocket Books"...a name they utilize to this day!
Who says comics ain't educational???
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Sunday, March 10, 2024

Easter Reading Room EASTER WITH MOTHER GOOSE "Little Bunny"

Walt (Pogo) Kelly went into full-on "cute" mode with his holiday stories...
...including this never-reprinted one from Dell's Four Color ComicsEaster with Mother Goose #185 (1948)!

Besides doing an annual comic of Easter stories featuring fairy tale and nursery rhyme characters celebrating the holiday, Walt also did an even-more popular series of annual Christmas comics utilizing the same concept!