I don't even remember where I picked up this issue; it was probably a throw-in at some garage sale, or one of the collections I picked up at some point. I certainly never would have bought it individually, but.... It turns out to be pretty good. I remembered the name Clyde Crashcup as having something to do with 1960s cartoons, but not what the cartoons were about; if I'd had to guess I would have made the obvious assumption that he was a terrible auto-racer. It turns out that he was the backup feature on the Alvin and the Chipmunks show, and instead of being a driver, he's a madcap inventor. Of things that have already been invented:
See, he'd just whip out his pencil and draw something and it would come to life. He also had a funny way of explaining the derivation of the name for his invention:
The formula for these stories is pretty simple; he invents something, but he and Leonardo, his (mostly) silent assistant, end up regretting it as it boomerangs on them:
The artwork is quite good and the writing is way above average:
According to Toonopedia, there's a pretty good reason for that:
The comics are sought after by today's collectors, because all five were written and laid out by cartoonist John Stanley, whose work on Melvin Monster, O.G. Whiz and Little Lulu is considered classic.
Of course, I probably would have realized that if I'd looked hard at this panel:
You never know where you'll find terrific comics entertainment.
Update: Commenter rnigma points out that Crashcup's verbal style and appearance were based on the oldtime character actor Richard Haydn. I don't remember Haydn myself, although obviously I did see several of the films he appears in (Please Don't Eat the Daisies and the Sound of Music). Here's Haydn doing his schtick:
As you can hear by listening to this clip of Clyde Crashcup, it is obvious that he is indeed based on Haydn: Haydn seems to be one of those rare character actors who was hired to play himself in every movie he appeared in.
Back when I was a young teen collecting comics, I remember picking up this issue at a garage sale and boggling:
Under "Still 10 cents" it says "No. 1115". I was flabbergasted. I knew that Ricky Nelson had starred with the rest of his family in The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet for a very long time (in fact, that show is still the second longest-running sitcom in US history, behind only the Simpsons), and that he'd had some success as a rock star, but the idea that his comic had over five times as many issues as Superman (back then) was simply impossible to conceive.
And, of course, it wasn't true.
DC did not originate the concept of a tryout magazine, where new features could be tested to see if they sold. They borrowed the idea from Dell Comics, which had a series simply entitled Four Color Comics. Dell published approximately 1350 issues under that name, which I believe is still the all-time record for a single series in the United States, even though the last Four Color issue was published in 1962. Since the first issue appeared in 1942, it is obvious that they put out about 60 comics a year under this line, or five per month. And four of those issues, not 1100+, featured young Mr Nelson.
The Four Color line included the debuts of many long-running series for Dell and its later successors, including Donald Duck, (#9), Felix the Cat (#15), Roy Rogers (#38), Little Lulu (#74), Pogo (#105), Woody Woodpecker (#169). Of course those features had appeared elsewhere, but these were the tryouts that got them their own comic titles. Four Color also featured the first appearance anywhere of Uncle Scrooge (#178).
The Four Color series did create one problem which caused endless anxiety for collectors in the days before the Overstreet Guide. Dell would run, say, four tryout issues for Spin and Marty (a serial about two boys on a dude ranch that ran on TV in the Mickey Mouse Club), spaced out over a number of months, and if the sales justified it, they would start issuing the feature in its own magazine, starting with #5. Which meant that collectors might search forever for the elusive #s 1-4, not realizing that they bore issue #s 714, 767, 808 and 826 on the covers.
As if that wasn't complicated enough, Four Color was actually two series; there were 25 issues in Volume One, and 1300+ in V2. To add to the confusion, while the last issue of V2 was #1354, there were numerous missing issues in the last 100 or so; for example, there is no #1351, #1352 or #1353.
The most valuable issues in the Four Color line are generally the early Donald Duck appearances by Carl Barks, but there are plenty of cheap issues from the 1940s-1960s offering fine quality entertainment.
The beatniks were a source of endless amusement to the mainstream media in the late 1950s and early 1960s, much in the way that their descendents, the hippies and the Goths, would be later. The stereotype of the beatnik is pretty much apparent on the cover: berets, long (for the times) hair, unkempt beards, patched clothes and imaginative footwear. Bob Denver played a beatnik on Dobie Gillis (before he became Gilligan). Snapper Carr got his nickname because he snapped his fingers, much like beatniks did in lieu of clapping their hands.
So it was not particularly surprising that the comic found its way onto the newstands in early 1962. Kookie herself is not a beatnik, she's a sweet young woman who works in a coffee shop apparently frequented by the beat crowd. She has dreams of making it big on Broadway, but like all aspiring actresses, she's dirt poor and has a roommate, the rather plain-looking Clara.
In the opening story, Clara can't sleep because of all the bongo-playing (another beatnik stereotype): She wakes up late for work and hurries out the door. But her neighbor wants her to try on his latest creation: But she can't get the ring off her finger, so she hurries to work with the jeweler following. When she gets to Mamma Pappa's (the coffee shop), the proprietor of the same name solves the problem: By the way, despite the cover image, it does not appear that the male beatniks are immune to Kookie's charms: A wealthy couple comes in, slumming it: Later, Kookie delivers a cup of coffee to a sculptor, who uses it to soften the stone he works on: He decides to let Kookie deliver the final blow. No particular surprise, the statue falls apart.
The second story is a little more amusing. Kookie has been offered a role in an off-Broadway play! It turns out the houseboat is sinking, but that doesn't matter, as the play is about a young couple struggling to keep their heads above water. But the boat has sunk, and so they won't be able to stage the play until the tide goes out.
There follows a second feature called Bongo and Bop, about two beatniks who decide to go into a park to see what this fresh air stuff is all about. Once they get a whiff of the stuff, a change comes over them: But when they step out of the park, the exhaust fumes from a bus overwhelm them and: The final Kookie tale has her worried about walking home from the coffee shop, because Mamma Poppa's landlord has been harassing her. Mamma comes up with a solution: she can climb up a fire escape and take the rooftops home. But: Now that makes no sense at all. Overall, I found the issue moderately amusing, with the Bongo and Bop story standing out as the best in the issue. Kookie made it to a second issue, but then disappeared for good.
Much of what seems bizarre to modern (i.e., younger) comics fans is actually quite explicable to those who understand the kid culture of the 1960s.
The lovable but scary monster is a classic example. What were Casper, the Friendly Ghost, or the Addams Family, or the Munsters? Kids sympathized with Frankenstein as the villagers torched him alive in that old windmill. There was also the Beany and Cecil cartoon series about a boy and his friend the giant sea serpent, or Bizarro, the Superman supporting character I blogged about recently. Of course, it is not entirely as if this archetype has disappeared; the Iron Giant is a more recent example of the phenomenon.
There are good reasons why such characters are popular with youngsters. First, because kids are often the only ones who see the monsters the way they really are. The Casper theme song makes this explicit:
"Though grown-ups might look at him with fright, the children all love him so..."
And indeed, Millie is pretty much played the same way: In addition, a well-intentioned but misunderstood character probably fits the way a lot of kids feel about themselves. They want desperately to be helpful but adults reject their assistance. (Often for good reason, as a kid's idea of help can turn out to be far more trouble than it's worth.)
Most of the adults quickly realize, however, that Millie really is a friendly monster. When the cops go to arrest her, they find her escorting an old lady across the street. But there must be a villain in the piece, and it turns out to be Mr Gotrocks, the town banker: But when Millie pokes her head in the window, even Mr Gotrocks is won over. BTW, I am not sure where the name Gotrocks (usually spelled Gottrox) became a synonym for "very rich", but it's been around for quite a while. Here's a 1915 movie that features a character named "Patrick Gottrox - the Pickle King," which fits:
Gottrox decides to let Millie live in the old haunted house he owns, which nobody else will inhabit. Although he's wealthy, he's not anti-union: But the union men won't work on the house because they're afraid of the ghosts. So the banker decides to have Millie haunt the haunts. She quickly cleans out the nasty ghosts and makes friends with Goodie, the (tickled) pink ghost. Goodie promises the union members professional courtesy: The third segment is called "Millie Does the Twist." The Twist, of course, was a dance craze in the early 1960s:
That song is the only one to hit #1 twice; it reached the top in 1960 and in 1962. Chubby Checker later tried to get folks to do "The Fly", but they remained grounded:
At any rate, Millie's twisting causes havoc in the city: And the city responds by banning the dance.
Later still, Millie goes to Hollywood where she becomes a star. Jealous, other monsters invade Hollywood, but Millie shows that while remaining lovable, she can still pack a punch:
The producers are ecstatic and the writers are working overtime on scripts for Millie. But she develops a bit of an artistic temperament: So they rewrite the script to be Millie's life story as we've seen it in this comic, and Midway prospers. The End.
Comments: Obviously this is a very basic comic, intended for small readers. The art (by Bill Woggon) is appropriately cutesy. I did like some of the little touches, like the way he gave Millie a beret when she goes to Hollywood. There is a minimum of conflict in the story, which again may be appropriate for the age level this was aimed at.
A longtime buddy posts about the Sea Hunt comics put out by Dell in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Sea Hunt was a TV show that ran from 1957-1961, and longer in reruns (which was where I encountered it). It featured Lloyd Bridges as a scuba diver; I seem to recall that one or two of his sons also appeared on the show occasionally.
I don't have any recollection of any specific episodes of the show itself, but in 1964 my mom took me and my sister to the New York World's Fair. My best memory at that fair was seeing a guy wheeling several baskets full of strawberries. Being a little wise-ass I asked him if he had any free samples, and no kidding he gave me a humongous strawberry! Better still, when my sister demanded that I share it with her, Mom said that since I was the one to ask for it, I could have it all.
Anyway, there was a Sea Hunt exhibit at the World's Fair and since I'd seen the show on TV, I wanted to check it out. It was basically a scuba diver in a giant glass tank, with Lloyd Bridges (on tape) narrating the story of a dive that suddenly went awry. A giant octopus attacked him!
Well, in the tank, the diver grabbed a very fake-looking plastic octopus and pretended to grapple with it. The whole thing was very cheesy. Okay, big deal, right?
Except that even as I was griping how fake it was, I realized that only a year or two earlier I would have been enthralled, and oddly that made me feel a little sad. Not at my earlier self for having been a credulous little kid, but at my (then) current self for being unable to suspend disbelief. It was an odd thing; I realized I was growing up and getting just a tad more sophisticated, and it was a little dismaying.
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lecuongle on Thứ Năm, 9 tháng 12, 2010
As the 1960s wore on, the superhero craze showed no signs of abating. DC, the only comic publishing company that had never ceased publishing superhero comics, nearly doubled their output of the men in capes and cowls from about 25% of their books in the 1950s to about 45% in the 1960s. Marvel, which had no superhero titles from about 1955-1961, suddenly was swarming with amazingly-powered characters.
And then came Batmania, and it seemed like nothing sold except superhero titles. So Dell, which had only made a few half-hearted attempts at the genre, leapt in with this rather lame effort. Even the comic's title seems generic: Superheroes. "A Fantastic Transformation into Reality?" And the Fab 4 were the Beatles.
We quickly learn that four "teeners" are able to control a quartet of super-powered androids. One guy can receive radio waves; a very useful ability. Of course, you could just bring along a portable radio instead. Another guy has built-in radar, which proves handy considering that the story is about a bomber plane from SAC (Strategic Air Command) being hijacked by hypnotic command. Polymer Polly can fly and create strands of polymer from her body, while Crispy can shoot cold rays from his fingers.
The androids use their combined skills to find the bomber and render harmless the atomic bomb it had dropped: In part II (pay no attention to that "The End" caption above), we learn that some hip couple were behind the hypnotism that took control of the SAC bomber. Since their plot has been ruined, they decide to get even with the Fab 4. And they quote a lot of 1960s music lines in the process: This part also explains the "fantastic transformation into reality" bit. You see, the kids send their minds into the androids. The androids come to the old abandoned opera house where the kids hang out. The hip couple send a bomb there. And the bomb implodes: As a result, the kids now have the powers that they formerly had to use the androids in order to possess. It's ginch-tastic!
A week later, the teeners have had some time to test and expand their powers. The radio-wave guy (called El by his buddies) has figured out where the hypnotic wave came from. And so the laser/radar guy: When they get to the theatre, the Mod (our villain) and his gal are giving a concert: Yeah, I could criticize that song for not rhyming, but it's not like the other publishers of the time did teen exploitation any better--the Kryptonian Krawl, anyone? Anyway, the kids (including the heroes) are all hypnotized to attack the Peace Ministers' Conference. Fortunately, the hypno-wave doesn't work if one is shoved (which seldom happens at a riot): The Fab 4 quell the mob, and eventually catch the Mod and his girlfriend.
Comments: Painful. About the only thing positive in this effort is the artwork (credited in the book to Sal Trapani, but actually penciled by Bill Fraccio and inked by Trapani per Martin O'Hearn in the comments). The script glosses over all sorts of plot-holes, then maddeningly screeches to a halt so the kids don't walk out of Polly's house dressed in their uniforms. Never mind that earlier it's Tom's house. The story tries too hard by half to be relevant to kids of the time--why Tom even produces a comics fanzine--but fails miserably. It is plain to see why this was the last outing for the Fab 4.
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lecuongle on Thứ Ba, 30 tháng 11, 2010
I was not aware of these comics in the 1960s and only recently purchased a couple of issues on ebay, unfortunately, not including the first issue (Four Color #1330), so we'll have to go to Don Markstein's Toonopedia for the origin:
Brain Boy was Matt Price, whose father was killed two months before he was born, in a spectacular car accident that also demolished a high-voltage power line, sending enough electricity through his pregnant mother's body to kill a dozen people. Miraculously, she and Matt both survived, and Matt grew up to be the world's most powerful telepath. He learned early on that kids who can do spooky things get beat up a lot, so he hid his power — but right after he graduated from high school, he was approached by Chris Ambers, also a strong telepath, who recruited him for an agency of the U.S. government so secret, it hid under the name "Organization of Active Anthropologists" so nobody would suspect it was engaged in international skulduggery.
The story in this issue is not particularly unusual: Dictator plans to take over the world by provoking a nuclear war between the US and Russia. However, there are some individual elements that are quite interesting and the concept of a Brain Boy fits in well with the early 1960s, so I thought I would discuss those more than the plot itself.
The early 1960s was a celebration of youth. John F. Kennedy was (and still is) the youngest president ever elected. It was also a time when intellect began to be respected more. The Whiz Kids of Robert McNamara, having reformed and modernized Ford Motor company, moved on to the Department of Defense.
Of course the Whiz Kids weren't really kids; McNamara had been 30 when he joined Ford and 44 by the time he became president of the company. But then, neither was Brain Boy a boy; his adventures start after his graduation from high school.
His powers are not described in full in the story, but it is obvious that they include telepathy, mind control, and the ability to fly: He also possessed the ability to make himself virtually invisible, a la the Shadow:
Super powers and an origin mark him as pretty much a superhero, although he did not wear a costume. Dell had up till that point mostly specialized in licensed characters such as Donald Duck, but as Don Markstein notes, they had recently spun off much of that business to their Gold Key imprint and thus were apparently willing to experiment more in search of sales. Correction: As noted in the comments by my old buddy King Faraday, Gold Key was an imprint of Western Publishing, which had previously provided content to Dell.
Although Brain Boy did not operate in disguise, he did conceal his true abilities, causing him occasional problems with his girlfriend: A very standard dilemma for a superhero character and his female companion, although as you can see, Maria (the girl in question) is far from a typical girlfriend for a 1960s superhero character. An interracial romance was definitely cutting edge by the standards of the time.
Brain Boy also lacked the code against killing that was common for the Silver Age: And as Brain Boy leaves, he says "So die all tyrants." Not quite the literal meaning of "Sic semper tyrannus," (the words John Wilkes Booth shouted after shooting Abraham Lincoln), but close enough that it hardly seems coincidental.
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lecuongle on Thứ Bảy, 31 tháng 10, 2009
Here's one I had completely forgotten I had in one of my long boxes. When Batmania hit in 1966, many publishers were unprepared for the sudden appeal of Super Heroes. I've talked a bit in the past about some of these efforts, such as Jigsaw (by Harvey), Nemesis (by ACG) and Pureheart the Powerful (by Archie). Dell Comics, while no longer the major player in the comics biz that they had been in the 1950s, obviously felt the need as well, and thus we had the brief and rather strange incarnation of Dracula as a superhero. Well, he is the original "Bat-Man".
We learn that Count Dracula is the last of his line, and "determined to clear his family name of the superstition that sets men's hearts to beating faster". He is working on a bat-derived serum to help cure brain damage. Believing he has succeeded, he has a drink in celebration, not knowing that the bat he set free had knocked over his serum, causing it to drip into his cup. He discovers: Traveling under the name of Al U. Card (Dracula spelled backwards), he sets sail for America. But the ship he's on encounters some rough weather, and the radar isn't working. Fortunately, Dracula himself has radar as one of his powers (a bit of a mistake there, as bats actually use sonar to guide them) and, after kayoing the helmsman and taking his place: He guides the ship to safety, but is curious as to what caused the sudden storm. Another error there; bats have terrible eyesight, which is the reason they use sonar. Changing into his bat-form, he flies up to the dirigibles, and discovers that they are responsible for the weather modification. He's captured, but manages to convince the villain, named Admiral Maltemps, that he wants to join up: Pretty classic villain there down to the bald head and monocle. Have you ever seen anybody with a monocle in real life? Neither have I. His plot is to devastate North America with his weather changes, causing drought in one area, floods in another and blizzards elsewhere. Nasty stuff. Dracula plans to stop him, but: So that's the first rule of evil? I wonder what some of the others are: "Never kill the hero quickly?" The Admiral drops him to Earth, unaware that he can change into a bat and fly away. First he goes to the nearest missile base, but the general is unimpressed with his story. So he heads to Washington. And, atypically for a hero, he doesn't let anything distract him from the immediate task: But even at the Pentagon he is unable to convince the brass of the actual situation, so he has to head back to the dirigible. We'll assume that couple on top of the car has drowned by now. Dracula takes over control of the ship, and maneuvers it above the other blimps. He unleashes the snow on them, which causes them to crash, then tackles the Admiral: The Admiral and his men are taken into custody. Dracula heads back to the ship so he can enter the country legally, and even finds a potential girlfriend: Comments: A silly story, but the entertainment value is pretty good and the artwork is acceptable if uninspired. One thing Dell did have over Marvel and DC; the story is a full 32 pages long; there are no ads whatsoever inside the book other than the inside back cover and back cover.
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