Willie Lumpkin Day!

Stan "The Man" Lee was born on this date in 1922. Stan is a guy who gets too much credit for the wild success of Marvel, but that said there's no way it happens without him. He had much more help from other great talents. Still Stan was a great comic book writer, able to bring high drama to the antics of Marvel's heroes. Stan gained even more fame from his cameos in nearly all Marvel movies. My favorite is his appearance as Willie Lumpkin, the postman who delivers mail to the Fantastic Four at the Baxter Building. 

Stan Lee joined forces with Dan DeCarlo to create the comic strip Willie Lumpkin, comic strip designed to entertain in the "hinterlands" of the United States. his route was in the fictional town of Glenville. Stan was always looking for a way to break out of the comic book ghetto, and a successful syndicated strip was a good way to do it. The strip ran for a few years from 1951 until 1961. Later Stan used the name for the mailman who delivered to the Baxter Building in the pages of the Fantastic Four. Stan at last found the success he craved, but it was inside the ghetto, one he and his colleagues redesigned for a new audience and a new age. 

William Lemuel Lumpkin became a not infrequent visitor in the Marvel Universe even revealing his superpower, the ability to wiggle his ears. 

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Doctor Cyclops Goes To Riverdale!

Dr. Cyclops is an intriguingly titled move from the 1940's. I'd long wanted to see it when I found it included with some Universal monster flicks from the 1950's which I dearly adore such as The Monolith Monsters and The Tarantula. The flicker features a mad scientist isolated in the Amazon jungle who is experimenting with making things small and considers the arrival of a party of strangers a good fortune for his research. Albert Dekker comes across as properly mad in this one. 

Here's a surprising and also delightful 1960's sci-fi cover by John Giunta for the seventh and final issue of Archie's Tales Calculated to Drive You Bats. It offers up a slightly more serious run-in between a trio of explorers and a calculating and cruel three-eyed scientist. Below is the splash page.

And here's a link to read the compete story with art by Archie mainstay Dan DeCarlo.

The story is clearly an unofficial adaptation of sorts of the classic sci-fi movie Doctor Cyclops which also pits a gang of explorers against a mad scientist who wants to shrink them down for his own purposes. His name is the result of his giant status as well as his exceedingly limited eyesight which makes his domination of his tiny victims all the more difficult.

This story, clearly inspired by Homer's The Odyssey was written by Henry Kuttner for inclusion in a 40's issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. Kuttner adapted the story from the film script. The movie was directed by Ernest B. Shoedsack, who had in years previous directed King Kong. The movie has the distinction of being the first American horror film produced in full Technicolor. All in all, a nice diversion. 

That story proved popular enough to end up eventually in this 60's paperback anthology, which thought enough of the story to headline it, but not feature it in the cover art. A strange choice, I think. 

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Klassic Krazy Kool Kids Komics!

This Yoe Book The Golden Collection of Klassic Krazy Kool Kids Komics is a feast of light-hearted fun and funny comics designed for kids. And there must be a little bit of kid in me because I enjoyed most all of them. The immediate drawing card for me was the staggering list of talent represented in this hefty tome. Names often associated with kids comics are evident such as Carl Barks, John Stanley, Walt Kelly and George Carlson. Less likely folks are Jack Kirby,  Steve Ditko, Frank Frazetta and Wally Wood. Add in typically sardonic cartoonists such as Syd Hoff, Harvey Kurtzman and Jules Feiffer and you have a heady brew here. There's even a complete (or attempt) vintage tale by the great Dr. Seuss. 

After a short introduction, Craig Yoe, the editor of this opus divides the stories up into some pretty entertaining categories beginning with "Old Skool" which is comprised of just one entry from the 1850's entitled The Adventures of Tom Plump. 

Following that is 'Fairy Tales & Fantasy" which offers up stories by the likes of Walt Kelly, Dave Berg (twice) and George Carlson. These are breezy samplings with fanciful critters, talking buildings and two takes on Alice in Wonderland. There's a retelling of the King Midas story featuring art from Wonder Woman great H.G. Peter. 

Next is a section called "Kid's Stuff" and we get a John Stanley piece about a kid named Peterkin Pottle alongside a lengthy story by Syd Hoff with a character named Tuffy. Jules Feiffer is represented with a few Clifford pages and even the Yellow Kid by R.F. Outcault shows up. 

"Funny Animals" is one of my favorite sections and kicks off with Harvey Kurtzamn story Pigtales about two enterprising porkers trying to sell door to door. Then there's a longish Felx the Cat story followed by a charming story about The Calico Pup. There are stories about dogs, cats, birds, and even bears. The last is Barney the Bear by Carl Barks. One of the doggie stories by by John Stanley again. Surprisingly Jack "King" Kirby checks  in not once but twice with a story about a rich rabbit and a big-mouthed crocodile named Lockjaw. In the Kirby's stories the animal is among people and in some of these the animals are ubiquitous in human roles. Frank Frazetta shows up with a Hucky Duck story as well. 

That lengthy section is followed by "People Are Funny" and that kicks off with two Jack Cole one-pagers about a blowhard named Windy Breeze. There's a bit by Mort Walker about a madcap reporter and Intellectual Amos by Andre Le Blanc is lovely to look at. There are some nifty stories by Jack Bradbury and Al Stahle as well. The highlight for me was the most recent story in the collection by decades, a story from 1997 drawn by Steve Ditko for Yoe when he was in charge of the freebie Big Boy comics.

"Super Duper Heroes" is next and we get Super Rabbit, Supermouse, and SuperKatt. These were drawn by Milt Stien, Al Hubbard, and Al Gordon respectively. There's another human one-pager by Gordon as well called Mussle-Man. One thing about superhero funny animals is that it's sometimes difficult to detect their powers since funny animals are not subject to normal physical laws anyway. 

The section titled "Nonsense" features all fourteen pages of Heji by Dr. Seuss. This abruptly stopped comic entry is even given a potential ending just for this collection by writer Clizia Gussoni and artist Luke McDonnell. A second highlight of this section is a Basil Wolverton story titled "Flap Flipflop and the Flying Fish". There are a few vintage fanciful tales but it's left to Wally Wood to close this section with his "Goody Bumpkin" story from Wham-O Giant Comics. ( It is of course reformatted.)

Following that is a section called "Total Nonsense" which defies description a bit and a wind up with the final part titled "Now It's Your Turn" with a two-page how-to-draw-comics bit. 

This is totally a book intended for kids to get kids excited by comics both old and older. It should work well in the capacity, but for this geezer it was a delight to read. 

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Refreshing Breakthroughs! Oh Yeaahh!

Kool-Aid Man has been a proven advertising star for longer than I thought possible. Here is a refreshing history of the living pitcher of fluid, the anthropromorphic jug of tasty juice who has been around since 1954.

Star of TV and print, Kool-Aid Man had his own comics of course, first from Marvel for three issues and then over at Archie Comics for many more. The artist most closely associated with the comics is proven Archie veteran Dan DeCarlo. Some see the hand of John Romita (or his "Raiders") on a few of the Marvel covers. The Adventures of Kool-Aid Man are weird artifacts from a weird time when entertainment and advertising were the same thing, it's a time in which we still live alas.

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Out Of The Looney Bin!

What an absolutely delightful comic book is Superman and Bugs Bunny is. . This special slipped by me when it first dropped some weeks ago, but when I stumbled across the awesome Steve Rude cover above I knew I had to have it. I eagerly collected up the original four-part series by Mark Evanier and artist Joe Staton when it first came out (gasp) nearly twenty years ago, but having it in all in a beautiful 100-page package was too cool. I'm a Joe Staton fan and will glom onto any project he's a part of most of the time, but this one was ideal for his particular skills. He's a dandy artist who is able to sit inside the confines of the superhero universes and also produce delightful broader more bigfooted artwork. This project was the perfect vehicle for his talents. Aided by inkers Tom Palmer and Mike DeCarlo (who are listed as finishers on this project) the two took Staton's art and make it at once distinctive but still cohesive, no small challenge when working with characters which are so divergent as these.

The series is actually a crossover (when crossovers were king) between the myriad characters of the Looney Tunes universe and the stalwarts of the Justice League of America. When this was produced, the League was comprised of Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Flash (Wally West), Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner), Green Arrow (Connor Hawke), Aquaman (with a hook), Plastic Man, and Martian Manhunter. It's a visual feast but aside from that it's a really funny comic book. I don't always laugh when I read "funny" comics, but I did when I read this one again after all these years.  Evanier does a grand job of capturing the lines and cadences of the Looney Tuners to a tee and that plays off the more stern JLAers perfectly. The scenes with Green Arrow and the singing Frog are invariably hilarious.

You owe it to yourself to get this one. I don't know if the new crossovers which prompted this reprint are any good, but I do know this one is an absolute delight.

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Duality At The Drive-In!

This 1963 cover by Bob White for Pep from Archie Comics presents us with an interesting contrast. Archie Andrews and his frequent date, the raven-tressed Veronica Lodge get to see the latest flick from the relative comfort of his classic jalopy, though admittedly atop an unusually broad ladder. It's clever gag, but what grabbed my attention in this classic cover was the contrast in design of Archie and Veronica and the considerably more realistically rendered folks on the big screen. It's odd for an artist to call attention to the distortions necessary for the cartoon to work.
 

Several years later in 1966 a similar scene by Dan DeCarlo at another drive-in (Archie apparently has gotten some cash since) when he, Jughead Jones and his other paramour Betty Cooper watch a movie, the folks on screen look like they properly fit into the Archie universe.

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Doctor Triclops!

Here's a surprising and also delightful sci-fi cover by John Giunta for the seventh and final issue of Archie's Tales Calculated to Drive You Bats. It offers up a slightly more serious run-in between a trio of explorers and a calculating and cruel three-eyed scientist. Below is the splash page.

And here's a link to read the compete story with art by Archie mainstay Dan DeCarlo.

The story is clearly an unofficial adaptation of sorts of the classic sci-fi movie Doctor Cyclops which also pits a gang of explorers against a mad scientist who wants to shrink them down for his own purposes. His name is the result of his giant status as well as  his exceedingly limited eyesight.

This story, clearly inspired by Homer's The Odyssey was adapted by Henry Kuttner for inclusion in a 40's issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. Kuttner adpated the story from the film script.

That story proved popular enough to end up eventually in this 60's paperback collection, which thought enough of the story to headl line it, but not feature it in the cover art. Strange.

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Cat Women!

Here are some lovely gals along with their best friends in the world. A man is always in trouble when he seeks to get between a woman and her cat. I hear there's a movie out that features a "cat woman" of sorts. I wonder if it will be successful?
















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