The Sunday Funnies - Sam's Strip!

Sam's Strip by the team of Mort Walker and Jerry Dumas hit the newspaper funny pages in late 1961 and held onto a birth there for just a couple of years. It was a comic strip loved by cartoonists and some editors across the nation, but never by a significant number of the reading public to make it a going concern long term. What makes it funny is inside information about the construction of comics themselves and the devices and gimmicks which are used to compose and communicate through that form. Sam is the titular star and he occupies a comic strip which serves often as his workplace and features file drawers and closets filled with word balloons, speed lines, and other accoutrement necessary "talk" comic. There is a wild full-blown absence of a fourth wall and in fact such a screen between reader and character would murder the premise. 

As part of the conceit other comic strip characters are often featured in the strip, some current, but mostly vintage characters from years and strips gone by. Krazy Kat and Ignatz are frequent guest stars for instance. Other styles are even used such as the time the strip rented space to an adventure comic and the other time when Prince Valiant showed up.  My favorite vintage intruder is the hobo masterpiece Happy Hooligan who keeps trying to slither into the strip and who is usually rebuffed by an intemperate Sam. Eventually he caves in to Happy's relentless efforts. 

Sam is assisted by a nameless large-nosed office mate who gets off some of the best gags of the series. That character wouldn't get a name until years later when the material was retooled into the strip Sam and Silo. Walker and Dumas have a lot of fun in this strip and it shows through. Dumas is often a character and his drawing is the focus of many of the strips. There is also a very specific interest in modern world events and since we're dealing with the early 60's some of the jokes fall flat without some historical knowledge of the era. In the Fantagraphics volume which collects the complete run, there are notes by both Walker and Dumas to assist with some of those references to history as well as some of the more obscure comic strip references as well. 

This is a nifty light read. The cartooning style is open and energetic and Dumas is able to ape the styles of other artists with generally sufficient skill to get the job done. It's an older volume but highly recommended for fair money. 

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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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The Beautiful Buxley!

Mort Walker's Beetle Bailey has been many things during its decades-long run. It's been a comic strip which celebrated patriotism, individuality, and even the power of friendship. But it's not a comic strip which could ever be considered politically correct, at least when it comes to gender relations.

Sexism in the strip is embodied most magnificently by the bountiful Miss Buxley, the often-harassed secretary of the sometimes oafish General Halftrack. In the offhand manner often displayed in earlier eras, the notion of a woman-chasing, tit-gazing boss is the source of laughter and his hapless buffoonery at attempting to lure a fetching damsel like Buxley is ludicrous. But times change.

Mort Walker for his part has always been an artist, typical of his generation who drew women as the distant allure. In the pages of Beetle Bailey, we have a cadre of soldiers who are in a relatively woman-starved environment, so most of their attention is immediately directed to the buxom Buxley.

(Miss Buxley's Debut in 1971)

It's at once a picture of the real world both for good and ill. That said, the folks in the Europe sure saw the attraction of Buxley and in the Scandinavian comic Billy which is the name Beetle travels under in those northern realms, Miss Buxley is often the focus of the covers. I've featured them here from time to time, but the passing of Mort Walker inspired me to gather up a goodly number. Here the are in all their splendid sexist glory. My mother would be ashamed, but I'm sure Mort is proud.

And to close out this...ahem...look at the bountiful Miss Buxley, here is another by Mort Walker himself. Buxley in the buff is everything we imagined, but then she always is. At some gutteral level that's girl power at its most fundamental and most potent alas.

Regular and more polite programming will pick back up tomorrow.

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Mort D' Beetle!

The passing of Mort Walker was a big deal in the comics world which is nearly bereft of the classic talents who helped define the genre. Walker's legacy is the reams of great work he left behind which told yarns and gags with which an enormous number of people could identify. That's the key to any success on a mass scale and Walker sure achieved that with Beetle Bailey, a comic strip and comic book character who was the military everyman.

Beetle's constant struggle to keep his own sense of  integrity intact in a system which by its very design was working to make him a cog of a larger unit, was a fundamental struggle which never lost its luster after decades. Beetle's very name says it all, a man named for a bug trying to keep a sense of himself and prove he's of worth to his colleagues and those who have cast themselves as his superiors. The attitudes about and toward the military have undergone dramatic changes during the highly successful run of Beetle Bailey, but what never diminished was Mort Walker's ability to tap into that recognizable part of the fundamental human dilemma which we all share. It's the loss of that singular perspective which we should mourn as much as the man.

Here's a baker's dozen of my favorite Beetle Bailey comic book covers from across the decades and from myriad publishers.

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