June Nineteen Fifty-Seven!

When yours truly entered this old world way back in 1957 the comic book rack looked much different than it does today. The modern youth is crushed by the myriad superheroes who leap and twist and bamf across the landscape of the four-color world. But when I was just beginning only DC published superhero comics and all of them on sale for the month of June can be seen above. Four Superman family comics with Action Comics, Superman, Adventure Comics and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen. Lois Lane was still showcasing her talents in anticipation of a regular series. We have two Not-So-Quite-Dark-Knight features with Batman and Detective Comics, and there is Wonder Woman.  The Flash had debuted but didn't yet have his own comic. Now in the back pages of Action there was jungle action with Congo Bill and sci-fi with Tommy Tomorrow and in the back of Adventure thee were still Green Arrow and Aquaman. In Detective Comics only Martian Manhunter held the line for super types with Roy Raymond landing the other slot. Wild weird adventures of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were all that graced the covers for the reader in those ancient days. It should be noted that World's Finest was not on sale in June. 

Blackhawk was still around offering a mix of science fiction and war with Tomahawk doing the same for frontier adventure. In the comic named The Brave and the Bold the likes of Silent Knight, Robin Hood, and Viking Prince held sway. Gang Busters is the lone representive of the once robust crime genre as well All-Star Western being the only pure representative of that kind of book. 

War comics were well represented with five different titles such as G.I.Combat and Star-Spangled War Stories offering up a range of battlefield fare. 

Science Fiction and mystery tales had four representatives . Note that Jack Kirby is still working for DC at this moment, though that will change soon. The best cover of the month was likely  Gil Kane's for Mystery in Space. 

Romance comics were represented by four classic varieties of the comic intended for girls (as indicated by the titles) as well as the Archie-flavored A Date With Judy. 

There were three comics from a genre little seen today. The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, The Adventures of Bob Hope, and Jackie Gleason and The Honeymooners were three comics that attempted to tap into other types of entertainment to catch a few sales. 

But the dominant kind of comic book from DC in June 1957 was the funny animal variety. There were eight different titles available for the young reader, one more than superheroes. In these Comics Code aware times the comic rack was indeed a different place. But not all that different as we'll see this week as funny animals make a comeback (of sorts) here at the Dojo. 

Oh and before I forget there was one more DC comics on sale in June of that halcyon year, a comic book that defies categorization really -- the simple awesome Sugar and Spike by Sheldon Mayer. Enjoy the day, I know I will. 

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The Toon Treasury Of Classic Children's Comics!

While The Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics is divided into five categories ranging from "Funny Animals" to "Fantasyland", the real categories in this book according to editors Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly really fall between four artists -- Sheldon Mayer, Walt Kelly, John Stanley and Carl Barks. The editors admit as much and work from these giants of comic art dominate this collection regardless of the category a story might fall into. 

Chapter One is titled "Hey, Kids!" and celebrates such titles as Sheldon Mayer's Sugar and Spike (three stories) and Scribbly (one lengthy sequence of one-pagers), as well as two stories featuring Little Lulu by John Stanley. Dennis the Menace makes two appearances in this section and talents such as Jules Feiffer and Harvey Kurtzman are represented by Clifford and Egghead Doodle respectively. We are also treated to a story of Intellectual Amos by Andre LeBlanc from the pages of The Spirit sections. 

Chapter Two is dubbed "Funny Animals" and leading the way is Walt Kelly with a few "Uncle Wiggly" pages, a skewed fairy tale titled "Hickory and Dickory  Help the Easter Bunny", as well as an early Pogo story from Animal Comics. Mayer returns with a funny Three Mousketeers story and we get three Fox and Crow stories by Jim Davis. Donald Duck by Carl Barks is on hand alongside John Stanley's "Jigger". Throw in a Nutsy Squirrel and you have quite a bevy of beasts. 

Chapter Three titled "Fantasyland" delivers the goods as might be suspected. Lots more Walt Kelly with stories (four to be exact) from Fairy Tale Parade and a new name George Carlson shows up with some offbeat fairytale variations. John Stanley returns as does Little Lulu with two offerings. We get a story by Popeye animator Dan Gordon featuring a prototype of Droopy and MAD man Dave Berg is represented with two stories adapted out of Alice in Wonderland. Add in a little Supermouse by Milt Stein and it's a festive section indeed. 

Chapter Four is called "Storytime" and seems to be a section in which some oddball stuff finds inclusion such as more Pogo, more Intellectual Amos, and even a C.C. Beck story starring "The Big Red Cheese" himself  titled "In the Land of Surrealism". The latter is a delight. But the highlights of this section are by Carl Barks who has two Duck stories, one featuring Donald battling bees and the other with Uncle Scrooge and the boys venturing to the distant paradise of Tralla La -- one of comic's great classics tales. 

Chapter Five wraps it all up with under the heading "Weird and Wacky" giving the editors free reign. Such things as three Burp the Twerp one-pagers by Jack Cole, four Hey Look! one-pagers by Harvey Kurtzman, alongside  a J. Rufus Lion story by Mayer and a Patsy Pancake yarn by Milt Gross. Dr. Seuss offers up the peculiar classic "Gerald McBoing Boing" and Dick Briefer's Frankenstein plays music. John Stanley's Melvin the Monster tries to catch a mouse and it doesn't go well. The highlight though of this section are several pages of "Foolish Faces" as well a complete Powerhouse Pepper story by Basil Wolverton. 

The main significant  difference between this 2009 collection and the exceedingly similar Yoe Book collection from 2011 I examined last weekend, is that the latter was more interested in a diverse range of examples from the public domain to showcase what had existed in kids comics. This collection was more about the pure quality of the stories and sacrificing some variety. There's not much to criticize about either collection though if you have any fancy at all for light-hearted comic book tales. 

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The World's Oddest Profession!

I've been wanting to snag this fun looking offering from  Yoe Books for quite some time. The price was a bit prohibitive though and I couldn't justify it. But I managed to wheedle a bit and got it from a dealer for small bucks and brought it home at last. Comics About Cartoonists - The World's Oddest Profession is a collection of stories which point back to their very real world creation by referencing in some way the men (exclusively men in this collection by the way) who actually spilled the ink and fashioned them. The kind of fourth wall breaking stuff is always a hoot and has always been a feature of comics, an artistic form which has a really resilient quality for this kind of thing.

See above for a catalog of the talents contained in the pages within the tome. Besides a horde of public domain comics there are few which might surprise, such as a Will Eisner Spirit tale, a handful of strips from Elzie Segar's Popeye, and some stuff from Al Capp. Throw in great talents like Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Steve Ditko, Wally Wood, Frank Frazetta, Sheldon Mayer and so many more and you have a broad overview of different kinds of comics. There are funny animal tales, science fiction yarns, mystery tales, and simple gag comics. All kinds of weird stuff to tickle the comic book fan's inner self.

Here is a gallery of comic book covers which are featured inside the book, including the Punch Comics cover which serves as the decidedly memorable cover of the entire tome. These will give you a good sense of the wide array of different kinds of comics contained within.  Craig Yoe and his associates have done us all a favor.

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