Out Of Whack

Saturday Leftover Day.

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article for Alter Ego (it actually got so big it was spread over two issues) about all the Mad comic book imitations. I wanted to turn it into a book, but John Benson and Fantagraphics beat me to it. Instead I wrote a book about the Mad Magazine imitations Behaving Madly, which went on to win an Eisner Award nomination. If I had done the Mad comic book imitators book, I would have tried to include one of the stories from the 3D book Whack #1. But not as a 3D story. Last week I tried to see if I could turn the 3D story into a clear line 2D version and it went pretty well. For print, it would probably have needen even more restauration ans possibly some coloring. But here you are. I don't think there are many people who have actually read it (even if they have the 3D book with glasses). A Dick Tracy parody by none other than Joe Kubert.

All For The Family

Saturday Leftover Day.

In 2007 Allen Holtz devoted a series of posts on his unmissable Stripper's Guide to a specialty newspaper section called Family Comics. Like me, he was alerted to it's existance by the fact that Ebay seller (and famous oriinal art dealer) Lowery had been selling original pages from the the strips in these sections. Without evidence of publication, they seemed to be either samples or unused pages by a lot of familiar names in the industry, most of which may or may not have been based on the West Coast (California) rather than the East Coast (New York). But they were pretty well done, stamped 'sponsored comics' on the back and some strips were represented with several samples. I myself even got two of them, one three tier half tabloid page of David Gantz' Wee 3 and a stylish full page of Gill Fox' The Mayor. Allan discovered these strips were actually used in a free give-away in Californian supermarkets, called Family Comics. Here is what he wrote initially:

"Family Comics. It consisted of 16 pages -- 11 pages of color Sunday-style comic strips, four pages of black and white recipe and homemaker articles, and an ad page on the back cover. The 'magazine' was on newsprint and priced at 5 cents.

The magazine was marketed to food store chains, mainly in California. I can vouch for two chains that used it - Shopping Bag Food Stores and Hughes Markets. It may have been marketed to other businesses as well, but for that I have no evidence. The food stores got their name in the masthead, ads on the back cover plus sometimes an additional ad inside. The marketing gimmick was obviously to get kids to beg their moms to shop at that grocery store chain every week so that junior could keep up with the funnies. To that end, the strips were tipped in favor of continuing adventures.

The first issue of Family Comics was dated the week of May 4-10 1959, and the latest issue I have is #10, dated July 6-12. If there are later issues we could probably determine it easily enough from original art as most of the strips were coded with the issuing week. For instance, on the strips in issue #10 each has the code 7/6-12 lettered on it."

After this he found out that the man behind this was former George MacManus assistant Zeke Zekley (through his outfir 'sponsored comics')

Allan finally got hold of an almost complete run of the publication that used these strips and discussed almost every one and it's possible artist. After that he sold his run of the section and I don't know why I didn't get it, but I believe I was outbit or sniped at the end. Darn. I would have loved to have seen all of them, especially that beautifull Gill Fox strip and Norman Maurer's contribution Happy Days 1969, which must be one of the smartest and best drawn things he ever did.

Ever since I have been looking for my own copies of Family Comics without luck. A couple of months ago I finally came across one single copy in excellent state. Sadly it is the same issue Allan seems to have used for his presentation, but that does not hold me back to share the whole thing with you here with some comments of my own. Here's to hoping the rest will follow before The End of Blogs.

I will use the information Allan has unearthed abd urge you to have a look at The Stripper's Guide for more.It may take me a while to annotated every one, so please come back for more.

Funny Pages

Friday Comic Book Day.

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article for Roy Thomas' Alter Ego about the Mad comic book imitations of the mid fifties. For it, I made a complete list of all titles doing parodies the early Mad way or imitating the format of the comic book Mad for a more general sort of humor books. To that I added a bit of history about the poublishers and artists and as much as I could find about the movies, tv-series and comics being spoofed. The article ran over sixtie spages and ws published in two installments. About a year later Fantaghraphics published a book of Mad comic book imitations by John Benson called The Sincerest Form of Parody. If anyone was suited to do such a book, it was John, but both Roy and I were hurt that neither party contacted us about it. If I would have done a book such as that, I would have included these two stories from an unlikely source. Norman Maurer and Joe Kubert entered the imitation field with their comic Whack, which was published by St. John. It is one of the better Mad imitations, not only because of the superior art, but also the targets and the stories themselves were very well thought out. This is generaluy known by the fans. Less known is the fact that Norman Maurer included a couple of parody stories to his Three Stooges comic book series. One of the few projects he did at St. John without Joe Kubert, the Three Stooges comic book featured hectic stories about the three comedians he later directed in som eof their later films. In #6 and #7 two comic book pardoies were included, which were either intended for later issues of the (cancelled) Whack or Murer had so much fun doing them that he couldn't stop.

Hio Mankin!

Saturday Leftover Day

The Roy Rogers strip had many different artists. I never really looked at it until I saw the middle years, drawn by Hi Mankin. Mankin has a slightly caricatured style, similar to that of artist such as Norman Maurer, Carl Hubbell and Bill Elder. I recently came across a paper that has three dailies every Wednesday and Friday, making it a lot easier for me to clip and collect them. The files are quite big, though. So I had to do a trail to see how well they upload. To add to that, I have used all my various Roy Rogers clippings through amassed over the years. The good news is, that uploading was no problem and the soonest available spot I will start a longer storyline.