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.

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.

Filling the'gap'

Friday Comic Book Day.

Earlier this week I showed you Ray Bailey's 16 page 'educational' Steve Canyon effort for Harvey Comics. Most posters agree that the heads in that story were probably done by Milt Caniff himself, even pointing out one non-fitting unusually large head in the story. One poster also pointed out that the inking seemd a little bit for Bailey himself. I have not really compared it to the ining on the early Tom Corbett strips, which were contemporary with this book, but in the meantime I did look up the work of another Caniff assistent to compare. Bill Overgard assited Caniff in the late forties and probably the early fifties on Steve Canyon. I am not quite sure about the dates or the details, but I do know that Caniff suggested his former assistant when te syndicate was looking for a replacement artist for Steve Roper. Overgard took on that strip and made it his own. Just before that he ahd a last go at Steve Canyon int this spoof of the strip from Whack #2. As I noted in my article on the Mad imtations of 1954, Whack was one of the better ones. This was partly due to the style and taste of editors Joe Kubert and Norm Maurer, but also to the stylistic skills of Bill Overgard, who produced this bit of comic mimicry as well as a veru good parody of The Cisco Kid.