Pow!, ZIng!, Zowie and Biff!

Saturday Leftover Day.

From last week I am following a new format for The Fabulous Fifties. On Sundays there will be new scans of strips I have shown and written about before. On Mondays there will be strips you have not seen before. And onSaturdays I will continue with oddities, rarities and other loose ends. Pick your day, come round often and feel free to comment. I have also started creating new superposts collecting series I have shown many times before in chronoligical order. But as you can imagnie that takes a bit of time.

So for today we have an oddity. At the hight of the Batman craze in the fifties, every one wanted in on the act. So Woolwroth's decided to include Batman and Superman in their Halloween costume line-up that year. At a full page it seems to me like the perfect collectable for any Batman collector who actually has one of those costumes. Identify yourself and we'll work out a way to get it to you.

The Batman in this drawing is similar to the Batman in the comic strips at that time, which was designed (though at that point no longer drawn) by Carmine Infantino. The rest of the poster isn't so I am guessing this is a swipe as well.

With that I have an article from the shortlived magazine '47/'48, a digest sized cultural magazine that was named after the year it was ublished (hence the chaning title). It features the first use of the Pow! Zowie! headline that was used on every article about comics until well into 2000, supposedly taken from the fight cards in the Batman tv show. Turns out it had been around a bit longer than anyone thinks. Fellow Comic Book Historian Bob hughes invormed me that he has seen it as early a 1927 on a cover of Life magazine (then still a Punchlike cartoon magazine) and that it came from The Katzanjammer Kids. Adjust your history books accordingly.

A Very Important Ketch

Saturday Leftover Day.

Looking for cartoons by Mort Walker, I came across a note that he tried to sell them to a magazine called 48. By chance I found a seller on eBay who had a whole bunch of them. Turns out the magazine started as '47, the magazine of the Year. When the new year came around they changed their title to '48. It was a slick digest, with news and items about the main points of that year. The emphasis was on culture, with articles about mdern American artists in almost every issue. Apparently they had a large budget and a lot of ambition, because they used a lot of ilustrations (including some from Robert Fawcett and severl other well known names). And of course, they had gags. From the talent they got together, it seems they were aiming for some sort of New Yorker appeal. They used several of the New Yorker's cartoonists, including Chas Addams. From the second tier of talent, they used only the upper crust, mostly people who also worked for The Saturday Evening Post like Al Kaufman, Al Ross, Garner Rea, Virgil Partch, Hank Ketcham and Chon Day. Reamer Keller was there too, but with a much more worked out cartoon than he usually did. In fact, all of the cartoonists seemed to have worked just a little bit harder. Partch even invented a new style for them. No wonder Mort Walker wanted to be in there - they must have paid very well.

Towards the end of 1947, they seem to have slashed their budget, though. There were less cartoons, most by 'regulars' who provided many cartoons and ilustrations for one issue (probably at a lower cost). The big name illustrators disappeared, but the well photographed American artists features remained. As far as I now, the magazine stopped somewhere in 1948 and their was no '49.

So for me, as a cartoon collector, this was a real find. To find unknown Hank Ketcham or Virgil Partch cartoons is a treat anyhow, but to have them at such a high level makes it extra special. They also had a very interesting article for the comic bok historian in me, a piece about writing for the comics with many illustrations. Okay, it's from the lesser known Dick Cole series, which ran in 4-Most comics and had it's on title for a short while, but the insights in this piece are remarkable. I have looked through quite a few of these magazines, by the way and I have not yet found this particular story. Maybe it was never made and the whole thing was made up?