Continuing Dr. Seuss’s never before finished Hejji story is a twist ending illustrated by Clizia Gussoni and Luke McDonnell. Below you’ll find the creations of their imaginations found in “The Golden Collection of Klassic Krazy Kool Kids’ Komics “.

Order the book by clicking on the cover above!

There’s lots of reason why I love Golden Age comics, the characters, artists, covers, ads, etc., but if I had to give just one it would be this; they didn’t know what they were doing. Oh, they had a couple of stencils to work from, pulp magazines and comic strips, but the result was something beyond just a weird synthesis of both, a remarkable mishmosh of the strange, wonderful and utterly appalling.

But this recent quote from Erik Larson says it far better than I could:

“Often, the promise of Golden Age comics-where creators were making up the rules as they went along and were blazing new trails-was more exciting than the reality of Golden Age comics, where creators were essentially mimicking some of the same dull formulaic writing found in other mediums at the time…a thrilling glimpse of what comics could be-if only creators were allowed to run wild with the characters they were handed!”

If I had to name a second thing it would have to be discovery; I have been reading and reading about Golden Age comic books since I was ten and I keep coming across things I didn’t even suspect existed! I always assumed that eventually I would know it all but there always seems to be more.

Like Great Comics from Great Comics Publications, one of those small publishers who only published (in this case quite literally) a half dozen comics then disappeared without a trace. It ran three issues, the first two pretty standard anthologies that went off the boilerplate by having a large humor section called “Barrel of Fun” as well as non-fiction stories of famous people in general and spies in particular for some reason.

The cover to Great Comics #1 may be a little rough to be sure and you’ve got to second guess both the composition and the decision to squeeze the logo into the left hand corner. But, gosh, it’s depiction of it’s headliner, The Great Zarro, is sure dynamic.

Clearly the publisher was under the impression The Great Zarro was going to be their Superman, as evidenced by this offer for kids to join The Great Zarro Victory Club:

This is how he was introduced in a caption in his second and final appearance:

Learning from an old sorceress the secret of overcoming gravity, the Great Zarro, ex-circus aerialist, assisted by his little pal Rags, uses his strange power in a relentless war against the forces of crime and evil.

Which sadly sounds a lot better than his actual origin as recounted in #1. A circus performer billed as “Eagle Man” (which you’ve got to admit makes for an infinitely better superhero name than “The Great Zarro”) visits a fortuneteller who gives him magic herbs which will help him fight crime in some unspecified manner far in advance of his actual need of them.

Then racketeers torch his circus*, killing his unnamed girlfriend in the process and Zarro and her little brothers Rags decide to avenge her, swearing “To the Death! We Destroy crime!” (not exactly the kind of thing I’d feel comfortable hearing members of the The Great Zarro Victory Club reciting at the top of their lungs) Zarro spoon-feeds himself the herbs (which I’m not completely sure is the most efficient delivery system for ingesting herbs) and gains the ability to fly.

The art by Larson Wells is a little stiff but is otherwise perfectly adequate by Golden Age standards — except when it comes to Rags. Not only is he dressed like a stereotypical street urchin and has only one tooth (clearly Zarro’s girlfriend wasn’t taking very good care of him) but he;s drawn in a big-foot cartoon style in sharp contrast to the rest of the characters. Then there’s his age — maybe it’s just the wonky perspective at work but most of the time he’s shown to be the size of a toddler when he’s treated like he was at least eight or nine.

In retrospect the publishers faith in The Great Zarro is nothing short of adorable, but you’ve got to give them credit; it would have been a whole lot easier for them to come up with just another Superman clone. But instead they came up with something that, while admittedly eccentric, was also absolutely autochtonous (look it up).

Maybe it’s only me, as it so often is, but in The Great Zarro I see a more relatable figure than most of the long underwear characters of the time, a Frank Capra superhero by way of Ed Wood. Imagine a slightly dazed man wandering the back roads of America, wearing an outlandish outfit from his last job because he doesn’t own a change of clothes. And shadowing him like so much Mickey Rooney a homeless kid who treats him like a superhero until he eventually starts acting like one.

I think about this stuff entirely too much.

Also included was the adventures of Guy Gorham, a two-fisted scientist (you’d probably be surprised by how many of those there were in the Golden Age) strip that had some intriguing ideas.

Buck Johnson, a standard big white hunter affair, though a handsome one drawn by Andre LaBlanc…

Devildogs Three, a fairly standard military feature…

…and most notably Madam Strange, but don’t get excited the way I did. In spite of her swimsuit/superhero attire and distinctive name sadly she was just a non-powered spy buster who inexplicably liked to play dress up. Oddly enough, it kind of looks like something Katy Perry would wear on stage.

Most of the features in the Barrel Of Fun section are in no way noteworthy, except for the pages done by Batman creator Bob Kane, which are notable for, well, being by Bob Kane.

The second issue is pretty much the same as the first…

But it was the third issue that truly embodies the spirit of they didn’t know what they were doing. Unfortunately it is currently unavailable for download or I’d post it’s cover featured main story, “Futuro Captures Hitler and Takes Him to Hades!”. But it was reprinted in 1992′s Anti-Hitler Comics #1 from New England Comics; the Grand Comic Book Database describes it this way:

“Time Traveling Super Hero Futuro along with his team The U.S. Futurians (Faith, Freedom, Truth, Courage, and Justice) kidnap Adolph Hitler and send him to Hell as punishment for his crimes only to discover that The Fuhrer and Satan make a deadly team.”

Apparently you can still order Anti-Hitler Comics from New England Comics and you might want to seriously consider doing so because in forty years of reading comics I have never read anything even remotely like it.

Great Comics Publications published a second title, Choice Comics; I’ll get to that next week.

*In the 1940′s if you were totally stuck for an idea you could always pull out the hoary “someone is trying to take over my circus” plot, a favorite of old movies and comic strips (heck, it’s even the origin of Robin the Boy Wonder). Of course it (a) makes no sense and (b) I don’t believe it has ever happened in the history of the world.

Now I could be wrong, I regularly am; maybe in the 1930′s organized crime really did try to gain control of America’s circus’ and carnivals. I’ve always assumed it was a bunch of crap since it’s hard to imagine the profit margins of a circus being of much interest to the Gambino Crime Family (though I suppose you could launder money through one). Plus, if they did want to “muscle in” on a circus I assume they’d use conventional methods, like simple intimidation and applied violence. Staging increasingly elaborate and unlikely “accidents” seem kind of counter productive, especially in this case where they burn down the circus.

So, maybe it’s not a hoary chestnut but rather, like a lot early superhero stories that dealt with construction companies who used sand in their concrete or companies that sold tainted milk, “torn from today’s headlines”. But somehow I doubt it.

The Groovy Agent offers up the Blunder Agents! Wally Wood’s T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents get a Mad-style lampooning from Gary Friedrich and Marie Severin in a mid-sixties issue of Marvel’s Not Brand Echh.

http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2010/11/sunday-funnies-blunder-agents-by.html

From a 1980′s issue of Denis Kitchen’s Death Rattle, here’s Steve Stiles with yet another Wally Wood homage, this one a sci-fi war story in the classic EC tradition.

http://swords-and-veeblefetzers.blogspot.com/2010/11/death-rattle-v2-3-mind-siege.html

Let’s continue our theme, here, with a plug for Bhob Stewart’s Potrzebie which not only has tons of rare wally Wood stuff but in his most recent post, a nice plug for Craig’s Art of Ditko book (available elsewhere on this page) and a Jungle Jim story by Ditko and…you guessed it! Wally Wood.

http://potrzebie.blogspot.com/

Finally today, here’s a YouTube look at the magnificent catalog for the Woodwork exhibit currently appearing in Spain!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiYzXDJJOKw

With the Civil War ended, the Union Army was free to concentrate on the conquest of Western native tribes (plus the re-conquest of tribes that had become “western”, by virtue of being forcibly re-settled west, after their lands in the east had been stolen.) Depictions were rampant of murderous savages commiting acts of senseless violence, against innocent whites who were merely exercising their God-given right to take from natives everything they had. For our second post for Native American Heritage Month, below are a few examples.

First up, illustrated by Frank Bellew (Sr.), The Massacre of General Canby — The Murderers and Their Allies, on the front page of the April 23rd, 1873 issue of the (New York) Daily Graphic.

Click on any picture, to open larger versions.

WARNING: The following cartoons contain racist imagery and slurs.

Next, from the rear cover of the August 7th, 1878 issue of Puck magazine, Oh! Oh! Howard! , by Puck‘s founder, cartoonist Joseph Keppler, Sr.

Above, The Indian “Difficulty”, by the senior Keppler, again, found on the front cover of tha January 22nd, 1879 issue of Puck. Left (click on it to enlarge it), the prose piece in the January 22, 2026 Puck issue, detailing what the above cartoon is satirizing. The article and cartoon are taking Generals Schurz and Sheridan to task, for neglecting the welfare of relocated indians. Right and below, three-and-a-half years later, Puck proves its fickleness/lack of memory, with a text bit plus cartoon, complaining about the resettled indians being “lazy”, with Uncle Sam needing to feed them (neglecting the fact that they were perfectly self-reliant, before the U.S. corraled the tribes into reservations/

ghettoes, on unproductive land for farming, with not enough game to hunt). The cartoon — A Losing Business — is by Frederick Burr Opper, who imagines a wealth of food stocks being given to the natives — far from the reality of the situation, in which the government left them freeze and starve.

Next, below, two Currier & Ives plates, titled A Howling Swell, showing Buffalo Bill escorting a British “Swell” (Dude) on an excursion in the prairies, and encounting “Injun” trouble. I’m uncertain of the date, though I suspect it to be around the time of — or soon after — Buffalo Bill’s tour of England (1887 — click here to find my article from this past Spring, on British and American cartoonists’ coverage of the Meeting of Buffalo Bill and Queen Victoria).

Click here, if you missed last Monday’s Native American Heritage article. Next Monday, we’ll have another new entry in this series.

Doug Wheeler

NYDailyGraphic BellewSr KepplerSr NYPuck NativeAmericanHistory

Where can you find some of Dr. Seuss’s most interesting work? In the pages of “The Golden Collection of Klassic Krazy Kool Kids’ Komics “

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Order the book by clicking on the cover above!

Rich Buckler discusses the trials and travails of apprenticing with veteran comics artist Gil Kane in the seventies and the uniquely comic book style “revenge” he got after Gil let him go.

http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2010/11/swash-buckler-saturdays-well-ill-tell.html

Here’s a real bit of lost comics history as we get a look at some sample strips done up by Dave Cockrum for a proposed Doc Savage comic strip, probably in the late 1970s, possibly early ’80′s.

http://ripjaggerdojo.blogspot.com/2010/11/doc-savage-by-cockrum.html

Silver Age Comics recounts the short, bizarre life of Mike Murdock, the previously unknown playboy brother of blind attorney Matt Murdock who is secretly Daredevil, the man without fear. That’s Mike that’s Daredevil…not Matt!

http://sacomics.blogspot.com/2010/11/short-life-of-mike-murdock.html

It hasn’t been updated in a while but Chain Letters For Disturbed Children is a wonderfully illustrated blog about comic book fanzines of the sixties and seventies, a fond memory to many of us who discovered fandom at that time.

http://chainlettersfordisturbedchildren.blogspot.com/

“I Am the Gorilla Man” and “Return of the Gorilla Man,” a couple of related pre-Marvel Universe monster stories by Lee and Kirby, are brought to us by Pappy today.

http://pappysgoldenage.blogspot.com/2010/11/number-841-i-am-gorilla-man-imagine-if.html

Here’s Marvel’s pre-cosmic version of Warlock as created by Lee and Kirby and here modified by Thomas and Kane. I have always loved this cover and once literally traced it!

http://www.kingdomkane.com/2010/11/rhodan-and-hounds-of-helios.html

It’s nearly Midnight…in fact it is Midnight over at Cole’s Comics as the fifth episode of Jack’s 2nd run on Quality’s homegrown Spirit knock-off is presented.

http://colescomics.blogspot.com/2010/10/midnight-episode-5-second-run-coles.html

Finally today, it may be post-Halloween but Comicrazys gives us a double scoop of John Stanley’s gentle-humored Melvin Monster in two stories from the mid-sixties.

http://comicrazys.com/2010/11/12/melvin-monster-girls-game-blackout-john-stanley/

For Veteran’s Day, more extracts from the Great Depression I-era pamphlets sold on the streets by unemployed WW I veterans, that we’ve sampled from in prior posts (found here).

First, below, an Out Our Way cartoon by cartoonist J.R. Williams.

Click on any picture, to open an enlarged version.

Below left, from veteran Dan Napoli, and, below right, by Harry Haenigsen.

Below left, the front cover from one of the pamphlets. And right, Napoli again.

Click here to find prior posts on the unemployed WW I veteran pamphlets.

Doug Wheeler

Kenneth Landau-an artist with whose work I’m not familiar (but who I read went into animation) drew this creepy ACG story from the fifties in a detailed but scratchy style. I kinda like it!

http://comicreadinglibrary.blogspot.com/2010/11/forbidden-worlds-31.html#more

As a child I wanted to become a panel cartoonist more than anything in the world. As originally published in 1931, here are a handful of single panel cartoons from the prestigious magazine, Judge.

http://hairygreeneyeball2.blogspot.com/2010/11/judge-not-lest-ye-be-judged.html

Here are a few more panel cartoons, these by Dennis the Menace creator Hank Ketcham, along with some other odds and ends pertaining to Ketcham’s career.

http://allthingsger.blogspot.com/2010/11/dogs-and-ponytail-wednesday-advertising.html

Our friend Jacque over at the romance comics blog, Sequential Crush, offers up a great, exclusive interview with Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, easily one of the most consistently impressive comics artists of the past few decades.

http://sequentialcrush.blogspot.com/2010/11/interview-with-charlton-romance-comic.html

Now that Halloween is over it’s time to talk about Dick Briefer’s Frankenstein, the new comics collection from Yoe Books and IDW. It’s available now on Amazon. What are you waiting for?

Of course, the book has been discussed at length, here and elsewhere. My job is to tie it into a record. And what I have for you this Tuesday is classic rock at its classic-est. It’s rock at its rockingest! It’s “Frankenstein” by Edgar Winter.

Click the photo of Edgar for a GIANT-SIZE pin-up

The song got its name because it was spliced together from bits and pieces, just like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. Betcha didn’t know that! This version clocks in at an amazing 17 minutes and 43 seconds, which means you can probably read a Frankenstein comic book or two in the time it takes to listen to the song.

Now click the link below and rock out!

Edgar Winter - Frankenstein