Between 1970 and 1972 Marvel Comics published six bi-monthly issues of Harvey, an attempt to do a ultra contemporary (several of the covers promised/threatened “Hectic Happenings and Hilarious Hang-Ups!”) teen comic that focused on the foibles and fashions of the very, very late 60′s (I contend that the 60′s didn’t actually end in America until 1973). The results managed to be something more than just your usual complete Archie Comics rip-off; the comics weren’t all that good but, especially in retrospect, they were kind of interesting.

For instance, take this panel from a story in Harvey #1; OK, sure, Archie spent a lot of time in Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe while Harvey wasted his money at Cheerful Charlie’s. But while Terry “Pop” Tate might have been occasionally exasperated by his clientele he definitely didn’t hate his customers, let alone kick them in the ass when they got on his nerves. And to the best of my knowledge Archie Andrews never called anyone a “fascist”.

Clearly Stan Lee and Stan Goldberg using a stencil of Archie Comics, especially at first, like, Harvey had a Reggie named Duke. In the first story he’s positioned as the antagonist of the series and Havey’s arch-rival but he just wasn’t big enough of a jerk to fill the role and soon disappeared.

Harvey’s Jughead was Goober who was, well, just kind of weird in a nonspecific way. His major defining characteristic was his clothes which were even wilder than those of his classmates. In the first issue he’s seen running around sans shirt and wearing a shaggy woolen Son of Frankenstein type vest (believe it or not I actually knew a guy in Junior High who had one of those). Here we see Goober dressed for school in a sleeveless white wool…something.

Then there were the Harvey girls. Raven is, let’s face face it, Veronica, and Raquel is a Big Ethel type but I’m not sure exactly who Wendy is supposed to be, other than a red-headed Betty. But like Duke she disappears from the series pretty quickly and we’re deprived of a Archie/Betty/Veronica type romantic triangle.

I’ve previously posted a story from Harvey #1 (see Comic Book Compulsive — Archie: The Also-Rans) by Stan Lee and Stan Goldberg that was exceedingly Archie-like. But like Duke and Wendy Goldberg soon left the series and the art was done by Stu Schwartzberg and Henry Scarpelli. Although Harvey continue to look more or less like an Archie type the stories were drawn in a loose, big-foot style that was very un-Archie. And without the benefit of a romantic triangle the stories, supposedly by Stan Lee, sometimes got very un-Archie, like “Everybody’s Peking At Us” in Harvey #4 where Harvey and Goober go to China (!) where they meet President Nixon (!!!).

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And as a bonus, here’s a couple of Stan Goldberg drawn gag pages.

Marc Tyler Nobleman is running a series of pop culture interviews over at Noblemania that right now include talking with Super Friends voice actors! Lots of cool stuff with the real heroes of seventies cartoons!

http://noblemania.blogspot.com/

Artist Dave Cockrum was a big fan of Blackhawk so it was always fun to see him draw the characters, as here in a team-up with Batman inked by Dan Adkins.

http://mailittoteamup.blogspot.com/2011/08/double-header-tales-from-dollar-bin-and.html

Yesterday we linked to Steranko’s spfx. Today here’s a closer look at his all-important first issue of Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

http://sacomics.blogspot.com/2011/08/nick-fury-agent-of-shield-1.html

Finally today, here’s a look at one of the great lost comics companies of the sixties and seventies, Gold Key.

http://comicbookcatacombs.blogspot.com/2011/08/top-10-defunct-comic-book-publishers_10.html

Just noticed that the long on-hiatus Nedor-A-Day site has recently returned with all new posts. Lots of cool stuff here, all from the old Nedor Comics!

http://nedor-a-day.blogspot.com/

Longtime fan, writer and Marvel expert Nick Caputo has recently started blogging, also, as evidenced here by an interesting piece about “What Made Marvel Different.”

http://nick-caputo.blogspot.com/2011/08/what-made-marvel-different.html

When I was eight years old, I’d sit and stare mindlessly at Steranko special effects like those seen here. Surprised my parents didn’t think I was tripping on something other than comic books!

http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2011/08/stunned-by-steranko-more-sensational.html

Finally today, here’s a look at one of the most unlikely comics of all time-Archie meets the Punisher, as created by Batton Lash, John Buscema and Stan Goldberg (with Tom Palmer on inks!).

http://blogintomystery.com/2011/08/10/could-we-maybe-reverse-the-names-and-swap-kills-for-meets-archie-meets-the-punisher-1/

As promised, here’s part two of Hank. If someone does collect it (and someone really should) it will be a very short volume; Waugh discontinued the strip due to eyestrain at the end of 1945.

Start your day with a creepy issue of Eerie-not that one though, Avon’s 1950′s version, this one highlighted by some art from African-American comics pioneer A.C. Hollingsworth.

http://comicreadinglibrary.blogspot.com/2011/08/eerie-11.html#more

As if designed to plug Craig’s book from last year, here’s Dan DeCarlo’s Jetta! You can still order the complete collection of Jetta elsewhere on this very page!

http://truelovecomicstales.blogspot.com/2011/08/jetta-of-21st-century-my-cosmic-hero.html

One of my favorite British comic strips has long been Garth by Frank Bellamy but I’ve rarely seen the strip before Bellamy made it his own. Why, here’s an example of the Steve Dowling version now!

http://hairygreeneyeball3.blogspot.com/2011/08/garth-1957-part-2.html

Finally today, here’s prolific Golden Age artist Bill Everett with a well-drawn adventure featuring Bullseye Bill, the cover-featured cowboy from the very first issue of Target Comics.

http://westerncomicsadventures.blogspot.com/2011/08/bulls-eye-bill-troubles-coming.html?

Back after a several day absence so let’s jump right in with a visit to JVJ Publishing, home to renowned art historian Jim Vadeboncoeur and his ImageS and Black and White ImagesS publications!

http://www.bpib.com/

Here’s a seventies favorite of mine-Marv Wolfman and Dave Cockrum team up for perhaps the ultimate EC tribute story (at Marvel no less) aided and abetted by Neal Adams and his Crusty Bunkers crew.

http://diversionsofthegroovykind.blogspot.com/2011/08/black-and-white-wednesday-good-lord-by.html

The Constant Eye is an eerie, creepy Fawcett tale presented by Karswell at The Horrors of It All and drawn by, presumably, Bernard Baily.

http://thehorrorsofitall.blogspot.com/2011/08/constant-eye.html

Finally today, here’s an album of visual non-sequiturs I myself have been collecting from old comics lately, on Facebook but viewable from the link below.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150739995160076.717037.859435075&l=85fba9c597&type=1

From Yoe Books, our gracious hosts here on I.T.C.H., comes Krazy Kat and the Art of George Herriman: A Celebration. I haven’t even seen this book yet, but I’m giving it my highest recommendation. A+++++++! You can order it from Amazon now and you’ll probably get your copy before I get mine. Well, what are you waiting for?

To celebrate this celebration I am pleased and proud to present a little ditty called “Krazy Kat” by no less talented a duo than Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang. This was recorded back in the days when Herriman’s strip was still running in newspapers. I give it my highest recommendation. A+++++++!

Click the link to listen.

Krazy Kat - Joe Venuti Eddie Lang

With Professor Tigwissel’s second comedic adventure, Livingston Hopkins cements the funny-sounding name and bespectacled egg-head design of the character to which Hopkins repeatedly return to for parodies involving in inventors, academics, scientists, and explorers. On this second appearance, though, it was not yet clear that readers would (sporadically) be seeing Tigwissel again and again, over the next seven years. In The Day We Celebrate, published on the front page of the July 3rd, 1875 edition of the (New York) Daily Graphic, Professor Tigwissel’s strip is given no more than twenty percent of the page, which he has to share with a potential rival character, Dr. Jingo. Hopkins will in fact eventually give Dr. Jingo his own full page solo outing, but only once.

(NOTE: You can click on the pictures above & below, to open versions large enough to read!)

For those interested, below is an extraction of just the Tigwissel/Jingo cross-over panels contained within the above page.

To view previous entries in this series, click here on Tigwissel Tuesdays.

Doug Wheeler

ProfTigwissel NYDailyGraphic

Image via Wikipedia

As a cartoonist Coulton Waugh (as seen in this self portrait) is probably best known for taking over the comic strip Dickie Dare from 1934 from Milton Caniff. As a author it’s undoubtedly for writing the first major books on the subject of comic strips, the indispensable, still in print The Comics.

Image via Wikipedia

But in my opinion what he should be better known for is his comic strip Hank. It began on April 30, 2026 in the left leaning New York newspaper PM (for Picture Magazine), the story of a disabled GI’s return to civilian life and was groundbreaking on a lot of different levels. Lots of comic strips during the immediate post-war period dealt with the struggles of returning servicemen. And there were even a number of strips that began then (just off the top of my head there’s Rip Kirby, Buz Sawyer, Steve Canyon, and I’m sure I’m missing a lot) that featured returning servicemen as their heroes.

But what made Hank special was he didn’t have one of those handy occupations like cop or newspaperman that constantly but him into dangerous situations. He was just Hank Harrigan, a former garage mechanic with interesting hair (apparently Waugh thought Hank just having a cowlick wasn’t interesting enough so he also gave him Joe Palooka’s unruly forelock) and had a habit of using “Juicifer” as a exclamation.

Hank had also lost a leg in the war and he was just one of a number of wounded servicemen being targeted by a group of leftover isolationists to ferment discontent and spread racist, anti-Semitic propaganda. The politics were extremely progressive and according to Waugh the strip was”a deliberate attempt to work in the field of social usefulness”.

The strip was also quite innovative artistically, especially it’s use of black on white and white on black, especially when it came to it’s word balloons some of which feature white lettering reversed onto black balloons (as well as lettering which used both upper and lower case letters). Sadly if I was only able to find a single image of Hank large enough to use available anywhere online and as far as I can the only place the strips were ever reprinted was in a single issue of the comic book Hank. It was published by Paragon Publishing, Inc., a company that seemed to specialize in turning third tier comic strips like The Adventures of Alice, Claire Voyant, Flying Jenny and Stony Craig into comic books. Sadly its not particularly good even by Golden Age comic book standards coloring doesn’t do Waugh’s distinctive artwork any favors. The only thing left of the artist’s highly idiosyncratic vision is the occasional black word balloon with white lettering. But it’s better than nothing.

Clayton “Peg Leg” Bates was in fact very much a real person. He had lost his leg at the age of 12 in a cotton gin accident but not only became a professional dance he had two command performances for the King and Queen of England in the 1930′s and performed on The Ed Sullivan show 58 times. He was also the first black man to own a resort, the Peg Leg Bates Country Club in the Catskills, home to the Jewish Borscht Belt And the people of his hometown, Fountain Inn, South Carolina erected a statue in his honor.

Part Two Coming Soon.

The Phantom Viking was that rarest of things, an actual, full-on British superhero. And as should be obvious, he was also pretty much a

Image via Wikipedia

professional Mighty Thor impersonator, specifically during his early 60′s period when he was more or less a straight up crime fighter. Olaf Larson was a tmid bespectacled school teacher who found an old Viking helmet inscribed (helpfully in English) “Only Larson the Liberator and his descendants shall have the power of this helmet, the secret of great strength and flight”.

In spite of always being treated like a classic 60′s milksop Thor’s alter ego Dr. Donald Blake always carried himself with a certain amount of quiet dignity, something denied poor Olaf. His boss Headmaster Grimsole was always threatening to fire him over his inability to control his students. Though school secretary Helen Yates was usually around to offer poor Olaf some pity sympathy, and to underline the obvious; he wasn’t a real man, not like that dreamy Phantom Viking.

Of course to be fair he wasn’t pretending to be a coward to throw off suspicion he was secretly The Phantom Viking; Olaf really was a coward. Though he deserves a certain amount of credit for putting that stupid helmet on in the first place because of it’s innate weakness. Something which in the hierarchy of superhero weaknesses is even lamer than Green Lantern’s power ring inability to deal with yellow or the Martian Manhunter’s aversion to fire. For you see ”when the wind from the south doth blow, the ancient Viking power shall go”.

There was something something refreshingly pathetic about The Phantom Viking. Olaf never filled out the way that Donald Blake did, staying a spindly scarecrow. He was never never going to earn the respect of his students or Headmaster Grimsole and he certainly was never going to get that nice Helen Yates to ever so much as look at him. No, he would just go on teaching school for a pittance, getting older and occasionally becoming The Phantom Viking, never knowing just when the wind would suddenly shift in mid-flight and he would plummet to his death.

As previously established for the most part British comics weren’t canceled so much as absorbed by another comic. “Great News, Pals!” was code that was about to happen but if you were real lucky some of your favorite strips would make the transition. This is how The Phantom Viking went from being in Champion to being in Lion.

And finally for no other reason than I like it also from Champion Annual ’68 is this lovely little strip, “The Outlaw Boy Who Won An Empire!”. What with him being, by Western standards, a heathen barbarian with a reputation only slightly better than Attila the Hun you really don’t expect to see a highly sympathetic portrayal of the boyhood of Ghengis Khan in a British boys comic from the 60′s Especially one this beautifully drawn.