You really can’t lump Swing With Scooter in with DC’s other teen comics. A hodgepodge of everything that was going on in the zeitgeist at the time concocted by Barbara Friedlander (a regular contributor to the DC’s romances titles completely unknown to comic book guys such as myself) and Jack Miller and drawn by Joe Orlando. It ran 36 issues between 1966 and 1971.

And as you can from his supporting cast there wasn’t anything overtly ‘Archie’ about him:

Even designated fat guy Sylvester (“The One and Only Tubby Greenbacks”) wasn’t the stereotypical eating machine; first and foremost he was a stereotypical tightwad of Jack Benny proportions who actively loved money so much he couldn’t bear to part with it. Plus, as you can from the one page strip below, he was brimming with unwarranted self esteem not usually found in comic book fat guys.

But the breakout star amongst the supporting cast was Malibu, a guy who appeared to be a cross between Eddie Munster from The Munsters and Ilya Kurakin from The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Dubbed “the rage from Finksville” for no apparent reason (perhaps the author was under the impression it sounded like “teen hip talk”) he constantly wore a white trench coat and occasionally said something that suggested he was a vampire - in spite of the fact he could move about freely during the day.

As I compulsively like to say “weird almost always gets you half way to good” so, I place into evidence this story from Swing From Scooter #4.

None of the stories in Swing With Scooter were what I would call good exactly, but they were really, really weird. And they were certainly a whole lot better than the weak tea Archie clone it later became under the hands of Doug Crane and Henry Scarpelli. Scooter lost his scooter, Sylvester became an eating machine and it turned out that instead of “just” being a 60′s style teen vampire super secret agent Malibu it turned out that he really was from a place called “Finksville” that was inhabited entirely by movie monsters. I’d post one of those stories so you can compare and contrast the two different versions for yourself but…trust me, this cover is more than enough.

As I’ve written we’ll probably never see a revival of either Buzzy or Binky but there’s definitely enough potential in Scooter for a new version. I keep saying how DC should revamp some of their characters so they reflect the same age as their graying readership. Today Scooter would be well into his 70′s so, how about the adventures of him and his pals as they segue their way into a assisted living community by running around on their electric Rascals. The title: Power Mobility Scooter.