The publisher Ziff-Davis published quite a few handsome action/adventure (Explorer Joe), western (Kid Cowboy) and science fiction (Lars From Mars, Crusader From Mars) that featured their signature pretty painted covers. But hey also produced some really oddball comics such as Big Jon and Sparkie and Sparkie, a pair of titles that featured the adventures of “America’s Beloved Radio Pixie’. From the context I’ve got to assume that Sparkie was supposed to have been a character from a children’s radio (or at least seem like he was) but with so little to work with the internet provided no information.

I thought that Sparkie was about a strange as Ziff-Davis got but then I (once again) discovered something that I never imagined existed, Beanbags. It was a comic-adventure series drawn in a bigfoot cartoon style that lasted two issues. It concerned the crew of a tug boat, the big and well meaning Bozo, the Alfalfa from The Little Rascals looking Beanbags and pretty girl Idabelle. The first issue issue told a single story broken into complete in themselves chapters about their journey to the country of Zanytopia, the first of which I’m posting here. It was drawn by Ben Brown and inked by David Gantz who did work for Atlas and Toby Press, funny animal stuff like Buzzy Rabbit for Quality and Dilly Duncan at Lev Gleason.

I’m still trying to decide whether Beanbags is good exactly, but it is certainly odd, and in my book odd almost always gets you at least half way to good.

I have a strange fondness for Kid Cowboy, if only because he had the most on the nose name for a cowboy character this side of Atlas Comics The Western Kid.