In previous columns I’ve touched on Marvel’s long history publishing funny kid comics, not funny comics for kids but comics featuring kids who were supposedly funny. Well, in 1957 they published exactly one issue of Cartoon Kids, an anthology title featuring all of Atlas’ funny kid characters, as meager as they were.

Their biggest “success” in the 50’s was obvious Dennis the Menace imitator Melvin the Monster which ran for six issues. Maybe Marvel-then-Atlas decided Melvin wasn’t enough of a Dennis swipe and after six issues it was retitled Dexter the Demon for it’s final issue. If you’re thinking the name change might have had something to do with John Stanely’s Melvin Monster, well that’s OK because I did too for a moment there. Until I realized Stanely’s Melvin wasn’t published by Dell until 1965.

Maybe Stan Lee didn’t “get” the relative subtleties of Dennis or maybe he just had a repressed mean streak because rather than being a innocently mischievous little boy who didn’t understand the grown-up world Melvin was a greedy, malicious, vicious little bastard. As per usual Stan’s jokes were water weak but Joe Maneely (co-creator of such Atlas adventure titles asThe Black Knight, The Ringo Kid and The Yellow Claw) demonstrated he could also draw in a seriously funny style when called upon.

The character got one final name change (as well a change in hair color) in 1969 Marvel published three issues of Melvin/Dexter reprints under the title of Peter the Little Pest.

Melvin/Dexter was at least a success by the standards of Willie the Wise-Guy which lasted a single issue. If brought back today it would, more appropriately,be titled Willie the Wise-Ass because Willie was a nervy little jerk with a lot of theoretically (Stan certainly deemed them so anyway) smart answers and a bad haircut. Unlike Melvin/Dexter Willie seemed to prefer psychological manipulation (and sometimes torture) to physical violence. But the results were pretty much the same; some nice comic book pages by Joe Maneely that were drawn to resemble gag a day one panel newspaper comic strips featuring stale joke book jokes.

The final “star” of Cartoon Kids was Little Zelda, who was yet another horrific little brat who’s behavior was about as bad as the boys. Except her antics were always accompanied with a nearly maniacal mean-spirited grin which seemed to suggest not so much bad intent or insolence as serious psychological problems. Unlike Dexter and Willie Zelda never made it to her own title but appeared in back-ups in Milton the Monster #6.

Like Melvin/Dexter Little Zelda assumed a new name, Pixie, in the 1970’s when Marvel reprinted some of her strips in the anthology L’il Kids.

It seems like Stan missed an obvious opportunity by not having Dexter, Willie and Zelda team-up to form a brat super group, but the only place they encounter each other is here in this innovative coloring/activity “Fun Page”. Sadly it’s the only really imaginative thing in the comic.