Not that any of you need to know what goes into writing these things but in spite of the fact I that have over sixteen thousand comics in my external hard drive there are still weeks when I absolutely have no idea which comics I’m going to write about. Part of the problem is that in spite of all evidence to the contrary (i.e. the recent multiple entries devoted to British robots and comedy teens) I really do try not to repeat myself too often. Because my favorite kind of comics are generally (a) good and (b) unexpected, (c) strange comes in as a very strong third. And the stranger the better, so I’m always on the lookout for something I (and hopefully) you have never even heard of, let alone seen before.

For instance Famous Features Stories #1 this apparent (the Grand Comic Book Database has no information about this title, I’m guessing because it doesn’t consider it to be a “comic book”) one-shot from 1938 which only looks like just another collection of comic strips. It’s actually a 66 page collection of prose stories featuring the comic strip characters Don Winslow of the Navy, Dan Dunn, King of the Royal Mounted, Smilin’ Jack, Buck Jones (who of course was also a movie cowboy), G-Man, Tarzan of the Apes, Tailspin Tommy, Dick Tracy, Terry & The Pirates and Little Orphan Annie. The cover also promises us Smokey Stover but no such story appears for which we should probably all be grateful. Because even given my tremendous imagination I can’t begin to imagine what a Smokey Stover prose story would be like.

Besides it’s format perhaps the most interesting thing about this comic is, as far as I know, it’s the closest Dick Tracy ever got to Dan Dunn, professional Dick Tracy impersonator. Dan Dunn is an all put forgotten strip today and for very good reason; it was an altogether amateurish imitator of the actual article, looking for all the world like it was scribbled during Junior High study hall. But it kind of looked like Dick Tracy, if you squinted enough, and given the enormous popularity of the Tracy strip at the time that seems to have been good enough for all the newspapers who couldn’t get the real thing.

I’ve posted the stories featuring Dick Tracy, Terry & The Pirates and Little Orphan Annie for no other reason than these are my favorites.

And I’ve included this back page ad because I honestly don’t think I’ll ever get tired of seeing these kinds of ads. I said it before but I wish there was a comic book themed fast food place that used these kinds of pages as decorations, like how in days of yore Wendy’s used pages from turn of the century catalogs.