As well established I’m always inappropriately delighted when I discover something I don’t know. This week it’s the fact there was an Archie character I had never heard of, and I’ve heard of Senor Banana. I speak of The Adventures of Pipsqueak, a short-run Archie series running six issues between 1959 and 60. Pipsqueak is considered by some to be a Dennis the Menace ripoff and while I’ve only read this one issue and he certainly seems to be a lively kid misconstruing the English and causing chaos didn’t seem to be his exclusive reason for existing. He’s a pretty normal kid with pretty normal friends and parents and his ‘antics’ are low key and thoroughly believable. About the only thing of distinction, I can find about this comic is that characters use the archaic nautical term “yare” meaning easily maneuverable, ready. It’s used by both Pipsqueaks friend Knucklehead and his dad and in the context it appears to mean “right” or “I heard that”. Perhaps the writer/artist Walt Lardner had a nautical background of maybe it’s a regional colloquialism; I just don’t know.

Speaking of whom I also learned, a little about a cartoonist named Walt Lardner who seems to have lived a double life. While there is precious little about Walt Lardner, comic book artist, available on the web there’s a bit more about Walt Lardner, an editorial cartoonist. Anyone with any further information about Lardner please to let me know.