Casual Calamity Cubed: Three Stories From New Funnies 116, 1946

Of all the titles edited by Oskar Lebeck for Dell Publications, New Funnies seems most spontaneous and slapdash. The bar was set quite low for this title. Quality of story and art material wavers dramatically from issue to issue.

In 1946 and '47, the title was a place for John Stanley to blow off steam, as he prepared for what he didn't yet realize was a 15-year run on Little Lulu. His story (and art) for that series is impeccable. Perhaps because the licensed property was of a higher status (and its creator was initially looking over the collective Lebeck shoulder), Stanley's Lulu is tighter, less risky and more grounded than any of his other work in comics.

While under close watch on the early Little Lulu one-shot issues (most of which you'll find elsewhere on this blog), Stanley catered to his chaotic, more off-the-cuff impulses in New Funnies. He did some of his best--and worst--work for the series.

At their finest, these stories are freewheeling, very funny and full of a street-wise charm, In their low points, they reveal their creator's burn-outs, hangovers or crunched-deadline hackwork. New Funnies was clearly not a high priority on either Dell's or Lebeck's agenda.

Offered today are Stanley's 31 pages of story for issue 116 of New Funnies, cover-dated October, 1946. I've isolated these three stories in a CBR file that you may download HERE. (If you don't like the CBR format, just rename the extension to RAR and open it with WinRar or other, similar programs).

Spoilers abound in the text that follows. Those who read the following without reading the stories themselves are living far too dangerously for their own good.
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Stanley is in better-than-average form in these three stories. They clearly illustrate his often-expressed philosophy that the outside world is a dangerous place, and that we protagonists are chess-pieces in the hands of unseen fate. Sometimes we're moved to exciting places and sometimes we're stale-mated (and check-mated) by random events.

"Andy Panda" exquisitely details a waking nightmare in post-WW II America. As Stanley points out constantly in his 1946/7 stories, victorious post-war America was still a promised land full of vexing shortages.

Stanley hits this note so often, in this year, that it seems autobiographical. In the New Funnies world, everything from pajamas to hot dogs are scarce. Their appearance incites riot-like behavior in the most passive people. Anyone who desires the most commonplace things--pieces of the entitled American Dream--is guaranteed a harrowing experience.

We're tipped off to this problem in a subtle way: clothes are so scarce that Charlie Chicken, Andy's soul-mate, earns pocket change by renting Andy's one good suit. Its last renter left it covered with barbecue grease. "I charged him 20 cents extra in damages," Charlie says, in feeble self-defense.

In a Tubby-like burst of self-belief, Charlie concocts an acidic "spot remover" from his chemistry set, and destroys the garment. Here, Andy's worries begin. We see him rehearsing a speech for the Ladies' Club in his sleep--a violent narrative out of a pulp magazine, and as such, hardly suitable for his genteel audience.

The speech itself doesn't rattle Andy, but being reduced to his pajamas does. Naively he sends Charlie out to buy a new suit. This leads to the delightfully barbed sequence, from pp. 3-5, in which it's made clear that clothes make gold look common in this world. The only suit left for purchase is so gaudy that, in Charlie's words, "Andy wouldn't even wear that in Miami!"

Andy is forced out on the street in his PJs, in a vain search for clothes that are "...conservative! Not zoot!" For our younger readers, a bit of historical info: zoot suits were the 1940s equivalent of those shiny track suits that rappers wear. Gaudy, exaggerated clothing, zoot suits were scorned by the Andy Pandas of their day, who favored the more respectable but equally absurd dress wear of post-war America, which included ridiculously short neckties and wide lapels.

Andy's quest for clothed dignity pushes him further into the epicenter of embarrassment. Because he's so blandly conformist, Stanley rakes him over the coals. He rejects a Hamlet outfit at a costume shop, loses his pajama pants, and is forced to rent the only stock left in the place--a horse outfit.

Ironically, Andy's frantic costume-bound performance (in which he's chased by a lazy beat cop whose horse he and Charlie startled) goes over big with the Ladies' Club. This Preston Sturges-ish slapstick finale adds comic irony to the finale:  all the fuss and bother Andy and Charlie went through ultimately didn't amount to anything.

In the "Oswald Rabbit" story, trouble comes knocking via special delivery. A sarcastic, plump messenger brings Todo, a sentient "cannibal plant," to Oswald and Toby. It's the dying gift of Os' rich Uncle Rios, who appears to have been a recent meal of Todo's.

Oswald and Toby are a duller shadow of Andy Panda and his poultry partner. Thus, something worse has to happen to them. Todo takes over the household. He attempts to eat Oswald, but rejects him as unsavory. They attempt to give him a ham sandwich, extended on a broom. Todo eats the broomstick and the jar of mustard.

He smokes cigars and flicks the ashes on the carpet--a move that finally angers Oswald and Toby. The emphasis is now far away from the possibility of Todo eating the rabbit or bear--this is not Chew Chew Baby, the deeply disturbing 1958 animated cartoon.

Todo exists only to annoy these two docile domestics. After Toby's deep-fried cooking nearly kills Todo, he literally turns a new leaf, and falls in love with a rose growing in the backyard. He still poses a menace to neighborhood cats, but, at story's end, has mellowed (somewhat).

A lightweight piece, this "Oswald" story has some subtle, dry moments of black humor, but one gets the sense that Stanley dislikes the characters, and is most interested in tormenting them. The story is funnier and smarter than it has any right to be.

"Woody Woodpecker" delays its namesake's entrance, and the casual calamity the bird brings to others, until its second page.

Stanley felt warmest towards Woody, and usually saved his best material for the anti-social bird. (Woody's most delayed entrance occurs in this story, which features in-joke caricatures of Stanley and artists Mo Gollub and Dan Noonan.)

Woody passively enters the waterfront setting, in search of cheap seafood. He is crowned with a mass of wriggling live eels. He runs, Hydra-like, down the cobbled street, and into a tavern, where the seagoin' toughs empty out at the sight of him.

It just happens that a "cross-eyed, red-headed woodpecker brings more hard luck than anything," according to a piece of sailor superstition I didn't know about. Armed with this new status as a social threat, Woody has fun being a pariah. He causes a blackjack-wielding shanghai-er to attempt hara-kari when he's trapped in a blind alley.

Woody frisks the presumed corpse, finds the guy's wallet, and good-naturedly carries him back to the S. S. Rustbottom--to the horror of the ship's captain. He and his crew jump ship, as Woody enjoys a good horse-laugh.

Left alone to man the wheel, Woody attempts to drive cross-town, to catch a trolley car--a more down-to-earth form of transportation he trusts best. He collides the ship with a bridge, sneaks aboard a jostled trolley in the chaos, and is quickly evicted as a non-paying rider. Booted off the car, he shrugs his shoulders with an "Oh, well!"

All in a day's work for this woodpecker. This simple story is a wonder of narrative purpose. Woody moves in one direction, never stopping to think about the consequences of his actions, or, more importantly, where he's going. This underdog relishes the chance to wreak havoc, but quickly forgets the whole set-up.

The story is a thin excuse for casual calamity of the streetwise, of-the-fly nature that distinguishes New Funnies, the ragtag underdog of the Oskar Lebeck offices. The near-improvisational feel of these three stories, though often sloppily executed, is a breath of fresh air, and a reminder that Dell Comics weren't always dull comics.

Something Old, Something New...

Two things of interest:

A complete collection of John Stanley's "Peterkin Pottle" stories has been posted, for free, at the Digital Comics Museum. Richard Davidson did this compilation, and it's handy to have all seven of these stories in one spot. Click on the image to go to the download page.

I have started a new blog which, like Stanley Stories, focuses on the work of one creator. In this new blog, I'll look at the Warner Brothers animated cartoons of Fred "Tex" Avery, and, I hope, trace the important developmental paths of these 60+ films--many of them landmarks in the reclamation of animation from the Disney influence. Click on the above image, or visit it at http://texaveryatwb.blogspot.com/

A Cockeyed Cure For Well-Being: Clyde Crashcup #3, 1964: story by John Stanley, art by Irving Tripp

SPOILER ALERT: Once again, I've gathered today's stories in a stand-alone CBR format, which you can download HERE. I put in some time straightening and brightening the pages, and I think it improves the reading experience.

Don't dig CBRs? Rename the file as an RAR extension, unzip it, and read the pages that way. You'll want to read the stories before you partake of my commentary on them.

That said, let's get this show on the road...

A common factor in many of John Stanley's post-1955 comic book stories is their creator's evident lack of personal enjoyment.

The creation of mainstream comic books is almost entirely not about art. It pays badly, it's often high-pressure work, and until recently, most of its publishers regarded the end results as disposable and fleeting. Like any business, it's built on making bucks. Quality is a surprise by-product. That any memorable or lasting work has appeared in American comic books is a small miracle.

John Stanley was perhaps spoiled by his first and best editor, Oskar Lebeck. Like William Gaines and Al Feldstein of E.C. Comics, Lebeck cared about the quality of his creative team's output. When Stanley lost Lebeck's guiding hand, in the 1950s, he suddenly seemed to enjoy his work much less.

As the 1950s wore on, Stanley's work becomes more mechanical and less spontaneous. Stanley's gritting-of-teeth, in the last two years of Little Lulu, overshadows any moments of genuine inspiration and joy. The stories are still of an overall high quality, but they seem forced. Despite themselves, they continue to entertain and, occasionally, surprise. They have much less wattage than Stanley's work of the 1945-55 period.

If Stanley felt burned out on Little Lulu in its last couple of years, he made some effort to disguise his ennui. The real fallout of his burnout hit hard in Stanley's oft-joyless tenure on Nancy/Nancy and Sluggo. 

Though frequently inspired, Stanley's Nancy work bears the weight of responsibility, and obligation, over the sense that the creator genuinely gets a kick from his work.

As Nancy represented a forced attempt to tread the oh-so-familiar ground of Lulu, it's most impressive when Stanley's anger and frustration elbows its way to the stories' fragile, downcast center-stage. There is energy in Stanley's anger--a vitality that also fuels the much better, more original series Dunc 'n' Loo.

Had the fun gone out of creating comics for John Stanley, as the 1950s ended?

Not entirely.  He found his way back in the 1960s, via his two "auteur" series, Melvin Monster and Thirteen Going on Eighteen. An important transitional title was Clyde Crashcup, based on a TV cartoon property.

We've done Clyde here before, but its significance, in the amount of fun Stanley seems to have with this series, has grown on me. Like Lulu's Tubby Tompkins, Clyde is a perfect character for John Stanley. Self-obsessed, quixotic and fearless, Clyde is also a creator. With his magic pencil as the conduit from his subconscious to comic book reality, he can realize anything, have it function, and retool it on the fly.

The irony is that all these things already exist. Clyde is too well-sold on his own brilliance to stop and think that someone, somewhere, must have had the same idea and, sans magic pencil, done it the hard way. his fittingly mute assistant, Leonardo, attempts to act as the always-needed Voice of Reason, typically in vain.

Like most of John Stanley's work for comics, this is a re-think and refinement of an existent idea. Rather like Clyde, Stanley "invented" what was already there--but did the character better by improving and expanding on the (typically under-developed) original.

Thus, Stanley owns Clyde, Little Lulu, Woody Woodpecker and The Little King in a way the original creators don't. They had the birth of a notion, but nothing else (with the exception of Otto Soglow, whose own creativity just about meets Stanley's).

This third issue of Clyde Crashcup is perhaps the best of the five-issue run. Reunited with his longstanding Lulu partner, Irving Tripp, and given an unusual character he can really sink his teeth into, John Stanley rolls up his sleeves and has fun with his work.

"Clyde Crashcup Invents The Scare" is something of a tour de force for artist Tripp, as he fearlessly depicts wild horses, roller coasters, haunted houses and dirty dishes with a solid-yet-sketchy astro-modern cartooning style.

Crashcup's self-absorption and unflappable self-belief fuel this story. He believes that only he can cure Leonardo's hiccups, and creates an ever-growing arc of devices to attempt this simple task. The grander these ideas become, the more of a toll they take on their creator--while effecting no change whatsoever on Leonardo's gastric distress.

As Crashcup says of his final creation's self-effect, "one more second... and I'd have lost my REASON!" In a finale apt for the "Goodman Beaver Lite" vibe of the series, a kid's exploded paper bag cures Leonardo--and transfers the hiccups to Crashcup, now able to torment himself further.

"Clyde Crashcup Invents Glue" clicks on the inventor's obvious high self-regard. "I am admiring an EXCELLENT PICTURE of me in today's newspaper," he glibly admits at story's start.

That self-love is echoed by a series of increasingly self-destructive invention attempts, as Clyde tries to capture that self-image for posterity.

Tripp's lively, loose cartooning helps sell this simple story, which again ends on a self-evident note of irony.

By now, Stanley is fully warmed up, and in "... Invents Deep-Sea Fishing," he makes some rare self-referential remarks, via his characters.

In a genuinely Kurtzman-esque moment, Crashcup addresses a trope of comic books and animated cartoons--something we take for granted, as no attention is called to it.

The very act of calling attention is important, and I'm glad at least one popular culture creator addressed this vital logic flaw of so many mass-market entertainments:

Tripp has some fun with the blowsy blonde mermaid, who also sees fit to question Clyde's ability to speak under-water. We mostly know Tripp for the stiff, mechanical linework of Little Lulu. It's a pleasure to see him cut loose in this series.

The last two stories revisit some pet themes of Stanley's "Lulu"-- the war of the sexes and the questionable pleasures of the public park.

"Clyde Crashcup Invents Chivalry" frames the inventor's eccentricities against a merciless world of "...selfish men and roughneck ladies!"

For the first time in this issue, we see Clyde and Leonardo in a world not of Crashcup's invention. Like the worlds of Dunc 'n' Loo, Melvin Monster and Thirteen, it's not an easy place for a sensitive soul.

Noble deeds are misinterpreted, and mankind's first impulse is to react with violence, not reason. If this is Clyde's reality, small wonder he spends so much time in retreat, re-creating a habitable universe. That these attempts fail adds a layer of poignancy to what would otherwise be a mechanical sitcom shell.

Clyde's attempts to create the world of Arthurian chivalry--a more brutal place than the 20th century--is more heart-breaking than funny, despite a clever reference to Cervantes' myopic tilter-at-windmills, and a hip update of the Robin Hood cliche. For the first time, Clyde gains some humanity, whether by design or by blissful coincidence.

This mood is sustained as "Clyde Crashcup Invents Spring--" a timely farce, as we descend into the season of pollen, stinging eyes and burlesque-comedy sneezes as a way of life.

Again, Clyde rebels against the establishment--both of the uncontrollable climate and the regulated-but-dangerous world of the urban public park. By inventing spring, as a reaction against the "...endless dreary round of COUGHS, COLDS and SNEEZES," Crashcup blindly sets himself up for more negative social interactions. Bees, cops, rams, babies, jealous boyfriends and mud puddles batter our innocent hero relentlessly.

He, of course, winds up sick in bed from this caring attempt to force the world to be a nicer place.

That familiar John Stanley message--that the world is a frightening, uncertain place--caroms through his two decades of published work. It sounds more often, and more shrilly, in his stories of the 1960s, and casts a shadow across the most light-hearted events.

In his hands, Clyde Crashcup is more than another droll Space-Age throwaway. While Stanley's joy of creation shines through these five stories, the heavy weight of his central, melancholy message anchors their knockabout antics. This was Stanley's greatest gift as a comedic writer, and constant tension of dark and light in his late work remains gripping--moreso than the comics themselves have the right to be.

P.S.: All of Stanley's stories for this series are now available via this blog. Enjoy!

Bucolic Battles, Noxious Neighbors and Sob Sisters: Three Stories from Little Lulu "Four Color" one shot 146, 1947

It's been nearly a year since we continued the series of posts on the early one-shot issues of Marge's Little Lulu, before it was granted its own regular series at the start of 1948. Have crowd, will please!

The previous one-shot, 139, is fully covered on Stanley Stories. You may read "The Hooky Team" HERE, and the other two stories in that issue HERE.

Cover-dated May 1947, this Lulu one-shot was written and penciled by John Stanley. Charles Hedinger, a significant interim artist, did the inked finishes.

Hedinger brings a distinct energy to the table. His Lulu stories have more visual energy than those of Irving Tripp, who would very quickly join Team Lulu. That said, they lack the bristling vigor Stanley's own artwork gave the series. It's a pity Stanley had to cease the finished artwork for Little Lulu.

Without that break, he may not have developed such a sharply focused role as writer, as the series reached its early 1950s peak of all-ages popularity. With a need for consistent high-quality writing, the magazine needed a more focused, in-control Stanley. His presence is just felt enough, through the stagnant-but-effective lens of Tripp's stable, static artwork, to still energize the series.

Stanley's "Little Lulu" stories are typified by their sense of enclosure. The dwellings, streets and buildings--and the suburban vacant lots, such as that which hosts Tubby's boys-only clubhouse, seem small and confined throughout the series.

Today's lead story, "Sunday Afternoon," is a rare occurrence of wide open, rolling and bucolic space in Stanley's Little Lulu. It's also significant as one of the few early LL stories to just feature Lulu and Tubby Tompkins, with no other children or adults to interact with them. Stanley clearly savors the opportunity to have his two main characters spend some quality time together in the great outdoors...

An almost documentary approach distinguishes "Sunday Afternoon" in John Stanley's canon. Seldom do these two characters so truly and completely act like little children. Their off-handed cruelties, and gestures of genuine bonding, ring completely true.

The story is a very simple back-and-forth between Tubby and Lulu. Each attempts to assert their way of thinking--and, in doing so, thwarts the other's effort to achieve a (literally) childishly simple task.

The coda, of Tubby stealing his own mother's roses, is what improv comedians would term a "call back" to a telling incident on the story's first page. Tubby's decision to pick flowers is prompted by the thought that he'll sell them to his mother. This strategy horrifies the always mom-centric Lulu. Tubby's worldly gaze corrupts Lulu's innocent, parent-loving intentions.

That she doesn't know, and Tubby doesn't reveal, that these are his mom's flowers, is a prime example of a Stanley character taking a ride on the ol' karma wheel. His eventual punishment, which occurs off-page and post-story, is keenly felt all the same.

For younger readers, who may wonder who Betty Grable was, here's one of her iconic pin-up photos from the 1940s:

Grable was perhaps the most sexually desired female in 1940s America. If a woman was attractive, she was slangily referred to as an "able Grable." Grable was in the stable of 20th Century Fox Studios, and appeared in dozens of films from 1929 to 1955, including many musicals, a Preston Sturges comedy, and the proto-film noir I Wake Up Screaming. So now you know!

That pop-culture factoid achieved, onto today's second story. "Forbidden Fruit" is significant for the introduction of two themes that would become increasingly important to Stanley's 1950s Lulu. More on that after the story...

"Forbidden Fruit" is a surprisingly tense, moment-to-moment narrative. Incidents of sublime black comedy pepper its pages. The sequence on pp. 8-10, in which Tubby causes a flood, destroys several expensive things, and endangers Lulu's life as she seemingly chokes on a ping-pong ball, is beautifully timed. Each move seems casual, unconscious and utterly borne of Tubby's self-absorbed, inverted world-view.

We're warned of Tubby's self-focus at story's start. Mid-sentence, Tub blathers away about the picture-perfect achievements of his coming years. Lulu's lack of attention suggests that she's heard this spiel often enough to be able to tune it out. 

The presence of television--making its debut in the world of Stanley's Little Lulu--creates a delightful side-track in the suspenseful events of "Forbidden Fruit." 

Stanley generally avoided references to topical events in Lulu's pages. By 1947, television was enough of a national curiosity that it merited an appearance. It makes sense that isolated Mr. Gripe would own a TV set. As he has no family, and none of the attendant financial obligations, he could afford this still-experimental luxury item.

Before 1950, a TV set was an ostentatious purchase for the average joe. TV appears in a few more "Lulu" stories, but is never a major element. Its place in Gripe's home offers some sociological depth to his character.

Mr. Gripe's presence is another this significant first appearance of an important secondary figure in Little Lulu--the eccentric loner neighbor. This figure, most notoriously seen in the Tubby back-up story "Hide and Seek," from Little Lulu 79, is verbally, and often physically, violent towards children. The Gripes and Kranks of Stanley's world are a troubling presence.

Gripe is more compassionate than later incarnations of this type. He performs CPR on Lulu and retrieves the pent-up ping pong ball. The children have ruined his home, without realizing their actions, and Gripe is slow to notice the destruction. One imagines the off-story sequence in which he discovers his smashed TV set.

It's amusing that the story's colorist opted to make Gripe's set a color TV. Commercially produced color TV sets weren't introduced 'til 1953. Network color programming began, sporadically, the next year, but most American homes had black and white sets until at least the end of the 1960s. (My home stayed black-and-white until 1976, much to my teenage embarrassment.)

It isn't a Little Lulu comic unless it has a fairy-tale sequence, and here's one of the more creative early pieces in this Stanley genre, "Crybaby."

For those used to Witch Hazel, and the standard story-book vibe of the 1950s-era "Lulu" fairy-tales, early pieces, such as "Crybaby," may come as a surprise. Lulu's improvised story never strays from recognizable reality--as interpreted by a seven year-old kid.

Despite its escalating and clever comedy, "Crybaby" climaxes in a scene of violent child discipline. In 1947, whaling the tar out of disobedient kids was common parental practice. There was nothing unusual about its presence in this, and many other "Lulu" stories. It was SOP for child-rearing. Even Dr. Spock condoned it until the later 1950s. 

Pop Culture Reference #2: Mrs. Miniver was a 1942 Hollywood movie, made at MGM Studios, and starring Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon. A narrative about a wartime English family who deals with Nazi air-raids, bomb shelters and food rationing, it might have made an interesting tale for Alvin--especially in Lulu's regurgitated, misunderstood version.

For a chaser, here are the three pantomime gag pages of this issue. While Stanley is primarily known for his verbal wit, and fine dialogue, he was also an effective humorist without words. These pages provide a link to the origins of the character. They are, in essence, improvements on the single-panel silent gag cartoons that Marge Buell created before Stanley, in essence, took over the character and made her a vessel for his increasingly talky comedy of manners.

Weekend Plug-O-Rama

My friend and colleague Thad Komorowski has big news that I eagerly share here: Sick Little Monkeys, his book on the rise and fall of John Kricfalusi, Ren & Stimpy and Spumco Animation is now available. Full disclosure: I was the book's editor, and I also colored and co-designed the cover with Thad.

That said, it's his work all the way, and as I edited the text, I was fascinated with this darkly humorous, sometimes painfully tragic real-life story.

As I recently experienced with my work on the graphic novel The Carter Family: Don't Forget This Song, some real-life stories are so vivid, dramatic and striking that it is a privilege to tell them. I think this is true of Thad's account of John K's manic spiral of a cartooning career.

Thad did his homework very well, with many insightful comments from the various Spumco survivors he interviewed. This book will enrage some fanboys: it's a no-nonsense, decidedly frank look at an obviously talented man who made some great animated cartoons, but had certain personality quirks that brought the walls tumbling down around him.

Thad acknowledges John K's genius, but details the chaos and confusion of his world. I think that even those who don't like Ren & Stimpy would still find this book's historical narrative gripping. It's a remarkable achievement--well done, Thad!

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Might as well plug some recent antics of mine. I occasionally review 1940s and '50s film noirs for the blog, Noir of the Week, which is loosely affiliated with the Film Noir Foundation. This week, I review the thoroughly nutty 1945 sorta-noir, Danger Signal. You might enjoy reading it, and the four other reviews I've done for this blog.

Over the holidays, I put together a collection of some of Dick Briefer's Frankenstein comic-book stories, from public-domain issues of Prize Comics, with an introduction and supplementary features written by me. I am asking a nominal $3.99 for this 146-page e-book, which I think is a bargain for the quantity and quality of the work within, and for the time I put in touching up and sequencing the stories. If you'd like to learn more about this project, visit Comic Book Attic, the blog I share with Paul Tumey, who currently unearths early comics history in his marvelous Masters of Screwball Comics blog. Check out his new essay on pioneering cartoonist/painter Gus Mager.

Note: this post does not count towards the official 250 for this blog.

New Funnies Teachings: It's A Scary World Out There!

One of the key messages in John Stanley's world is this: the world is a scary place. Funny things may happen, triumphs may be scored, losses bettered, statuses and faces saved... but one never knows what's going to happen--or why.

This element, also familiar to readers of Carl Barks' comics, gives these so-called "kiddie comics" an edge seriously lacking in much of what passes for comics, period.

This message doesn't require the walking dead, heavy artillery, secret origins or super-powers... to experience the same, the reader only needs to open his or her front door, best foot forward, and step out into the world.

Culled from two issues of Walter Lantz New Funnies (113 and 120), this special "Scary World" edition of Stanley Stories features three stories, and is available as a .CBR file >>>HERE. <<< If you're not hep to the CBR revolution, just rename the file as an .RAR extension, crack it open, and read that-a-way.

In mainstream comics of the 1940s, particularly those published after the war, this message is common-place. The war made the world a walking, talking mass of PTSD. Good Americans that we are, we shrugged our shoulders, pretended to laugh it off, and fixed ourselves another stiff drink.

What else could you do? We had the H-bomb, they had the A-bomb; food, clothing and housing shortages remained from the war. On the upside: the economy was good, and the American worker entered the cushiest, most carefree era of his/her existence. Life's little ups and downs could really frazzle a fella, if he stopped to think about it.

Nah--let's not, and say we did. And so the American populace soldiered on through the worst anxieties of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear Armageddon. But the naked nerve-endings of those suppressed fears spill out all over their mass media.

John Stanley was a popular architect of this tread lightly and look o'er ye shoulder school of thought. Over and over, a message comes through in his stories: ya just can't win. Though subdued (as were many of Stanley's more personal feelings) in the best-selling pages of Marge's Little Lulu, the message was still there, a couple of layers down. We are all Tubby, and our occasional victories are forever leavened by a dozen small defeats. Smile while you can, 'cos the West Side Gang is waitin' around the corner.

These three New Funnies stories explore a different slice of post-war anxiety pie. Please do download and read the stories before going much further, unless you're hooked on spoilers.

In our first (and gravest) piece, our barely-functioning woodpecker sits in the upholstered comfort of his home, reading a yet-unidentified story/poem, similar in title to one of Walt Whitman's ground-breaking poems, yet authored by "McAdam."

Woody is at his most affluent in this most heart-breaking story. He's the 1946 equivalent of a Trader Joe's shopper... living comfortably, yet slightly beyond his means and with a blind eye to the realities of the world outside his window.

His pickled onions, caviar and truffles packed in a bindlestiff, the bird takes a taxi to the city limits, convinced that romance, joy and freedom await him. He's immediately sized up, and robbed, by two members of Stanley's hobo army (seen in Little Lulu and other Stanley efforts of the era).

Tied to a tree, and penniless, Woody is rescued by a circus worker, who revives the bird's Technicolor dreams of "Adventure! Excitement!" He's put to work peeling spuds. While he whittles, he dreams:

After this comic-poignant page, he's put to work on-stage as the passive assistant to a knife-thrower and a Native American archer. Then, after a stint (at gunpoint) inside the lion's cage, and an aerial voyage a la cannon, the bird again meets his tramp victimizers.

In anyone else's world, this would be the moment of victory. Woody gets back his stolen dough, but only for a few seconds. His final fate, at story's end, is one of the blackest moments in the q.v. of John Stanley.

How did 1946 kids, who inhaled such comic book stories, absorb these negative life-lessons? Or was this just "funny stuff" to them--that someone could be so stupid and ill-starred to lose his money, home and status? Perhaps, in affluent post-war America, such a fate was unthinkable to the enlarged, cushy middle class. There were people living outside the margins of society, making grass soup, if you will, in 1946, but they were far off-camera in the official family portrait of American life.

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Stanley's version of Andy Panda represents the more well-adjusted, socially connected and mild-mannered world of middle-class entitlement.

Andy and his bromance partner Charlie Chicken never seem to do without. They may tangle with gangsters, ghosts, mad scientists and homicidal maniacs, from time to time, but at the end of the day, the meat's on the table, there's a good book waiting by the big ol' overstuffed armchair, and there's a nice double-feature showing at the movie theatre right down the block.

Thus, Andy and Charlie are excellent foils for the unexpected shortages of The Good Life that seem to have plagued middle-class 1947 America. Much comedy is mined, in this New Funnies period, from food, housing and clothing shortages.

Stanley obviously saw great humor in this situation. Innocent foils, dreaming of a new suit, a warm apartment, or steak "with all the trimmin's" would find none of these creature comforts. A businessman set to make an important speech has only a gaudy Hawaiian shirt to wear; men grow elderly on waiting lists for a new sedan; an ambulance nervously delivers grade-D meat cuts to a frenzied, clawing public.

There are echoes of Milt Gross' Count Screwloose in such Stanley stories, but with a post-war edge. No longer is it an easy life in America. Butchers rent out their meat hooks for pay-by-the-hour hat and coat storage, and watch flies die of starvation on their dusty cutting blocks. The suffrage of the war still lingers to decade's end.

Andy and Charlie are driven to hunt for meat, beginning with a sublime moment:

Their hunting attempts result in the possible injury of a bridle horse, the annoyance of a bear, physical harm to Charlie and, finally, to a rabbit. Our heroes can't bring themselves to consume this accidentally-caught game, and rush it to a vet's operating room.

The rabbit lives, and, with promises to send the recovering bunny "fruit and flowers every day," the pair returns home to the likely dinner of many an average joe, 1947 model:

In an eerie parallel to the earlier "Woody" story, this final panel shows both resignation and contentment, as the protagonist fixes a meal that is far below their initial expectation.

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Even when there's a warm home to sleep in, and food on the table, Stanley's borrowed protagonists still face trauma every time they leave their homes. In this same issue of New Funnies, housemates Oswald Rabbit and Toby Bear fall afoul of a publicity agent's wet dream.

As often happens to Stanley's Oswald and Toby, the threat is sexual in nature. Toby's obsession with wispy, anemic Hollywood starlet Sally Simper causes social embarassment--and aggressive female response--for the easy-going hare.

In a series of events that recalls the screwball build-ups of Preston Sturges, asexual Oswald, via a series of insinuating newspaper articles, becomes the object of lust for crazed bobby-soxers, while Toby passively tries to get in on the action:

In Sturges' fashion, every effort expended by Oswald to right the misunderstanding worsens the situation. In disguise as a rheumatic oldster, Oswald becomes the sexual prey of the blue-haired set:

The story ends with the hero's retreat to a dark, dusty place, in the hope that the episode will just fizzle out.

Toby brings the topic of food into the story's last panel... thank you, Toby, for doing so. Now all three stories are tied in a Gordian knot of post-war anxiety. That knot would eventually be cut in the youth revolution of the 1960s, in which now-adult age former New Funnies readers would break the veil of anxiety with a libertine pursuit of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll.

With such profound messages of despair and tension in their childhood mass-media, is it any wonder that these grown readers would choose any avenue of escape? I don't know whether to curse John Stanley or thank him. He, and many other producers of post-was mass media, laid the path brick by brick, panel by panel, page by page.