Before I start today's post: a humble note of thanks to the folks who made thoughtful and immensely helpful donations to this blog, as we faced our darkest hour. I couldn't have made it without your help.
I'm happy to report that the worst appears to be over, and that a light is visible at the end of the tunnel--an opening not too far away.
Thank you so very much. I feel like celebrating, so here's another mega-long post: 36 pages of wall-to-wall comix!
<><><>The debut issue of
Tubby has an undeserved bad rep in certain corners of Comixville.
For those of us who treasure the subconscious, darker-hued realms of Stanleyland, "Captain Yo-Yo" is a major moment in John Stanley's career.
It was, by far, the most unusual story Stanley had written, with the "Lulu" universe, that had been published. ("The Bogeyman," slated for a 1950 issue of
Lulu, but cut due to its intensely nightmarish themes and narrative, would take top honors, had Dell been gutsy enough to publish it.)
The bulk of Stanley's
Little Lulu stories have their feet firmly planted on the ground of comix reality. We could exist in this world. (It would be fascinating to see how any of us would be drawn by Irving Tripp.)
Stanley segregated fantasy themes to a regular series of fairy-tales, usually related by Lulu to bratty Ritalin poster-child Alvin.*** [see post-script below]
In these stories, Stanley let his imagination--and his dark side--run rampant. Chaotic, troubling events fill these stories. It's acceptable because these images and narratives come from Lulu's mind, as she improvises these little masterpieces to her largely unappreciative, usually captive audience of one.
Stanley had an affinity for themes of fantasy, horror, science-fiction and the macabre. One-shot stories such as the Andy Panda tale "The Mighty Mites" and the Oswald Rabbit "last flower"/"don't laugh" story (both found elsewhere on this blog) are truly fantastic stories that take place in comix "reality."
Lulu might daydream wild stories, and Tubby might exaggerate the truth in his ego-maniacal braggadocio, but the majority of Stanley's writing for
Little Lulu wisely stayed put on a recognizable workaday world.
Tubby represented a clean break from the strictures of the Lulu universe. For one thing, Lulu is never seen in Tub's book.
This sprang from the need for separate "Tubby" stories, sans Lulu, in her monthly title, to qualify for bulk postage under the post office's requirements that periodicals have more than one feature per issue. (I'm greatly simplifying this information, but it's also the reason for those joyless text fillers in 1940s comic books--the ones that read like they were written at gunpoint, during a hostage situation.)
From the start, Stanley used
Tubby as a comix laboratory. He was clearly dedicated to the title. He did his first complete art-and-story comix since the late 1940s for issues 2 through 8 of the
Tubby book. Given his workload, it's significant that he was moved to do the finished artwork. (It helped that Tub's book was a quarterly for most of its run.)
Here, Irving Tripp, in his only appearance in
Tubby, does the book-length art. After Stanley stepped down as writer-artist, Lloyd White replaced him for the remainder of Stanley's time on the title.
White's artwork leaves me cold. He seems to have followed Stanley's layouts to the letter, but his rendering seems amateurish to me. The
Tubby stories were an improvement over his work on the Walter Lantz features in
New Funnies, circa 1946-8. His work looks flat and rough, and it fails to realize the possibilities of Stanley's writing.
It's great to see Tripp's crisp, precise work on this story. Now, without further adieu, here's "Captain Yo-Yo." Let's regroup after you've read this and ponder the many points of interest herein...
If you've read Stanley's "Peterkin Pottle" stories, you'll recognize "Captain Yo-Yo" as a chip off that old block. As Pottle is an alienating, unappealing character (seemingly on purpose), it's rewarding to see this tall tale formula applied to the more complex, likable Tubby Tompkins.
Tubby, at story's start, is ostracized by his friends. As one, they turn on him and, as often happens in Pottle's stories, take harsh, excessive action against him. Pages 3 through 5 of this story have an intense sense of despair.
Tub slowly but surely freaks out as the enormity of his dilemma takes hold. He's been abandoned by his so-called friends, and left to apparently starve on Pine Tree Island. (One assumes that the distance from island to shore is too far for an overweight kid to safely swim.)
Tubby retreats to a well-known sanctuary: his imagination. Here is where Tubby's character informs the story. Unlike Peterkin Pottle's fantasies (wish-fulfillments of blanket acceptance and admiration, which usually entail mass slaughter of animal and human life), Tubby's daydreams have a moral compass.
Of course, Tubby can down a thick crowd of cut-throats with a few sly extensions of his yo-yo. He holds himself in high regard. But even an ego-maniac has his limits. It's telling that he balks at the concept of being a for-real pirate. Although he clearly loves the colorful tone of adventure in the pirate genre, the idea of pillaging, looting and killing as a way of life doesn't appeal to him.
And why should they? Tubby's desire is to be rightfully recognized as the great, hip, talented, cucumber-cool player he fancies himself. As such, he need not tire himself out committing criminal acts. As the master of all he surveys, the riches of the world ought to be brought to him--on a silver platter.
"Captain Yo-Yo," like Lulu's fairy tales, succeeds as both a vigorous burlesque of genre cliches, and as a detailed reflection of the inner world of its teller. The broadness, while often hilarious, fits a kid's excited, breathless involvement in the here-and-how of a made-up story.
Stanley really gets into the spirit of the story. It's salted with some of the most vigorous, epic action of his writing career. Some of the battle scenes have a Jack Kirby-ish vibe to them--they're over-the-top and brimming with energy.
Stanley has great fun with the vocabulary of comix itself. Priceless are his heightened sound effects, particularly the "SPLASHES!" that accompanies the pirates' mass exodus. I don't think a sound effect has ever been pluralized anywhere else in comix, past or present. Please, someone out there, pluralize your SFX--keep this brilliant quirk alive!
The early issues of
Tubby are a fascinating anomaly in Stanley's career. These often book-length stories inhabit a nether reality, neither rooted in the recognizable everyday world of
Lulu, or in a stylized, obvious fantasy setting. These vivid, detailed yet spare pieces of storytelling reach an apotheosis in "The Guest In The Ghost Hotel" (the first Stanley story posted on this blog).
That story seamlessly blurs the boundaries of "reality" and "dream" in Stanley's comix world. "Captain Yo-Yo," though born of abandonment and desolation, is a rich slice of Tubby's inner fantasy world. Reading the story is, in effect, seeing the world through Tubby's eyes.
Irving Tripp's art is a revelation here. It's among the very few moments in his
Lulu tenure in which he gets to draw non-urban locales--and, at that, scenes of wild adventure. I particularly like his depictions of the sea. There is a genuine spark of life in his artwork here. It appears that he genuinely enjoyed drawing this unusual story.
The early
Tubbys gave Stanley a welcome break from the real-world confines of
Little Lulu. As such, they provided him with a welcome opportunity to rework the concepts of "Peterkin Pottle," and to wed these storytelling ideas to a genuinely rich and likable character.
As can be seen from other posts, here, of early
Tubby material, Stanley was also afforded a rare opportunity to draw his own stories. It's a pity that the book went to a multi-story humor format by issue #10.
Stanley never returned to this tall-tale genre again, outside of the monthly
Lulu fairy-tales. It was the comix' sad loss.
*** POST-SCRIPT: This, of course, fails to factor in the "little men from Mars" stories with Tubby. I'm not 100% convinced the little men aren't simply Tubby's wishful thinking, realized in some kind of waking dream. If they are, indeed, real in Tubby's fictive world, my theorizing is for naught.
