Post-Mortem Post 010: The Art of Solid, "Simple" Storytelling: Little Lulu 109

Long time, no post-- Wait a minnit--this blog is supposed to be "dead!" Finito! Kaput! Yes and no. My major work is long done here on Stanley Stories, but I'm aware that it finds new readers every day. So hello, new reader(s)... Frank M. Young here. Remember that middle initial, folks. There's a lotta Frank Youngs in the world. Such a clunky name... you wouldn't think it was so darned popular!

Sometimes I'm asked to explain the appeal of John Stanley's work. It's better read than parsed out; the work speaks for itself. This is a question I've tried to answer here many times over many years. Marge's Little Lulu #109 was part of a recent comicon purchase. I didn't have the issue, and wasn't wild with joy at the acquisition. It's from the post-peak period of Stanley's work on the series. Many of the post-1955 issues are rather shrill and mechanical. One gets the sense that their creator approached each new issue, by this time, with a quietly grumbled, "Oh, jeez, what can I possibly do that I haven't done a million times?"

Ritual and repetition are part of John Stanley's fabric, and he was adept at sewing attractive new "outfits" for his characters from well-worn patterns. The lead story in this July, 1957 issue of Lulu manages a complex comedy of characters without really going anywhere. "Saturday's Child" sets the reader up for one of Stanley's comedic specialties--a trip to the beach with bratty, unruly Alvin and quixotic, self-obsessed Tubby.

Stanley did such a story in his first Lulu comic book in 1945. In 1957, the faithful reader of the series might have silently mouthed "oh, boy" while scanning page one of "Saturday's Child." Conflicts in the sun... hot dogs, balloons, chances to annoy other beach visitors. Arguments! Salt water! Alvin getting lost! The possibilities are endless.

Here, Stanley does a Seinfeld. "Saturday's Child" is a story about a trip that never happens. The three kids don't leave their block. And, unusual for this late in the run, they act like children. Read, and then we'll compare notes...

"Saturday's Child" is proof that John Stanley had some affection and connection with the "Lulu" cast. Using a few props (shovel, sandwich makings, cake) he fashions a comedy of character interactions that is funnier and more affecting than that trip to the beach might've been. 

Stanley allows his characters to absorb aspects of each other's persona. At the end of page one, Lulu is struck by greed when she hears Alvin's mother has sent along two dollars as pay for minding her br-- er, son. Those two bucks had buying power of almost 20 dollars by today's standards. Lulu becomes Tubby for one wonderful moment:

Before the trio leaves the house, their kitchen futzing contaminates a fresh-made chocolate cake. Fearful of repercussions, Lulu panics. For one moment, Tubby assumes Lulu's usual mantle as the voice of reason--although his solution is guaranteed to fail:

Alvin is immutable. He brings chaos to the table via his skewed worldview. He imagines that he's "buried" the two bucks under the Moppets' front doormat. He fails to mention his fantasy to Lulu, who ruins the front lawn digging for the money. The aftermath of that damage is a story untold; Stanley lets that hang in the reader's mind. 

In the kitchen, Alvin demonstrates his unusual cuisine choices--peanut butter and jelly with catsup suits him fine--and gets hung up on the phrase "human goat." Improv performers would deem this a "callback"--in this case, to a recent LL story "Two Foots is Feet," from issue #94 (and found in this ancient post here). 

"Human goat"--or "humin," in Alvin-speak--is the agent of ruin for the kids' beach adventure. Alvin never fares well with bus drivers, and after the three are 86'd from public transport, Mother Nature provides the final curtain on that sand 'n' sun shenanigan. Lulu, Tubby and Alvin spend four hours staring goggle-eyed at Western movies and choffing on random sandwiches. 

A good time is had by all, as Alvin reports in a breathless unspooling of the day's non-events:

This is what makes John Stanley's work appealing and important. His best comics stories are a master class in fiction writing. Nothing needs to happen-happen, if the characters, and their inter-relationships, are strong and well-wrought. The success of "Saturday's Child," among hundreds of other "Lulu" stories, hangs on the durability and reliability of the characters. 

By 1951, Stanley had Lulu, Alvin and Tubby set in stone. He knew them inside out, and could place them in any situation, in any combination, and get something out of it. His investment in creating believable personae for these three characters paid off : they wrote their own stories. Put them in a room with one object and their reactions and interactions will develop a narrative. Any fiction writer--comics, prose, cinema, theater-- can learn from Stanley's work. Sometimes all you need are sandwiches and a sidewalk.

Post-Mortem Post 009: The Sweetie Pie Conundrum

As I've studied the output of Western Publications, and tried to determine which of their published comic book stories are the work of John Stanley, I've had my doubts about several pieces. Most of them I've included, with my reservations noted, in the three-book, decade-specific bibliographies I have self-published, and which are available on amazon.com.

The gag cartoonist and animation creator Sam Henderson brought to my attention two issues from Dell Comics' one-shot series, known to collectors and historians as "Four Color Comics." The books were based, as were almost all the Four Colors, on a popular culture property. 

Nadine Seltzer's newspaper comic panel Sweetie Pie was one of several imitations of Hank Ketcham's popular Dennis the Menace, which debuted in 1951. Seltzer's feature was syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association, which offered its clients--mostly urban evening dailies and small-town papers--a package of comics, columns and features, which they were free to use as needed. The panel ran from 1954 to 1967, but is rarely found in client newspapers which seemed to use most, or all, of the NEA allotment.

Drawn with an attempt to achieve the elided elegance of Ketcham's cartooning, Sweetie Pie suffered from the main flaw of its inspiration source: a grating main character and a general mood of anger and violence. None of these brat-kid strips from the 1950s have aged well. Seltzer's derivative strip was popular enough in its day to be twice collected in paperback books, and twice in original comic book series.

The Ajax-Farrell imprint, best known for its nightmarish, bizarre horror titles, edited by the enigmatic Ruth Roche, released two all-original Sweetie Pie comic books in 1955 and '56. They were clearly based on the Dennis the Menace comic books published by Standard/Pines, which began in 1953. 

The two paperback collections were published in 1955 and 1957, concurrent with the Ajax-Farrell comic books. Four-ish years later, with the panel cartoon among the lower ranks of syndicated comics, Dell's pair of Sweetie Pies saw print. The first issue, #1185, has a publication date of May-July 1961. The follow-up, #1241, has a November 1961/January 1962 date. 

These two books coincide with John Stanley's last few Nancy and Sluggo comics for Dell. Like those comics, the Sweetie Pies were drawn by Dan Gormley, in a style not far from his take on Ernie Bushmiller's Nancy. The stories feel like John Stanley's work, with elements of his Nancy and later Little Lulu stories. Yet there's something off about them. If they're Stanley's work, they are diluted, sedated stuff. They're quieter than Stanley's work of the period, which was given to much flailing of arms, shouting and dashing about.

Stanley's comics got louder from 1956 on, with characters using their outdoor voices at top volume. From Marge's Little Lulu #101, 1956:

And, more appropriate to this post, a sample page from the first issue of Around the Block with Dunc 'n Loo, which saw print around the time of the first Sweetie Pie:

There is some variance in volume in the following stories--and other touches familiar to Stanley's 1950s and early '60s work. Here is a selection of stories from the two Dell Sweetie Pie comics. See what you think:

"Clothes Make the Dummy" uses a story gimmick John Stanley made hay with in two stories--a long narrative from Henry Aldrich #4 and a short piece from Marge's Little Lulu #11, 1949.

Its mistaken-identity angle--with the disguised dressmaker's dummy confused with "Shiek Aboo from Abool-Bool"--is in line with the sitcom frolics of Dunc 'n' Loo or Kookie, two original Stanley series from this period.

Sweetie Pie and Lester are almost interchangable with Nancy and Sluggo, or a blander version of Little Lulu and Tubby. Sweetie Pie is something like the earliest Stanley version of Lulu--a mischief-maker and know-it-all. As those qualities rubbed off on the Tubby character, by 1949, Stanley made Lulu a fully recognizable and more complex being.

Like some of Stanley's lesser 1950s jobs, the story feels more-or-less like the man's work, but lacks the fire and wit that informs his best material.

Two stories from the second Sweetie Pie continue this vibe.

"Pitcher's Plight" could be the work of the late Jack Mendelsohn, whose wit and fondness for wordplay complements John Stanley's. That's just a wild guess. Its theme of a character fixated on one trait or profession, to the befuddlement (and endangerment) of others, is a plot device Stanley used many times in his career. The story is amusing, but something doesn't gel.

"The Eyes Have It" is more in line with Stanley's work of this period in its use of a brassy, oversized adversary-- the Terrible Thwarter/Obstacle persona that I discuss in this 2009 essay. In both stories, the character of Sweetie Pie sits between Stanley's Lulu and Nancy. She is more a mischief-maker than post-1948 Lulu and has the blunt unlikability of his Nancy. She's an improvement on Seltzer's one-note mayhem tot. If this isn't Stanley's work, it's someone who followed his lead, and took a licensed property, threw out 95% of the character's shtick and reimagined the entity and its world.

Panels such as these two, taken from other stories, would cause a casual reader to think "John Stanley:"

These two books could be the work of another writer doing their best impression of John Stanley, or Stanley at a lower ebb, trying to make a living in a business that would soon chew him up and spit him out. In either case, the pair of Sweetie Pies are a small conundrum stuck in an obscure corner of comic book history.

Post-Mortem Post 008: New Stanley Material Discovered--Oswald the Rabbit Four Color 39, 1944

In all my years of research, I somehow overlooked this early 1944 one-shot, which is now important as containing John Stanley's first two long-form stories. This is a terrible quality scan, suitable for reading, but that's about it.

With beautiful cartooning by Lloyd White, the pun-filled main story, "Easterland," is a larval early effort, but full of Stanley tells, such as slurred language/slang, dubious authority figures, quietly absurd humor (the plight of the elderly rabbit at story's start; the out-of-control jelly bean factory and its buried inventor; the little piece of hard candy that imitates train whistles, etc.)

Stanley would include similar stories in his much-loved Little Lulu series, from 1946 on, as told by Lulu to her hellion-brat neighbor, Alvin. With this, Stanley's first fairy-tale, we see the glimmers of a street-smart, reactive retreat from the sugary tendencies of the fairy story. His humor throws a cold bucket of water on the genre, as did Tex Avery's cartoons such as Red Hot Riding Hood, Cinderella Meets Fella and A Bear's Tale.

Here is the whole issue. I will need to revise my 1940s comicography book now! I knew this would happen someday...

Easterland...