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.

Stolen Snacks, Balloon Boys and Hallucinations: the last Little Lulu one-shot, 1947

As has been evident for the last year-plus, this blog is winding down. I've said pretty much all I have to say on John Stanley, short of a larger study, such as a book.

But with no visible interest in the publication of a book on Stanley, this blog is the testament of my years of thought and detective work. Perhaps Michael Barrier's forthcoming study of the Oskar Lebeck-edited Dell Comics, Funnybooks, will change this apparent apathy. Time will tell.

To complete a series on this blog, here are the three stories that comprise the final one-shot Little Lulu comic book (#165 in the Dell Four Color series), with a publication date of October 1947.

This issue would be followed quickly by the first official bi-monthly edition of Marge's Little Lulu. That short launch time speaks to the popularity of the Lulu one-shots. Carl Barks (and other artists) did 25 Donald Duck one-shots before Dell committed to a regular numbered series, four years later.

The Disney character was, arguably, a more potent commercial property than Marge Buell's magazine cartoons, but the decisions of publishers, then as now, remain a mystery.

Team Lulu is in great shape throughout this last trial issue. Charles Hedinger provides finishes to Stanley's script/pencils. John Stanley's understanding of the character of Tubby comes into sharp focus in the first two stories. All that remains is the entrance of artist Irving Tripp to complete the winning formula.

Running on Sheer Chutzpah: Little Lulu Four-Color One-Shot 158, 1947

One thing I must finish on this blog, as it reaches its end, is the remarkable run by John Stanley, Charles Hedinger and others on the one-shot issues of Little Lulu that precede its regular run.

This is the only Lulu one-shot that I own, although my copy is nothing to brag about. It is one of the worst-printed 1940s comics I've ever seen. When colors aren't wretchedly out of register, the black lines are fuzzy, clogged with ink, and otherwise bear all the signs of the end of a print run.

Thank goodness, I'll spare you a look at my version--these are top-drawer scans done by some anonymous kind soul a few years ago.

Many of the scans I've shared here, over the years, have come from such sources. I feel that I've never properly thanked these folks for all their hard, painstaking work in making these rare old comics available for study, reading and sharing (as I have done here with you).

These early Little Lulus suffer terribly when seen in black and white, as I've said before. Their simple contour lines were meant to be filled with the flat pastels and blunt primary colors of 1947 comics. Western's self-printed titles had a color palette all their own. After 1948, they are consistently well-printed comics. From 1943 to '47, buyer beware! Unless you somehow score a copy from the start of a press run, chances are the Dell title of this era will be a blurry, mis-registered mess.

But enough of that. Let's get down to brass knuckles, er, tacks. I usually choose a percentage of the stories in each of these one-shots. This book is so consistently great that I've opted to share the whole thing here today.

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.

Comics Within Comics: John Stanley's Little Lulu Fairy Tale Meta-Stories

The hundreds of spontaneous fairy-tales that occur in John Stanley's Little Lulu offered their creator a constant, reliable escape route from formula.

These playful comics-within-comics were, themselves, among Stanley's successful recipes for writing a popular monthly comic magazine.

When the two stories presented here today first appeared in print, in two consecutive 1951 issues of Marge's Little Lulu, the title was among the best-selling newsstand publications in America. Stanley was in a position of great potential pressure. He created stories that children and adults read in equal measure, and on completely different planes of enjoyment.

The responsibility might have psyched out anyone who stopped to think about it. Most likely, John Stanley was simply too busy with the work to take stock of his position. Lulu, by dint of its high circulation, was potentially as influential a magazine as Life, Time or The Saturday Evening Post. As a comic book, it, by no means, stood to change public opinion, or address crucial modern issues, as did those slick magazines. But it was as widely read, and its readership depended on its creative team to deliver the goods, month in, month out.

For Safiyyah: A Pair of Nice, Long “Little Lulu” Stories from 1947 (via Four-Color one-shot 139)

I am occasionally made aware of younger readers of Stanley Stories. Recently, I got this nice e-mail from reader Safiyaah Khan:

As I’ve said before here, we take requests. I’m glad to offer two more vintage “Little Lulu” stories, from the seventh trial issue of the comic, prior to its becoming a regular book at the start of 1948. This issue’s lead story, the sublime “The Hooky Team,” was run here in this 2011 post. Here, for Safiyaah, are the other two stories.

Two Stories From The First Little Lulu Comic, 1945: Story and Art by John Stanley

John Stanley's early work on the one-shot issues of Little Lulu has been dealt a bad hand in reprints. Aside from the appearance of one Stanley-drawn "Lulu" in The Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics, none of these early stories--which amount to over 500 pages of story and art by Stanley--have been accurately reprinted.

Another Rainbow's Little Lulu Library (which was scanned for Dark Horse Comics' black and white Lulu books) opted to crudely trace most of the Stanley-drawn "Lulu" stories, as photostats for them did not exist. These cruddy tracings appeared in Sets I and II of the LLL, which had super-low print runs, and are not worth the big bucks they seem to fetch on the collector's market. They are a vile bastardization of John Stanley's work! (There, I've said it.)

Thus, the reading experience of this sizable chunk of all-Stanley comix is rendered pretty moot. Reading these doggedly traced re-creations is like watching a colorized movie--or a movie with hard-coded Greek subtitles. Technically, it's the movie, but it isn't. The reader is not fully immersed in the work because it's not all there.

The dull, lifeless lines of the tracings leave these rowdy, vigorous stories flat and depressing on the reprinted page.

Since most people (myself included!) cannot afford the original 1945-47 printings of these comics, I have decided to embark on a series of more accurate presentations of this maligned and extremely important John Stanley material.

To that end, here are two stories from the first Lulu "Four-Color" book, with some one-page gags added to the mix. It's nice to see these in color. They were not intended to be read in black-and-white. This, again, does a dis-service to Stanley's work.

Here, for starters, is the very first "Little Lulu" story, written and drawn by Mr. S.

The rowdiness and anarchy of the kids here is striking. This story is very much of a piece with Stanley's early "Tom and Jerry" stories from Our Gang Comics (many examples of which are elsewhere on this blog). The broad, violent physical comedy, the un-punctuated sentences in speech balloons, and the SFX (including a couple glorious YOWs) are strong Stanley "tells."

In fact, by using this artwork as a compass, I now believe that Stanley also did the finished art for at least a couple of the "Tom and Jerry" stories. This post contains a story from Our Gang #15 that seems like 100% Stanley cartooning to me. There are possible others from around this time.

The lettering, which is clearly Stanley's own, is another "tell." He was a superb letterer, and his SFX words have a uniquely vivid pen line.

Lulu is a far cry from the Voice Of Reason goddess she would soon become. She is a stubborn, ill-tempered trouble-maker who takes her own initiative, damn the outcome.

In contrast, Tubby seems meek and mild--although Stanley had already previewed the classic Tubby persona in his New Funnies work, he waited 'til the book's second story, "At the Beach" (reprinted in the Smithsonian tome, easily available at most public libraries) to endow Master Tompkins with the first of his cognitive bias-driven quirks.


The mother's obvious fear of the children, and of their unpredictable, destructive actions, is priceless here. Stanley includes some pantomime sequences within the story. He did scores of wordless gag pages for the Lulu comics, but it's rare to see a showy sequence such as the one on p. 5 of this piece.


This is not the classic "Lulu" world, but it is bracing, beautifully drawn and paced suburban slapstick. The precision of Stanley's cartooning, which often feels hurried, is striking here. All eyes were upon him in the creation of this first "Lulu" comic-book (including those of series creator Marge Buell), and Stanley delivered the goods in both art and story. I can't imagine that drawing those poorly-designed Buell characters over and over again was much fun.


Here are two pantomime gag pages.

The book's third and last story introduces Alvin, the true loose cannon in the Lulu-verse. He is quite different from the character of the best-known 1950s-era stories. Once more, kiddie anarchy rules--with the children unfazed in the eye of their own hurricane.

Yep, Alvin's a hellion--but, in this debut story, there are surprisingly real moments of child behavior. The sequence on p.2, in which Alvin just has to lick the striped barber-pole, and Lulu confesses that she, too, went through that rite of passage, is spot-on.

Again, the lackadaisical reaction of Lulu and Tubby to Alvin's anti-social antics (hey, there's a great comic-book title!) is as funny, if not funnier than, the carnage that ensues.

The story's opening sequence, with Lulu happily maiming her doll, is another example of how different Stanley's take on this character is at the series' outset. The Lulu of, say, 1951 would recoil in horror at the thought of giving one of her dolls the "Kojak" look! Yet this random behavior seems on-the-money and probable. That's why it works--it's not trying to be funny.

A special shout-out goes to the innovative coloring of these stories. Although the achievement of magazine-cartoon wash tones was out of the question for the cruddy four-color press, the Western Publications colorist did his/her best to approximate the look and feel on the funny-book page.

D'joo notice the dropping of the name "Gormley" in this story? Stanley must have been quite fond of cartoonist Dan Gormley in the 1940s. He and Walt Kelly both name-check their colleague in their comic-book work.

Gormley drew in many styles. Here's an example of his "straight" action style from 1941:

As a chaser, here are three more gag-pages from this first issue. Dig that sprightly yet tidy cartooning! The final two gags, which ran on the book's back cover, tie in nicely with their front component. Thoughtful touches such as these make Western's 1940s comics a cut above the rest.

Want to see more of these Stanley-drawn "Lulu" stories? Let me know!

In Loving Memory of Miss Mollydog: "A One Man Dog," from Little Lulu one-shot #131, 1947--story and art by John Stanley

A dear canine friend of mine passed away today. Molly was a delightful individual--a kind and quizzical dog who could pull the "soulful eyes" routine at the dinner table with the best of 'em. A cheerful being, Molly made the world brighter, just by being there. No dog was a more accurate catcher of snacks-in-transit than Miss Molly. A thrown tidbit never finished its arc of motion when she was in the room!

My profound condolences to Molly's "person," Paul Tumey. Molly had become a bit gray in the muzzle, but no one was expecting her to pass away anytime soon.

It's to her memory that today's story is dedicated. I didn't have to search far to find a great dog-themed John Stanley story. This early "Little Lulu" piece is also drawn by Stanley. It's only been available, in recent years, in a poorly traced black and white version, via the 1980s Little Lulu Library, and in Dark Horse Comics' pint-sized reprints of those volumes.

The printing on this comic leaves something to be desired--this was obviously an end-of-press-run copy. The metal plates were hammered by the time ink kissed paper and made this particular edition come to life.

But it's the story that counts. I hope this will prove a fitting memorial to one crazy-cool canine. Molly, you'll be missed by many people. Hope Dog Hevvin is exactly the way you like it!

I'm going to forego the typical story dissection today. Just a story--and a tribute.