Book Edition of the 1960s John Stanley Bibliography is out!

THIS LINK will take you to the CreateSpace store page for this 112-page full color updated edition of the 1960s John Stanley Bibliography. In a few days, it will be available on Amazon, and I'll append this post to include that link.

This print edition, in an 8 x 10 trade paperback, is full color, and features a special 24-page section of stories written by Stanley and illustrated by his greatest collaborator, Bill Williams.

Any of these three books will make a superb holiday gift for the comics fan in your life. Please consider purchasing one or all of these books. Thank you!

"Homer"-- A Fascinating Forecast of John Stanley's 1960s Work, One Decade Early

I have posted examples of John Stanley's work on the early 1950s series Henry Aldrich here in the past.

As time has gone by, my study of this series' early issues has gradually revealed much more of Stanley's input than I first realized.

Stanley wrote the entirety of the first two issues of Henry, skipped the third, and returned with the fourth. The skipped third issue threw me off for a few years. I finally sat down and carefully read these comics.

To my pleasant surprise, Stanley's work appears through at least the 11th issue. I'm still going over the last half of the 22-issue run.

These stories, which are often quite long and detailed, are a fascinating precursor of Stanley's 1960s work on the series Dunc 'n Loo (also with Bill Williams) and 13 Going on 18. They show that these concepts did not appear out of the blue, for their creator, in the early 1960s.

The dawn of the 1950s saw an uneasy transition in John Stanley's writing. He repressed, consciously or not, the wilder extremes of his comedic sensibility. The frantic, everywhere-at-once affect of his 1940s work was suddenly muted.

John Stanley's World, Pt. VII: Stanley's Status-Seekers

In my ongoing study of John Stanley's work in comics, I explore various Dell Comics publications, more or less at random. My hope is to find undiscovered Stanley work. Most of the time I come up empty-handed, and slightly depressed at the badness of the material I've scrutinized.

Stanley's 1940s work is easy to spot. At this time, his narrative and comedic tendencies still in development, Stanley's writing stands out from that of Walt Kelly, Frank Thomas, Gaylord DuBois and others in editor Oskar Lebeck's stable. (More about this talented group at the end of this essay...)

The 1950s saw the rise of a group of creators who, either by editorial command or from their own admiration, assimilated the surface quirks of Stanley's writing style. Dick Hall, Frank Thomas and various other creators saw a successful thing and did their best to meet it. Thus, '50s Western Printing-created comics (published by Dell) abound with stories that, upon a casual reading, might seem to be Stanley's work.

The superficial trappings are there: broad, brassy SFX, the use of "Yow!" and other Stanley-associated phrases, aggressive physical action and frenzied comedic finales. The affect is almost convincing, but that extra level of depth--the quality that distinguishes Stanley's work in comics--just isn't there.

The "Stanleyisms" I've written about are a sure thing when looking at his work of the 1940s and 1960s. In the '50s material, with so many homages by Stanley's peers, it is the quality of the characters that makes the difference. In particular, it is the central figure in all of Stanley's work--the character he takes the most interest in, and subjects to his wildest whims as a storyteller.

I've called this figure the "Tubby Type" here before. As Stanley's interpretation of the Tubby Tompkins character, from Little Lulu, is the richest, most well-rounded figure in his 30 years of comics creation, that's an apt title. Yet it's also limiting. Stanley's outsider figures embrace a dramatic and emotional range that goes beyond the boundaries of the child figure, Tubby.

At the risk of getting sneers and chuckles, I've named this figure the Aggressive or Alienated Status Seeker. Yes, I know what the acronym for this is--and I intend to use it throughout this essay!

The, er, ASS is the most vivid figure in any John Stanley story. He/she/it is the voltage that powers his narratives. This character was not Stanley's creation. It goes back to the earliest traditions of comedy, from at least the commedia dell'arte trend of 16th-century Italy. (I'm not well-read on Greek or Roman theater, and it's possible there are such figures in those traditions as well.)

This figure is not just a gadfly. The ASS needs very badly to belong to the world around them. That world doesn't necessarily want them among its numbers. Not having societal acceptance goads these figures to take desperate measures--always at the expense of their well-being and dignity.

Silent American cinema is full of comedic ASSes: Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Langdon, Fields, Linder, Laurel and Hardy... Some comedians (W. C. Fields in particular) refined this figure and successfully translated them to talking pictures. Laurel and Hardy's characters became more domesticated in the sound era, but still displayed traits of the comedic outsider from time to time.

The 1930s brought a contrasting, more anarchic figure to American comedy: the screwball. This figure is a trouble-maker, a threat to society, and a trampler of affectations and conventions. The screwball is here to stay in American comedy. The Marx Brothers, Wheeler and Woolsey, The Three Stooges, Martin and Lewis, Sarah Silverman, et al, have no high stakes in mind. They enter a stock societal set-up, bungle and bicker their way into chaos, annoy and aggravate the high-status characters, take a look at the debris they've created, and scram.

These figures don't give a damn whether the world loves them or hates them. Depression-era audiences took to the screwball character, and it has remained in the trick bag of American comedy. Successively worse, more abrasive corruptions of this figure abound in network TV sitcoms and mainstream movies.

In its finest manifestation--the Warner Brothers cartoon character Bugs Bunny--the screwball is capable of depth, stakes and likablity. It takes a sure hand and a sound wit to make a Bugs Bunny work. Many have tried--and failed--to create such figures, especially in the American comic book.

This was John Stanley's first task, as a professional comics writer--to adapt screwball animated cartoon characters for Western titles such as New Funnies and Our Gang Comics. By the end of 1943, his first year as a comics writer, Stanley had assigned narrative depth to these flyweight figures.

His first notable screwballs are Charlie Chicken, in the "Andy Panda" short stories (visually based on a nameless character in the 1943 animated short, Meatless Thursday) and the diaper-wearing Tuffy Mouse in the "Tom and Jerry" series.

With the assignation of Marge's Little Lulu in 1945, Stanley again took screwball licensed characters and gradually imbued them with very real, and human, stakes and needs. By the end of the 1940s, Stanley had this down cold. With seemingly casual effort, Stanley spun hundreds of stories around the concepts of status (and its lack thereof).

Stanley understood that, for his stories to succeed, the reader had to care about the characters--even the gadflies in his cast needed something of value.

Thus, by 1948, his Little Lulu was no longer the cipher/imp of the Marge Buell gag cartoons (or the Famous Studios animated films, which had, by this time, ceased production). She was a reasoning, intelligent, aware being--able to see her place in the world and how to best protect it.

Stanley's Lulu, from the end of the 1940s on, understands the dichotomy of her life. She is a child, and is essentially powerless in the adult world. But within her sub-society of other kids, she is a leader, a figure of reason and wisdom. Mischief gets the better of her, on occasion, but there is always a reason for her behavior. She is not willfully malevolent.

Stanley gave his young readers a heroic figure in Lulu Moppet. She is in charge of her destiny (within the severe boundaries of suburban childhood) and cognizant of her peers' behavior. She makes a strong attempt to encourage her friends to do the right thing--even when the right thing ticks off adults and authority figures.

Famous' Lulu is much more passive than Stanley's refinement. She causes mayhem (sublimely, in the 1946 short Bargain Counter-Attack), but is deceptively gentle. Their writers were on the verge of finding a character similar to Stanley's version (which developed simultaneously in the ongoing Dell one-shot comics of 1945-47) when the series ended.

I don't know if John Stanley saw the Famous cartoons, or was even aware of them. It is fascinating that, at the same time, two creative teams worked at adapting the same licensed character, under more or less the same circumstances, and in the same place (general New York City area) and came up with such different interpretations.

Stanley's Lulu is never passive. Even in her first, tentative stories (among the most popular posts on this blog), she is forthright. Less aggressive than the Marge Buell original, Stanley's Lulu, in her pre-1948 stories, still conjures mischief and chaos for the adults in her life, but is never vicious or malicious. Her mis-steps are based on what little she understands of the world around her, and of her best attempts to cope with the great unknown that lies outside her house.

A hero needs a foil, and Stanley found his ideal in the character of Tubby Tompkins. In the Buell cartoons, Tubby contributes little; he's just window-dressing. Famous Studios' writers made an attempt to better integrate Tubby (sometimes called Fatso in the animated version) with Lulu--to play them off each other. But no one recognized the rich, innate chemistry between these two opposites until John Stanley connected the dots, circa 1949.

Stanley obviously is more fond of Tubby than of Lulu. Lulu is the necessity of the series--it's got her name, and she is the focus of every story. But the stories come alive when Tubby enters the scene. Lulu is a charming, in-depth character--neither a Pollyanna or an imp. Her stability and intelligence adds much to the stories. But without Tubby, Stanley's Little Lulu would lack its spark, stakes and significance.

Stanley attempted to fashion Ernie Bushmiller's Sluggo into a Tubby II, in his run on the post-Lulu Nancy and Sluggo title. Sluggo is too low-status to want anything better than what he's got. A passive figure, Sluggo stoically accepts his fate. He's a fascinating example of Stanley's low-end status character.

Stanley's second-best ASS (in a dead-heat tie with Woody Woodpecker) is Loo, from the eight-issue teen-slanted series Dunc 'n Loo. Gangly, graceless and guileless, Loo wants desperately to be respected and liked. He's less in-control than Tubby--chalk it up to those teen hormones!--and thus his falls from grace are harder and brasher.

To see a Stanley ASS in action, flailing for dignity in a world that will grant him none, here is a tossed salad of selections from the fourth and sixth issues of Dunc 'n Loo.

Drawn + Quarterly will reprint these, in time, in much better-quality scans than what I humbly offer here today:

"Dress Affair" takes place in an exclusive French restaurant--dangerous ground in Stanley's comedic world. Though Loo's more suave foil, Dunc, shares in the social humiliation of this story, Loo pushes himself farther outside his accepted limits than his world would like.

Although the Nat Hiken-esque antics of "Dress Affair"'s last half do amuse, it's the mockery and hostility shown Loo, in the first four pages, than hit their mark most fully. Loo is determined to be seen by his peers and neighbors as, at least, an equal of his buddy Dunc. His spray-can "cologne" and Jerry Lewis-ish "Ivy League suit" bring on catcalls and put-downs from everyone he encounters.

Once Dunc and Loo enter the no-man's-zone of "Le Chien Cher," the mockery of Loo vanishes from the story. It's a curious switch, and perhaps Stanley felt he was laying it on too thick for his anti-hero. The aggressive sitcom of the story's last half is an abrupt swerve away from Loo--although he has the last word, in one of Stanley's classic double-barrel endings.

"Readin' & Riotin'," from issue 6, shows a far harsher world in which Loo's only saving grace is his literacy. This barely exempts him from an avalanche of cartoon violence...

Stanley seems to have crossed an editorial trip-wire in this story. Notice that his Mickey Mouse parody was re-named after the story was finished. Each "Maxie" is crudely and hastily lettered. I'd love to know what the original spoof-name was--but it worried Dell editor (and Stanley adversary) L. B. Cole.

Stanley slips in some wry satire of the marketing of licensed characters that was rife, even in 1962. Strongboy Stoop's line on p.2, panel 4 is among Stanley's most sublime moments as a writer.

Loo is used and abused throughout this story. Though the violence is so extreme and cartoonish that even the characters don't seem to mind (as opposed to the all-too-real, usually implied violence in Stanley's Little Lulu), Loo bears much of its brunt.

He isn't seeking higher status in "Readin' & Riotin'," but he is on tenuous ground. Sid's soda shop is a touchy place for him. He and Sid are on dicey terms, at best, and subject to change for the worse at the whims of the risible merchant. Aggression and oppression zoom around Loo in this story. Only by his ability to read out loud to others is he spared the worst in Stanley's violent world.

"Tough Customer," also from issue 6, shows Loo's cheerful desperation to make good and find respect. Because he's a bit of a wise-ASS, and knows it, Loo brings on more woe to himself than he might otherwise receive. 

Loo's punishment in "Tough Customer" is earned. Perhaps he jinxes himself by trying to out-aggress the superior aggressors he sees around him. His lack of expertise in being an alpha-dog sends him, literally, to the dogs. We are spared the episodes of stomach distress that surely follow those familiar words, "The End..."

Loo is a dress-rehearsal for Stanley's most poignant ASS character, Val, in his late masterwork Thirteen Going on Eighteen. Both characters frantically strive to transcend the status-card fate has dealt them. Both bring acres of stress and abuse upon themselves because they want more than they've been given. Stanley's core message seems to be that old country maxim:

Don't get above your raisin'!

Predestination drives his characters, and their struggles to change the game are a consistent agent in John Stanley's comedy, from the start to the finish of his long comics career.

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Michael Barrier recently made a fascinating post on his blog, revealing some of the fruits of his ongoing research on Oskar Lebeck and his editorial tenure at Western/Dell. Today's starter picture is borrowed, with kind thanks, from this must-read post. I look forward to Barrier's book, to say the least...

John Stanley's World, pt. IV: Stanley's Soundscape

John Stanley's World:

Stanley's Soundscape

Comics, as a bridge between the written word and the moving picture, extensively utilize the former (as a necessity) and constantly suggest the latter. Although a silent medium, the comic strip or book has continued to compete with movies and TV, and hold its own.

This has been dependent on the developing vocabulary of onomatopoeia. Every WHOOSH, WHAM, SLAM and THUD (and their myriad variants) suggest the presence of sound, and abet the illusion of movement, in these fixed, mute boxes. They became a camp cliche in the 1960s, thanks to Marvel Comics' excessive, florid use of them, and via the network TV series Batman, which played up their cornball obviousness for comedic effect.

Even in 2010, when a newspaper (remember them?) runs a piece on comics, even if its subject is the most modern trends in non-mainstream material, chances are its unimaginative editor will have slapped a WHAM! or ZAP! into the headline. Onomatopoeia is a bedrock of the comics form. To many creators, it has been a necessary evil, to be used despite itself, or as a lazy way out of depicting complex scenes of action or destruction. (You could assemble a fat anthology of the off-panel CRUNCHes, BOOMs and TH-WACK!s that have occurred throughout the comic book's history.)

Others, among them John Stanley, embraced this sub-language of comics and brought it to the forefront in a vibrant and creative way.

Onomatopoeia was long a staple of newspaper comics. By the 1930s (the peak era of the continuity strip in American newspaper), several cartoonists made dramatic and highly visual usage of sound effects in their work. Roy Crane, Harold Gray, V. T. Hamlin, Chester Gould and Dick Moores come immediately to mind.

The concept of sound effects as a decorative, attention-getting element in the comics was clearly fixed before 1930, but these and other artists brought them to the fore and made them a component in the design of their panels, etc.

In the 1940s, comic books' use of onomatopoeia was all over the map. I've chosen three examples from 1940-44 comic magazines to show the spectrum of styles.

Some creators opted out of sound effects, as in this excerpt from the "Superman" story in Action Comics #27, 1940:

The absolute lack of SFX from these scenes of bending metal and ripping wood seems rather eerie. Author Jerry Siegel seldom used onomatopoeia. His stories tend to have a solemn feeling for their absence.

This panel, from Mystery Men Comics #7 (1940) shows the most common usage of sound effects in comic books. This is what the average person thinks all comic books are like:

Some early comic book creators made creative use of onomatopoeia--Will Eisner, Sheldon Mayer, Joe Simon & Jack Kirby, Dick Briefer and, most significantly, Jack Cole. Cole reveled in sound effects, and made them a vital part of his narrative and visual landscape. Typical of his mid-1940s use of onomatopoeia is this page from Plastic Man #2, 1944:

Cole's use of sound effects as a visual element would become more baroque in the late 1940s. (You can read a truckload of Jack Cole stories--and intelligent commentaries on them--at Paul Tumey's fine blog Cole's Comics. Paul, in fact, suggested the topic of this essay. Thanks, Paul!)

Onomatopoeia was warmly embraced at Western Publications (creator and packager of Dell's popular comics line). Its three major "star" artist-writers -- Walt Kelly, Carl Barks and John Stanley -- leaned on them extensively in their earliest stories.

Most conservative in his use of onomatopoeia was Carl Barks. Here's a chosen-at-random page from a 1944 "Donald Duck" story (Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #48). The two instances of SFX are vibrant but measured. They're here to serve the story--not to call attention to themselves.

Onomatopoeia was to Walt Kelly what a wallow is to a hog. Kelly used its devices as a kind of music, in concert with the florid, playful dialogue (and dialect) of his archly comedic characters. Here's a robust example from Animal Comics #9, also 1944:

Each BOO RAWP, OOP, ULP and CLANK are exultant to Kelly. Kelly's onomatopoeiac joy seems to have made a strong impression on John Stanley, as he began his comic book career.

From his first comics story...

to his last...

onomatopoeia, volume variance and SFX presentation are an essential part of John Stanley's comedic universe. How Stanley used onomatopoeia tells a story of its own, throughout his almost 30-year career in the American comic book.

Stanley's personal contributions to the language of comics include the following:

 ZAZ (and its cousin, WHAZ)

this effect was used in the late 1940s, then abandoned until the late 1950s. ZAZ becomes one of Stanley's major onomatopoeia choices in his 1960s efforts.

CHOFF (and its derivative, CHOMPF)

 Stanley used CHOFF through-out his career. It's associated with Tubby Tompkins in Little Lulu, but all of Stanley's characters (those who ate greedily or for a comedic or stakes-raising purpose) choffed or chompfed their way through their comestibles. (Choff is used as a verb, at least once, by Stanley; see for yourself HERE.)

KRAAAKL (in various spellings and configurations):

Most often used in Stanley's Little Lulu and Tubby stories, this sound effect connotes either gluttony or a sort of autism associated with liquid consumption. As seen in this example from Dunc 'n Loo, it often has an annoying effect on its target.

It may surprise readers to learn that YOW is not a Stanley creation. Stanley certainly made it his own. There are many YOWs in comic books, comic strips and animated cartoons before Stanley's first usage (as the derivative YOWEECH) in his first comic book story, which you can read HERE.

One could wallpaper a room with all Stanley's uses of YOW, throughout his comics career. It's his one-size-fits-all exclamation. It can connote:

FEAR

SURPRISE or SHOCK

ANGER

PAIN

JOY or EXCITEMENT

YOW is the mantra of the John Stanley character. It is all things to all people, animals or supernatural creatures.

YOW is not an automatic guarantee of John Stanley authorship--especially in post-1950 Dell comics. As I've discussed here before, Stanley's writing 'tics' were often adopted by less creative writers who also worked for Western Publications.

One Western staffer, Dick Hall, was greatly influenced by John Stanley's approach to comics. Hall was among the creators who took over Stanley's berth in Walter Lantz New Funnies in 1948.

According to the research of comics historian Alberto Becattini, Hall (who, I think, wrote his own material) had previously done the first two Woody Woodpecker one-shots, published in late 1947 and early '48. He also did some Stanley-esque stories, featuring the Lantz characters, for the March of Comics giveaway series produced by Western.

Hall deserves some props as a comics creator. Like Stanley, he was a journeyman. He worked for Lev Gleason, Hillman and, later, Gold Key. He fashioned a distinctive style, based on Stanley's work, and continued to write decent material into the 1950s. I'll do a separate post on Hall someday soon.

As Hall and others demonstrate, the affect of Stanley was imitable, but the soul and substance of his writing were not. Others could simulate Stanley's visual-verbal cues (YOW and such), approximate the frenzy of physical action and energy seen in Stanley's work, and still come up short.

That Stanley's vision was innately commercial is borne out by the influence his style had on Western in the 1950s. Until 1957 or so, when Stanley's writing and approach began to shift into a brassier, bolder mode, a superficial simulacrum of his comics style occurs constantly in the East Coast-produced Dell titles.

Another tic of Stanley's, used by all cartoonists, past, present and future, is his "Ha! Ha! Ha!" The way Stanley uses this device--to connote scorn, disapproval, social humiliation or triumphal revenge--distinguishes itself in his work.

John Stanley was among the few comics creators to combine creative onomatopoeia with a suggestion of volume, tone of voice and atmosphere. While this trend is seen throughout his career, it moves to the forefront--with a series of refinements--beginning in 1955.

Stanley's 1940s funny-animal work often affects a brassy, strident tone, as seen in this 1947 "Oswald Rabbit" page from Four-Color #143:

We see four distinct levels of voice tone on this page--from normal speech to ecstatic shriek. Combined with frantic physical action, this page is analogous to a scene from a Preston Sturges movie. These are loud comics.

Stanley tamped down these tendencies, on occasion, as the creator of Little Lulu. For stretches of his earlier Lulu stories, there are three voice-tones: normal speech, emphasis speech and emotional exclamations. All three tones are seen on this page, picked at random:

The overall feel is similar to Harold Gray's Little Orphan Annie of the late 1920s and early '30s. The volume is mostly "indoor voice," but outbursts are allowed for dramatic effect or narrative emphasis.

Stanley was inconsistent with his self-imposed rules. Even in the "quiet" period of Lulu, there are outbursts of hooliganism. Here are two examples, from Lulu #14 and 24, published in 1949 and 1950:

These pages are typical of Stanley's work, throughout his career. He never lost his fondness for aggressive shifts in volume, or for making his onomatopoeia jump off the page. That said, outbursts like this are less common in the Lulu of 1948-53 than elsewhere in Stanley's comics career.

The less flamboyant Lulu grounded Stanley as a writer--and provided his breakthrough to mass-market popularity.

The dialed-down tone of Little Lulu allowed Stanley to, for the first time, truly inhabit the skin and bones of his characters. He had written compelling character-studies before Lulu, most notably in his "Woody Woodpecker" stories of 1944-47. With Lulu, Stanley learned creative discipline. He had to. He was in charge of a major licensed property, and entrusted by the character's creator to do the right thing.

Boiled down, by 1949, into a series of bullet-proof story formulas, Stanley's Little Lulu rivals George Herriman's Krazy Kat and Chuck Jones' Road Runner animated cartoons as an exquisite expression of endless variations on a set of rigid themes.

Although this approach is more often borne of cynicism and mass-production, it can bear great riches in the right hands. Stanley used repetition of themes and incidents to solidify and deepen his characters. Thus, they felt real to millions of faithful readers.

Such discipline was not easily sustained. In his side-projects of the '50s, such as Krazy Kat and his eight-issue run as artist-writer of Tubby, Stanley let his wilder, looser sensibilities run rampant.

Compare these August, 1951 pages from KK #2 and  LL #34 :

Although the events in the LL page are far freakier than those on the KK, the difference in their energy is striking.

Both are recognizable as Stanley's work. It becomes clear that the characters themselves dictate the energy of the work. The usually unflappable Lulu chills out everything around her.

Stanley's antic re-imagining of Herriman's Kokonino Krew gave him a runway for his humor's inherent frenzy. Characters are physically and emotionally affected by their surroundings, and by the actions of others. Though the stakes are far higher for Lulu (becoming a "cute ghost"), Krazy's burrow into Offisa Pupp's living room is treated as a much bigger event--with more movement and noise.

As Stanley increasingly relaxed into Little Lulu in the 1950s, more of his true nature rises to the surface. The eight issues of Tubby he wrote and drew seemed to revitalize him. After 1954, the dry, tight tone finally leaves Lulu. Stanley's truly masterful comics period begins.

Harbingers of this mature style could be seen here and there. Here's another comparison of two contemporary pages--one from the fourth Tubby, the other from Little Lulu #58--both with April, 1953 publication dates.

These 1953 pages are more energetically matched. Stanley's artwork, on the first page, teems with energy. Irv Tripp's page, below, doesn't. But the events of the pages, and the reactions of the characters--and the variance of volume tones--are quite close.

The Lulu page is, in fact, louder than the Tubby. This is the template for the general intensity-level of Stanley's mature period. The mature Stanley has enormous range--from a whisper to a tsunami. The range isn't as extreme in either of these 1953 pages, but it's markedly different from the diffident approach of the 1951 Lulu page.

This '53 page has another career-spanning Stanley sound signifier: the placement of a sound effect in a speech balloon. Stanley used this affect often in the first two years of his comics career, and then soft-pedaled it for a few years. It is fairly common in his '50s material--most significantly in his eight self-drawn issues of Tubby.

Here's an example from Stanley's second "Andy Panda" story, published in 1943:

In the early 1960s, Stanley made the SFX-in-balloon one of his major stylistic tics. It's constant throughout his comics work...

This device, though downplayed during the austere Lulu period (1948-1953), never quite left Stanley's arsenal. It's a distinctive way to weave sound effects into the comic book story's fabric. I can't think, offhand, of another mainstream comic book creator of this era who used this technique.

Gilbert Shelton put sound effects into balloons in his early 1960s Wonder Wart-hog stories. He continued using this device through the 1970s and '80s. I can't recall if the last new work I've seen of his, Not Quite Dead, still features SFX-in-balloons.

It is memorably used by Stanley and Shelton to dryly underscore the monotony, futility or absurdity of their characters' actions. The traditional manner of showing SFX--as bright, bold, aggressive "floating words"--makes them seem like they're happening despite the presence of the characters. Stanley's ballooning makes a case that the SFX occur because of the characters' actions. The SFX are more intimately tied to the action via this enclosure.

Stanley also used specificity to make his sound effects funnier. As early as 1944, Stanley was hep to the potential of this specific-SFX comedy:

By the 1960s, repetition of common SFX, alone or in groups, was a major source of Stanley's comedic sense and of his timing:

Compare these three 1960s pages to the "quiet" period of Little Lulu. These offer a much more expressive soundtrack to the reader. Characters (and inanimate objects) raise their voices, act out more often, up the stakes of their narrative, and make a lot of racket in general.

Shouting matches started in mid-1950s Little Lulu. For comparison's sake, here is an argument sequence from 1949, and another from 1956:

In the 1949 sequence, the boys have a discussion that allows for several potential levels of volume--from normal speech to retorts to defensive response. It works because of the quality of the writing, and Stanley's growing investiture in his characters.

The 1956 page offers four visual levels of volume, and implies a much livelier "sound" overall. The reader is invited to "hear" the inflections of Lulu and Annie's speaking voices. Stanley is so deep into these characters that he can direct us to read these changes in tone on the silent printed page.

A fine example of Stanley's mastery of his comics soundscape is "Camping Out," from the last issue of Dunc 'n Loo, published in 1963. Collaborator Bill Williams really got Stanley's concepts on sound volume in the comics page. Oh, projectionist...

Sound effects and atmosphere are as much the stars of "Camping Out" as Dunc or Loo. This story shows Stanley on his A-game as both entertainer and sound technician. 

At this peak, Stanley achieved an alchemy of sound and silence not before seen on the comic book page. His innovations in comics sound, throughout his career, are as significant as his narrative or character-building skills. All these elements work together to distinguish his comics creations.

Gilbert Shelton, as I've said before, seems to have inherited this mantle of comics' foremost "sound man." But John Stanley, to the best of my knowledge, exploited sound, in the mainstream comic book, better and more thoroughly than anyone else.

You don't just read a John Stanley comic--you also hear it in your head. Its sounds are richly orchestrated, and add value to even the simplest of plots and conflicts.