Post-Mortem Post 004: Three "Heckle and Jeckle" stories, hidden in plain sight

To study and catalog the ephemeral is to constantly face the option that the work is never complete. The historian's version of wash-the-car-and-make-it-rain is publish-and-new-things-will-appear.

As I published the print editions of my three-volume, annotated John Stanley comics bibliography, I had a gut feeling that there was at least one story that had evaded me. Indeed, there were three.

As more is known about the career of John Stanley, our view of his work has changed. No longer is he the infallible writer of Little Lulu, and Lulu alone. I can take some credit in unearthing the breadth of his career, but many of my finds were preceded by others' wild stabs and guesses.

With this new information, some voices now decry Stanley's work--especially his late efforts. Every author has his/her champions and detractors. Stanley's work from 1956 on invites controversy and discord.

Though many admire his late "auteur" comics, Thirteen Going on Eighteen and Melvin Monster, an equal number despise and dismiss those as the "exhausted" efforts of a bright light now burned out.

I agree that Stanley has a burnout period--between 1956 and 1960--but challenge any claims that his post-1960 work is lesser or "exhausted." The late 1950s were a tough time to be John Stanley. He had overstayed his time on Lulu and Tubby, but could not leave either title, due to the need to make a living.

It's telling that he drops his other sideline projects--Krazy Kat and The Little King--in 1956. His writing approaches its lowest ebb in the next few years. The craft of his writing, developed over thousands of published stories, gives his work an unerring, professional gloss. His sense of the absurd was too strong to ever leave his work. Yet the stories of this period have a harsh, mechanical tone, and,  at worst, a grouchy disdain. Much of Stanley's 1957-1960 work feels like it was written by a man with a migraine, or a bad hangover.

There are transcendent moments in this era--the Oona Goosepimple stories in Nancy and Sluggo, and isolated spikes in Lulu and Tubby--and it can't be flippantly dismissed. Nor can it be approached as great material. It is, like much of mainstream comics, the output of a hard-working pro who has fallen out of love with his characters. By the time of his divorce from Little Lulu, Stanley had nothing to give its cast of characters, its familiar settings, its time-honored themes.

The bilateral move to Nancy, which occurred before he was through with Lulu, did nothing to help. I've written plenty about this period elsewhere on this blog, so I won't repeat myself further.

During the Nancy period, John Stanley wrote his last group of funny animal stories for two Dell titles sourced from the Paul Terry studio's animated stars. He wrote stories featuring the old-school wise-asses, Heckle and Jeckle, and some based on newer entities--the neurotic Silly Sidney and the TV-only Deputy Dawg.

Stanley's first Terry stories were tucked away as filler in Dell's continuation of the long-running Adventures of Mighty Mouse comic book. Dell adopted the numbering of Pines' series, which was taken from prior publisher St. John's. They converted the Paul Terry's Comics and Stories title to AoMM.

This title began its run at Timely Comics, as Terry-Toons, and despite a few overlapping/repeated issue numbers, the sequence continued from the Timely title's debut in 1942 to its final Dell incarnation in 1968.

Dell's first sequence, referenced in today's post, continued when Western took its licenses to its new imprint, Gold Key Comics. Sans the "Adventures of," Mighty Mouse continued, with the numbering intact for another five issues, at which time Dell got the Terry license, and published Mighty Mouse where Gold Key left off, until late 1968.

Five publishers, 26 years. Confused? Comics history is full of these tangled trails.

Stanley wrote three witty, energetic "Heckle and Jeckle" stories for issues 146-148 of the Dell AoMM. These are amidst his Nancy and Sluggo issues, and the stories share a like vibe, from vaguely similar designs of secondary characters to a scrappy, highly reflexive wit that recalls the TV sitcom humor of Max Shulman and Nat Hiken.

This suite of three stories is an example of Stanley the steam-engine, blowing off frustration and anxiety with the help of impish, Tubby-esque figures. This personality type--headstrong, quixotic, misinformed but sure of their rightness in all things--is Stanley's archetypal character, and under its aegis he functions best as a comedic writer.

Stanley's hand as artist is strongly felt in these stories. The finishes are by another artist (perhaps Lloyd White?) but the lumpen human figures are instantly recognizable as their author's work. The beat cop, park superintendent and hotel clerk in the last story here, "Illegal Parking," are approximations of McOnion, the passive-aggressive threat monster of Nancy and Sluggo. Said characters also compare with the human figures of the much later O. G. Whiz #1 seen HERE and HERE).

Here are the three H&J stories from this short-lived, whod'a-thunk-to-look-there Dell Adventures of Mighty Mouse, in their publication order.

From AoMM 146:

 from AoMM 147:

 And, from AoMM 148:

Sharp Stanley Stories readers will recall that I once mis-attributed the first two of these stories to a 1969 publication date. All three stories were reprinted by Gold Key in their revived New Terrytoons title at the close of the '60s. The affect of these stories is so close to Stanley's late work--especially O. G. Whiz--that I forgive myself that mis-assumption.

Stanley functioned best when he could free-associate within an unassuming story. With none of the structure--and stricture--of Little Lulu or Nancy, he has a field day making puns, wordplay and verbal witticisms, and diving into the deep end of his pool of frantic physical action. These are, above all else, funny stories, with a playful edge and a bit of bite.

"The Fastest Guns in the West," first and shortest of the three stories, overflows with verbal fireworks. Stanley anticipates the wittiness of Alun Owen's screenplay for the Beatles' first and best film, A Hard Day's Night, in panels such as this:

A three-character story, "Fastest Guns" seems bigger due to its large retinue of aggressive sound effects, and a large amount of over-the-top physical comedy. The remaining stories run two pages longer--a sign that someone up there liked Stanley's work.

The second piece, "Restaurant Business," satirizes a familiar Stanley target: pretentious, high-priced eateries. Like the fine art business and the rich in general, upscale chez-style cafes were an apparent pet peeve of the author. This story contains Stanley's most acidic salvos at what he clearly considered a racket. Striking is this moment, when brighter lighting reveals the horrible flaws and deceptions in their high-priced entrees:

Stanley seldom traffics in social commentary, and his work tends to avoid fads. In these few instances of his Cassandra cries, he smites his target with utter accuracy.

One of my top-five favorite Stanley Moments occurs in this story, when the bouncer, Beef, has pleased the bistro's flustered "manager man" and is rewarded:

"The Restaurant Business" is a fine example of a focused, witty Stanley staying on-task and wringing every available drop of humor from his cast and setting. The somewhat blunt and crude look of the artwork detracts from its complete success, but the sheer river of smarts and satire that guides this story is A-game Stanley.

"Illegal Parking" is a shade less effective, although it's a solid example of Stanley riffing off a vague general theme. The bright banter of Heckle and Jeckle highlights these three stories, and this one leans most heavily on their verbal humor. We're reminded of the characters Bill Bungle and McOnion, from the contemporary Nancy comics, in the story's best moments, which occur in that arena of human comedy, the public park.

Stanley appears to be having fun in all these stories, especially when his twin gadflies are in motion, double-talking their opponents into stupefaction or angling their way out of a crisis. A think-on-his-feet writer, Stanley relished characters of the same ilk.

This sequence offers a vivid distillation of Stanley's Space-Age approach to comedy: loud, broad and expressive, with verbal wit layered beneath the big red SFX.

After this story, Stanley transitioned to Dell's new anthology title for the Terry license, New Terrytoons, with its fourth issue. There, he contributed some decent stories, but none of them reach the comedic heights of these first three efforts. Following the Western/Dell split, in 1962, Stanley wrote no more funny animal comics.

These last pieces circle back to his first published comics work--the funny animal features for New Funnies, Animal Comics and Our Gang Comics. A comparison of that early material with these three pieces shows his startling development as a humorous writer from the 1940s to the late 1950s.

Stanley's Pogo-Shtick: Selections from New Terrytoons 4, 1961

There are still obscure by-ways of the John Stanley saga we haven't covered yet! Today's post puts a 30-watt spotlight on one of Stanley's minor works--New Terrytoons.

This title was a belated tie-in to a brief renaissance at the lowliest American cartoon studio--Paul Terry's outfit. Animation nerds treasure the 1950s Terrytoons for the scenes animated by Jim Tyer. I am among this group of enthusiasts--Tyer's reckless experimentation, possibly fueled by sheer boredom, produced the wildest animation seen in the classic American theatrical cartoon.

Terry's studio cleaned house in 1957 with the arrival of Gene Deitch. Deitch was an apostle of the UPA-style cartoon modern school. He cleaned house and changed the Terry look and feel to a more designy, astro-moderne groove. Only Jim Tyer was hep to this new jive--most of the other Terry animators, vets from the pre-sound era, were annoyed and uncooperative.

Deitch brought in new talent--Jules Feiffer, Ernest Pintoff--and created a brief run of graphically dynamic, unusual animated cartoons. Best of all is Flebus, animated entirely by Jim Tyer. You must watch this cartoon right now...



Deitch left Terrytoons quickly, but the modern graphics stuck. The studio began to produce TV cartoons, while continuing their movie cartoons for 20th Century-Fox. Among their TV hits was Deputy Dawg, which seems to have inspired Western Publications to license the Terry characters for a Dell Comics title.

The Terry characters had previously been licensed by Timely, St. John and Pines. Some of these comics were written and drawn by Jim Tyer and other Terry animators. Like Nancy and Sluggo, the Terrytoons franchise had been around the block a few times before Dell signed up.

These became John Stanley's first funny-animal comics since the late 1940s. They would also be his last. One senses that Stanley was not thrilled to backtrack into this territory. New Terrytoons was a quarterly magazine: evidence that Western wasn't 100% sure of the saleability of the book.

They underestimated their audience. The title lasted until 1979. Stanley appears to have worked on the first eight issues, published from 1960 to '62. This work was done alongside Dunc 'n' Loo, Nancy and Sluggo, Kookie, Linda Lark and the horror comics.

By the fourth issue of New Terrytoons, Stanley had warmed somewhat to his fate. He seems to have enjoyed writing the lead feature, "Deputy Dawg." In this story, he seems to pay homage to his old pal, Walt Kelly. The characters' dialogue, attitudes and the swamp settings sort-of allude to Kelly's Pogo. This blend of strident jet-age sitcom and cornpone characterization is unique to Stanley's work.

Deputy Dawg served as the host of New Terrytoons, introducing each of the book's short, untitled stories.

This rollicking story has some sharp touches. Deputy Dawg is a sort-of Tubby Type, albeit with a very low metabolic rate. His credo of only sleeping while on the job is stated with conviction. The ravenous, conniving alligator seems an obvious nod to Kelly's Albert. Note the frequent mis-spellings of the word "sheriff." Who wuz mindin' th' store thet day?

The cartoonist here, credited by the Grand Comic-book Database as Fred Fredericks, greatly resembles one of Stanley's old collaborators from the New Funnies days. Compare the "Oswald the Rabbit" story I recently posted. It's crude but vigorous. Fredericks seems to have preserved much of Stanley's original energy. In fact, I wonder if this distinct look was present in Stanley's pencils. There's enough similarity in style to suggest this.

Next up are three characters from the old days at Terrytoons. The sub-Tom and Jerry "Little Roquefort" dates from the 1940s, while Gandy Goose and Dinky Duck go back to the '30s. These three short stories are riddled with Stanleyisms, and have the recognizable shrill tone of his 1959-62 work.

The "Roquefort" story amuses with its mind-fudgery, as the mouse destroys the comforting fourth wall of network television. The other two, while minor stories, abound with energy and have their moments. The plethora of roosters in both stories bring to mind the Stanley-created Charlie Chicken, Andy Panda's domestic partner from New Funnies.

They're far better than the drek his Western peers (with the sole exception of Carl Barks) churned out for the other Dell licensed titles. It feels to me like Stanley atoned for the flimsiness of the characters with a three-ring circus of sitcom frenzy.

Stanley's comics became extremely diagrammatic in this period. The abundance of bold, graphic sound effects and visual icons seem, to me, a tell that he wasn't much invested in these characters. [Not much there, to begin with...]

The Dinky and Gandy stories read more like a schematic than an actual comic strip. They don't scan well: there's too much going on at once.

Today's final story is a product of the Deitch regime at Terrytoons. Here is a CinemaScope version of the first "Silly Sidney" cartoon, with more typically whacked-out Jim Tyer animation:



The neurotic Sidney had enormous black comedy possibilities, which inspire Stanley more than the older Terry stick-figures:

The myopic sociopath rhinoceros (a string of words you won't see anywhere else, ever!) Rupert, is a particularly vivid example of the Stanley Terrible Thwarter/Obstacle. He has a low-key repressed rage--a genuinely sinister edge to his character, much like McOnion from the Nancy and Sluggo series. I fear for Merton and Melvin's lives, in the comic book reality that continues after the story's close.

The vultures' open request to dine on Sidney, on the first page, impresses with its macabre freshness. The sharp-eyed reader will note the numerous incidences of choffing in these stories. The Albert-esque alligator, in the "Deputy Dawg" story, uses "choff" as a verb--the only time I've seen this occur in Stanley's work!

Stanley's New Terrytoons work, while not top-drawer, bears its maker's mark. These stories are the best of the eight-issue series. Stanley's writing becomes increasingly mechanical; it's evident that this quarterly project occupied his interest less as time straggled by.