Post-Mortem Post 005: The Second Nancy and Sluggo Summer Camp Special

Every so often, I get an e-mail from someone who has read and enjoyed this blog during its heyday. Though I consider Stanley Stories a done deal, I have done an occasional "post-mortem post."

These include material I've recently discovered, or oversights that really ought to be added, the better to make this site an exhaustive reference of the work of John Stanley.

Longtime reader B. Baker wrote recently, and requested that this second and last Nancy and Sluggo summer camp special be posted. It's still summer, so the time seems right.

I've written much about Stanley's Nancy comics elsewhere on this blog. As well, the 1950s and 1960s volumes of my illustrated Stanley comicography (available HERE and HERE on amazon.com) offer basic information on Stanley's creative involvement in this series.

This second 84-page graphic novelette is the lesser of the two Nancy annuals. The 1960 annual is one of Stanley's most satisfying, cohesive longer works. It's arguably the finest of his Nancy run--tense, edgy and amusing, with constant status shifts.

Stanley sleepwalks through much of Nancy, with refreshing pauses when newly-created secondary characters pique his interest. The series' humor is hard-edged and not always appealing. Character relationships are often brutal and loveless. Nancy and her Aunt Fritzi, for example, appear to barely tolerate each other's presence. Their existence together seems the result of an unspoken, half-hearted truce.

Ernie Bushmiller's original template is also troublesome, in this regard. In the Bushmiller world, events occur in one-gag increments. Fritzi's impatience with Nancy was a constant source of quick-laff set-ups. Perhaps Stanley chose to follow that, no questions asked, as it was one of the popular comic strip's backbones. That we see longer sequences, in which Nancy and Fritzi bicker, taunt and belittle each other, brings the laffs to a screeching halt. In these moments, Nancy threatens to become Edward Albee's Comics and Stories.

Sluggo is the character that most sparks Stanley the writer. As a student of social status, with a soft spot for life's underdogs, Sluggo seems to speak to Stanley. He is the lowest of his many low-status figures. He is not self-absorbed or full of hot air, like Little Lulu's Tubby. Nor is he zany and free-wheeling, as in Stanley's version of Woody Woodpecker.

Sluggo seems numbed, resigned to his fate and unable to change anything in his life. He is befriended by Nancy, and other kids, but shares none of their daily comforts. He is, on one hand, a child's fantasy of independence. No parental figures overshadow Sluggo. His next-door neighbors, the McOnions, are negative-image parents. They take some interest in Sluggo's well-being, but any benevolence is shattered by husband Bunion "Bunny" McOnion's schizophrenic mood-swings.

Freedom's price-tag is that Sluggo lives a life of flux. Nothing is certain, nothing stays the same for long, and his well-being/sense of self is in a perpetual state of challenge. It's a good life if you don't weaken!

Mr. McOnion is the most constant figure of threat and doom in Sluggo's life. In the first Nancy annual, Stanley makes his most memorable use of this twisted relationship. The re-match seems redundant here, but its less terrifying turnout suggests that someone might have mentioned to Stanley that he overdid the darkness in that first annual.

Whatever the case, this is still an amusing, if spotty, comic book. Good moments outweigh the bad, and as with the first annual, there seems a spark of life and interest in its contents. Here's the entire book, minus activity pages. Enjoy...

Buy A Print Edition of the 1950s John Stanley Bibilography! Yow!

Click HERE to order copies of the standard (black and white interior) edition of the 1950s John Stanley bibilography. It's 190 pages, in a handsome 8 x 10 squarebound trade paperback. The cost is $12.99 plus shipping, from Amazon's CreateSpace.

The deluxe (color interior) version, which includes a cover gallery in full color, is also available. THIS is the link for that edition.

I have print versions of the other two volumes in process. The 1940s volume will undergo some big revisions--mostly the inclusion of more text.

I think this is the first stand-alone book on John Stanley's work to be published. With any luck, this will just be the first of many...


Here's the full cover image, including spine and back panel...

Post-Mortem Post 001: Sluggo goes Peanuts: two super-obscure Stanley stories

I warned you that I'd come back, from time to time, after "officially" ending this blog. As I make new discoveries, or find new information that either confirms or corrects my past presumptions, this blog will remain on life-support.

If/when I complete and publish the John Stanley bibliography for the 1950s, it will consist of 11 years of stories. Near the end of that era come two small surprises from a semi-likely source.

For years, I've suspected that Dell's Peanuts series might hold some John Stanley material. No one had bothered to scan these comics and share them on the web until last month. Said it before, saying it again: kudos to the folks who scan old comics and remove them from obscurity and inaccessibility. Their work is a powerful help for today's comics scholars.

In a just world, Stanley might have been assigned Charles Schulz's characters, rather than the cast of Nancy and Sluggo, in 1959. Schulz understandably wished to keep the comic book version close to home. His friends Jim Sasseville and Dale Hale wrote and drew the new material, in the spirit of the mega-popular daily strip. You can read an interview with Dale Hale about his work on the Dell Peanuts title HERE.

Another Tip Top Tipple: A Nancy and Two Sluggos (feat. McOnion) from 1959

As is evident from even a quick reading, John Stanley was a bit burned out on Little Lulu in 1959. He had every right to be. Fifteen years of steady work on the series (including the companion title, Tubby) had yielded some 7,270 pages of comics--at least 700 of those also illustrated by him.

Lulu was continued by others, who followed Stanley's example to the letter, but without a vestige of the soul formerly present in the characters.

Someone at Western Publications had the brilliant idea that John Stanley should continue writing stories about kids, based on licensed properties. Having wrested rights to United Feature Syndicate's characters from UFS itself, Dell published a plethora of comics with the characters from Nancy, Peanuts and Captain and the Kids.

They ignored Gus Arriola's Gordo, which might have made a successful comic book transplantation, and apparently avoided Al Capp's Li'l Abner, which was a wise move.

Nancy, as I've written here before, is really just Little Lulu sideways. One can sense John Stanley's frustration in still being asked to churn out stories about kids and the suburbs. A certain anger rises from the base of these stories. This anger breeds a brittle, edgy comedy, often laced with dark impulses, and peppered with open hostility from its adult characters to its children.

On the other hand, Nancy gave Stanley a complete break from the heavy rules and regulations of Little Lulu. Though he was too careworn to run wild with this new property, he did approach it with a certain venomous vigor.

OCD Eating and a Convergence of Creeps: Nancy and Sluggo Summer Camp special pt. III (conclusion)

As promised, here is the conclusion of the 1960 Nancy and Sluggo Summer Camp shebang.

"The Dinner Belle" contrasts two schools of cognitive biases towards food: the anti-anorexia of Eadie and the smug entitlement of Camp directory Simply.

John Stanley, like Little Orphan Annie's Harold Gray, tended to give supporting characters Dickensian names--ones that sum up their shortcomings or hang-ups. In Simply's case, his smug, naive expectations fully justify this type-naming.

Everything in this rambling book comes to a head in "Lost in the Woods." All storylines intersect, and McOnion gets a terrifying-yet-appropos comeuppance.

Also like Harold Gray, John Stanley was a strong believer in comics karma. Gray's comeuppances are usually of a brutal nature. Stanley's threaten their characters, but never result in death or serious injury. Mind-fudgery and status demotion are typical results of Stanley's comic karma.

"Lost in the Woods" is by far the liveliest, most genuine sequence in this narrative. Stanley weaves together the book's various threads into a colorful, amusing fabric.

Moments of strong physical/verbal comedy include McOnion's Page-O'-Terror (the larger one here) and Nancy's mistaking of the wild bear's "GRRRRLLLLS" for an echo of her panic-stricken cry to her peers.

Also impressive is how Oona and her world is suddenly whipped into the formula. We're glad to see Sluggo reach Camp Fafamama intact, tho' too late in the game to achieve anything more than arrival.

Stanley would do far better in the second and last Nancy & Sluggo special, which I'll run here sometime.

Stanley brings this narrative to a rousing close with a finale that anticipates the over-reaching anarchy of It's A Mad, Mad, Mad World, while also suggesting the madcap quality of Frank Tashlin's or Jacques Tati's movies. Rollo Haveall is the stimulus of "The Tiger Hunt."

 

Rollo's need for/contempt for his protector-slave Keggly is darkly amusing. I find especially funny Rollo's move into Keggly's shirt.

The energy level surges in "The Tiger Hunt," after maintaining too much of an even keel in earlier pages. It's a welcome shot-in-the-arm, and shows Stanley finally investing something of value into this rambling piece.

After a rare and striking full-page panel, this story resolves on an almost-heart-warming note, with the emotional reformation of McOnion. He still has it in himself to send Sluggo one psycho post-card, and this event gives the book's finale a slight kicker of anxiety. (So does the last-panel Pledge to Parents!)

Inside-cover gag page, anyone?

My feeling about this book, overall, is a qualified Meh. It has its moments, and contains some striking anticipations of Stanley's more assured, solid 1960s comedy style. It feels a bit dashed-off, and shows the clear limitations of the "Nancy" cast, in Stanley's estimation. Nancy is a cipher--brilliantly manipulated in Ernie Bushmiller's comics world, but not a strong narrative leader. She exists as a foil for Bushmiller's factory-fresh gag machine, and nothing more.

Only when Stanley works with his creations--McOnion, Oona, and Tweak--does this narrative reach out and grab us. As Rob Clough notes in his recent review of the first Drawn + Quarterly Tubby book:

[b]y nature, Stanley was a world-builder; he felt the need to introduce various comic foils, friends and antagonists for his central characters.  Part of that, I would guess, was Stanley’s way of giving himself raw material to work with; it’s his way of coming up with the variables for his comics writing formulas.

Stanley's Little Lulu casts a long shadow over his Nancy work. If I seem overly hard on this material, it's because it is regressive. Stanley did not grow as a writer with his time on Nancy. He reached into his recent past, and recycled formulas that had grown thin in Lulu's late issues. Though competent, and sometimes inspired, it lays listlessly next to Dunc 'n' Loo or his finest moments in Thirteen Going on Eighteen.

Half-strength Stanley is still far superior to most contemporary comics creators' efforts. Even when dialed down, Stanley couldn't help writing quality material. We remember McOnion's freaky pursuit of Sluggo, and the vagaries of Oona's mystical world. Other Stanley Nancy add-ons of note include the inept house-burglar, Bill Bungle (another Gray-hued name!) and Oona's self-obsessed miniature magician Uncle Eek.

I promise to be more enthusiastic in my next post, whatever it may be...

Lumpy Beds, Midget Magicians and Nose-Tweaking: Pt. II of the Nancy & Sluggo Summer Camp Special, 1960

On we go with the N&S summer camp epic.

We begin with two bed-related (and titled) vignettes, both which feature Stanley's answer to the Harvey Comics omnivore, Little Lotta--Eadie.

Eadie, who looks uncomfortably like Sluggo in drag, is a representative Stanley Type of the late '50s and early '60s--the abrasive, perpetually displeased misfit. These characters are typically socially self-destructive. Unlike the Tubby Type, this archetype is usually hostile and aggressive. This type is somewhat like Stanley's Evil Rich--except they're usually so disenfranchised they lack wealth of any kind.

Other examples of this type include Buddy from Dunc 'n' Loo and the whiny hypochondriac from the first issue of Linda Lark, Student Nurse.

It's a genuine relief to get away from Eadie, and return to the inexplicable world of Oona Goosepimple. This story features Oona's miniature magician Uncle Eek--a classic John Stanley wild-card character. Again, note the different artist for this sequence.

This story boasts an abundance of the Stanley trademark I've named "floating eyes in blackness." Stanley leaned on this device heavily in the later 1950s. Although it spared the artist(s) the chore of drawing scenes full of characters, the solid black frames entailed much brushing-in of black ink, in those pre-Photoshop daze of olde.

"Noses are Red" offers up yet another Stanley character-type--the Terrible Thwarter/Obstacle. Eadie redeems herself as the vicious victor of the nose-fixated bully, Tweak, and wins some social acceptance. Good on her!

Back to the... endless... nightmare... that is... McOnion...

A curious Christmas-themed filler follows McOnion's latest threat to Sluggo.

What better way to end this suite of abuse/discomfort-flavored stories than another dose of Rollo Haveall? Once again, Rollo's lack of human warmth and disdain for the welfare of others brings a chill to the proceedings.

Rollo is on the dark end of Stanley Street. He never learns--or changes--as a result of his karmic come-uppances. He dusts himself off and becomes just that much more horrid for his troubles.

Rollo really bothers me. Fittingly, this second of three installments ends with a punchline of physical discomfort, bordering on torment. Stanley really puts his Nancy cast through a decathlon of suffering.

I've come to feel that Stanley didn't care for writing Nancy. A general tone of gruffness, coupled with contempt for its characters, suffuses his work on the series. It may be that Stanley was burned out on this kid-centric school of comics.

After perhaps 1,000 Little Lulu and Tubby stories, Stanley certainly had the right to feel written out on the genre. His interest, post-Lulu, lay in older characters. Melvin Monster is over-powered by its adult characters; Dunc 'n' Loo and Thirteen focus on characters at or near puberty-age. The "Judy Junior" feature from Thirteen is focused on the theater-of-cruelty misfortunes that befall poor Jimmy Fuzzi. It's not at all the emotionally varied and integrated world of Little Lulu.

Stanley's lone "Bridget" page (easily found elsewhere on this blog) still displays a sharpness and skill with kid characters. It's over after 36 panels, and all too soon.

Stanley's last two comic book projects, Choo-Choo Charlie and O. G. Whiz (one issue each) have child protagonists, but narrative stakes and, in O.G.'s case, eccentric, aggressive adults, overpower the proceedings.

Back to Stanley's Nancy. Nancy has none of the humanity of Lulu Moppet. Sluggo falls short of the bar that Tubby Tompkins set.  The rest of the characters, with the exception of the highly imaginative and inspired Oona Goosepimple, simply lack appeal and warmth. Oona's world, for all its flights of fantasy, is also a curiously cold, dangerous place.

Nancy's adult figures include some kind, helpful folks (e.g., the camp counselors in these stories), but the balance of them are dispassionate (Fritzi Ritz), sarcastic (Mrs. McOnion) or nutso (Mr. McOnion).

There is no sense of safety or comfort in the world of John Stanley's Nancy. Yes, there are brilliant sequences, and strong comedic set-pieces. We laugh at the comedy in Nancy, but we pay for it with the cruelty and emotional dis-connect of the characters.

It's not hack-work; almost nothing feels phoned in. Nancy was a necessary transition point for Stanley's work. Out of the emotional disconnect of this work would come the more character-rich Dunc 'n' Loo and the brutal-yet-deeply humane Thirteen Going on Eighteen.

We'll finish up this special issue next time.