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.

A post of convenience: "Andy Panda," from "New Funnies" #125, 1947--MISSING PAGE ADDED!

I had today's original story choice all ready to go--or so I thought. I'd forgotten to scan one page out of a long story. @#!%#@$!@#, if I may curse funnybook-style!

I had this amusing "Andy Panda" story as a possible Plan B, so here comes that rainy day! (Here in Seattle, it is NOT raining this morning. It poured non-stop yesterday.)

This is a typical entry in Stanley's entertaining-enough stint on New Funnies. Stanley wrote for the title for 4.5 years, and racked up, I'd estimate, 400 to 500 pages of work. Not all of it is world-class. Some of it ranks with his best work. It is a consistently likable and colorful chapter in John Stanley's career.

Via the characters of Woody Woodpecker and Charlie Chicken (from "Andy Panda"), Stanley developed the personality template for Tubby Tompkins, anti-hero of the Little Lulu comics. New Funnies also endowed Stanley with the ability to reel off variants on familiar plot devices and story formats.

Here is an amusing Stanley screwball-comedy. It has a classic screwball structure: one small misunderstanding snowballs into an avalanche of confusion, fueled by gossiping spinsters and "nosy parkers."

Stanley shoves one of his sinister hulking characters into the mix, just for fun. He also gives a typically descriptive name to the story's main character, Mrs. Munchbun.

Her neurotic, obsessive-compulsive devotion to her dead spouse is both touching and hilarious. (Our teaser panel hints at the manifestation of Munchbun's OCD memorial.)

Stanley was not writing for tots with stories such as this. Most of the humor in this piece would soar over a 9 year-old's head like a stealth bomber at midnight. Or, perhaps, the average 9 year-old, circa 1947, was a hell of a lot smarter than anyone would like to admit!

I hope that, somewhere, someday, the identities of the artists who rendered these stories will come to light. This cartoonist did many pieces for New Funnies. He has a pleasantly spiky, expressive workmanlike style. I don't think it is Irving Tripp or Dan Gormley. It could not be Dan Noonan. This artist did a lot of work for the East Coast division of Dell Comics. There must be records of the Dell artists somewhere...

While this mystery remains unsolved, please enjoy this amusin' but confusin' Stanley story!















NOTE: I somehow neglected to post the final page to this story when I first created this entry. Thanks for noticing this, Chris Riesbeck! Today is Missing Page Day here at Stanley Stories... my apologies to anyone who tried to read this story before its final page was belatedly slapped into place!