The Tao of Yow: John Stanley's World: new book available on amazon.com

I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book on John Stanley.

The Tao of Yow includes revised versions of three of the acclaimed "John Stanley's World" essays from this blog,  alongside four new pieces. All are profusely illustrated in full color with images from printed comics, production materials and rare promotional items that have sat, unseen, for over half a century.

This 154-page, 8 x 10" softcover, professionally bound and printed through the Createspace print-on-demand program, is designed as a companion to my three-volume bibliography of John Stanley's work in comics. Since those books are mostly data, they left little room for the type of material in The Tao of Yow. Given the impermanence of the Web, in which a long-established site or blog can vanish overnight, it seemed like a good idea to commit some of these pieces to the printed page.

Here is the book's table of contents:

The essay on p. 122 offers a first-time-ever full color version of a certain notorious "Little Lulu" story from 1950:

The Tao of Yow: John Stanley's World may be purchased on Amazon at this link. This will, I hope, be the first in a series of books that collect, expand and revise my work on this long-running blog.

From New Funnies 93, 1944: Multi-Skilled Dentist, All-Powerful Truant Officer Threaten, Cajole Panda, Chicken, Woodpecker; Dentist Charges Self for Services Rendered

Long time, no post. To remedy my untenable absence, here's a double-dip from a particularly good early issue of John Stanley's run on New Funnies.

Dell Comics' covers usually had little to do with the innards they contained--with the exception of their adventure-themed one-shot stories. Here's an atypical story-themed cover, to start things off right:

Here's the cover story. It's a warm-up for today's second feature, which I consider among John Stanley's best early stories. Why such unusually bright, strong colors on the first page? It was printed on the inside cover of the book--wartime paper-saving measures. I wish comic books had all been printed this way, cover to cover...

This is an extremely funny and witty story, with a quality typical of Stanley's earliest comics works. There are no real stakes to this story, beyond the prospect of Andy Panda losing teeth that don't need to be pulled.

The screwy dentist, Dr. Kiddem, seems benignly, matter-of-factly loco. One too many crown inlays may have sent this scion of medical respectability over the edge. Ditto for his supportive, chipper nurse, Miss Killigin.

Dr. Kiddem is just a poor choice--one of countless faux pas made, with the best of intentions, by Charlie Chicken.  Despite his evident insanity, he's a thorough medico. Note that, when he accidentally pulls three of his own teeth, he makes sure that he bills himself for the work.

John Stanley would soon make bolder choices, and raise the stakes of his stories whenever possible. This early effort is an example of pure screwball comedy, without the tinge of darkness that surely would have colored this story, were it written even two years later.

And now for the piece de resistance--a story old-timers may remember from the original incarnation of this blog, back when it was a primitive but sincere website. (Of course, now blogs are supposed to be old-hat, relics left in the dust by Facebook and Twitter, two popular sites I have little use for. Guess I'm just a Luddite after all!)

This Woody Woodpecker story is in my John Stanley Top Ten. It's beautifully cartooned by the author, as well. For once, the character is completely on-model with the contemporary Walter Lantz cartoons. The funnybook Woody was often ugly-looking, and he so resembled the screen version.

This story anticipates so many major Stanley themes--and presents them with vigor and intensity--that I consider it an important piece in Stanley's development. Here is the proto-Tubby character: the egocentric, self-righteous, rebellious man-child that is most typically John Stanley's focus character. Here, too, is the Terrible Thwarter/Obstacle--a literally nightmarish heavy who bears the bird genuine ill will.

I wonder if Stanley saw and liked "Tex" Avery's MGM animated cartoons. This untitled story bears the probable influence of Avery's 1943 cartoon, Dumb-hounded, which introduced the phlegmatic anti-hero who would eventually be named Droopy.

It's actually closer in spirit to the more intense, paranoiac Avery follow-up, 1946's Northwest Hounded Police. In both cartoons, the retiring, inert Droopy turns up in relentless pursuit of a panicky wolf, who escapes from prison but finds himself in an ever-restrictive nightmare. Everywhere he goes, no matter what he does, the underwhelming Droopy finds him, and confronts him without affect or aggression.

Here's some screenshots from Dumb-hounded:

As in Avery's animated cartoons, the settings change constantly, at rapid pace, and are tableaux of pop-culture cliches, shot through with horror. All are creations of Woody's addled imagination. He is chagrined by the actual Ketchem. Unlike McNabbem, the similar enemy of Little Lulu's Tubby Tompkins, Ketchem is a non-threatening wuss. McNabbem appears capable of causing the Lulu cast physical and emotional harm; he blessedly lacks the cunning to fulfill his brutal potential.

Within the same issue of a comic magazine, we can see Stanley go from harmless screwball antics to high-stakes, horror-laced black comedy. Both styles of humor are handled expertly. While the first story is merely funny and entertaining, the second has a bit of recoil. It's hard to forget its scrambling sense of inescapable terror, blended with deadpan satires of pop-culture tropes.

Stanley would only get better at achieving this blend of horror and humor. It's revealing to see this early,assured synthesis of dark and light.

From Nancy # 166: House of Oona Goosepimple Proves Impassable; Numerous Public Servants Wander Lost in Maze; Bristle-Headed Nancy On Case

Consider this post a teaser for Drawn + Quarterly's forthcoming first volume of the John Stanley "Nancy and Sluggo" stories.

I've wanted to feature this story for a long time, but this issue of Nancy, along with #170, is significantly harder-to-find than the rest of the Stanley run.
This isn't the best copy in the world--the pages are quite yellowed--but the story itself is a total mind-fudge.

Here, read it and see for yourself...








The opening page of "The House With Everybody In It" is among the talkiest of Stanley's career. It reminds me of some of those Al Feldstein-scripted EC stories; the dialogue threatens to crowd out the characters!

Stanley uses this ocean of words to set a nervous rhythm. The collusion of Nancy's rope-skipping count and Oona's stake-raising introduction puts us, the reader, on a speeding path into utter chaos and uncertainty.

Once we enter the Goosepimple house, the hinges fall off the doors of reality. I love the moment of Nancy's head-clearing tantrum:

At the heart of this story is a dark, edgy fairy-tale. The elderly witch, caught in the Sisyphian trap of feeding toasted marshmallows to the tiger, reminds me of something from Roald Dahl. I wonder if Stanley was a reader of Dahl's fiction.

There are startling similarities in both writers' work--most strikingly in their casual treatment of traumatic material. This story is a prime example. Trauma piles atop trauma. Each incident blends tragic and comedic elements. It is the passage of a vulnerable but indefatigable heroine through this maze of chaos--and her final escape, having undone the worst of the chaos--that compels us through this darkness.

I wonder, as well, if Dahl secretly read Little Lulu. There's a snapshot I'd like to see!

Dan Gormley's artwork is properly agitated--its linework borders on fury. One can see Stanley's drawing style peer through Gormley's assimilation of the Bushmiller style. He negotiates the nightmarish twists and turns with a dancer's grace.

I'll post another story from this issue tomorrow... we all need a breather in the wake of this one!

A Nightmarish SF Epic, Starring Andy 'n' Charlie: The Mighty Mites, "Four Color" #198, 1948

Remember "The Secret Six," the intense, ultra-dark Oswald Rabbit story from 1945? (It was posted here last year--well worth the effort to locate, if you've got the time.)

Here is its twin--one of John Stanley's final "Four Color" books featuring the Walter Lantz characters. "The Mighty Mites," from late 1948, is devoid of all but the darkest, dryest black humor.



Loaded with Stanley "tells"--floating eyes in blackness, morbid themes (including a jaw-droppingly grim finale, made all the darker for its casual, conversational delivery), ZAZzes galore, windmill action, SFX in speech balloons--"Mighty Mites" may qualify as the darkest Stanley Story of the 1940s.

Grim as "The Secret Six" is, it's leavened with light comedy, and trades on the sexual ambiguity of Oswald Rabbit and his domestic partner, Toby Bear.

Fellow dompars Andy Panda and Charlie Chicken have no time for comedy in this breathless, EC-like intense story of a mad scientist, living alone in a rambling house out in the middle of nowhere.

It starts on a dark and stormy night... well, take 15 minutes and just read this thing. Then we'll talk...


































Morgan is one hell of a disturbing villain. He has no motivation for his actions. Sure, one of his victims mentions that Morgan wants to be "king of the world," but his scheme of shrinking every being on the planet to "four inches--or SMALLER!" would take several lifetimes. There would have to be chartered busses bringing large groups of people around the clock, for years and years, for Morgan to attain his dark goal.

What chain of events led him to (a) develop the shrink-ray and (b) lure unsuspecting chumps into his remote forest home, whereupon he (c) shrinks them and collects them in bird cages while (d) actually believing he can rule the entire world?

In the best tradition of sociopathy, Morgan's outward persona is bland, ineffectual and even cordial. Although everything about his homestead screams WARNING! PSYCHOTIC LOSER! AM-SCRAY!, etc., his apparent affable, cheery facade disarms his victims.

This isn't the first time Stanley has invested the villain of a story with more interest than its alleged heroes. In this case, bland, low-key Andy and Charlie are, initially, evenly matched in the vanilla personality of Morgan.

A repeated nightmare image in Stanley's work involves a commonplace item--a bed, a house--sinking into the ground. (Check out the first story I ever posted here, "The Guest in the Ghost Hotel," from Tubby #7, for another vivid rendition of this theme.)

Morgan's house, filled with retracting panels, secret passages, and even a light rail line, is clearly a labor of insane love. One can imagine the years it took this guy to design and build this nightmare castle out in the sticks.

A stronger pair of protagonists might upstage a bad guy like Morgan. It is to this story's benefit that panda and chicken are so lackluster and ordinary. As the evident madness of Morgan's world slowly dawns on our heroes, a deeply disturbing facet of Morgan surfaces.

It isn't just that he traps people and shrinks and collects them--he takes out his rage on them. "He'll TORTURE us--he always does when he's angry," as one of Morgan's early victims exclaims, after Andy and Charlie shoot him in the big toe with his own gun.

Just enough is said to fill the reader's mind with the many sessions of torment the little people have endured before the time-frame of this story. Brrr!

"The Mighty Mites," from its misleading title onward, lacks many specific details. An obvious twin to this story is Carl Barks' "The Terror of the River," from 1946. Barks' story also has a sociopathic villain with elaborate equipment, for the express goal of scaring the daylights out of people.

Barks' story is full of down-to-earth anecdotes and experiences--of life on a riverboat, of the atmosphere of the water and the night, and of the foibles of funny-animal "humanity."

Stanley, by not crossing Ts or dotting Is, creates an inescapable, relentless state of nightmare in "The Mighty Mites." Nothing has much meaning--as in a bad dream, events just happen, and the protagonist bobbles in the wake of these random actions.

As is proper in the mad-scientist genre, the creator's evil creation proves his own undoing. And, in time-tested heroic fashion, Andy risks all to run back in the collapsing, flaming Morgan residence to rescue the villain, now reduced to canary size.

In the confusion, Morgan is lost. This leads Charlie to comment, in a masterpiece of understatement, "it's like looking for a lost golf ball."

Andy and Charlie only discover Morgan's fate via the afternoon newspaper: "Shortly afterwards, a neighbor reports finding his cat playing with a little suit of clothes and pair of shoes..."

Stanley lets his grimmest conclusions happen from afar. As with the fate of the evil industrialist in "The Secret Six," Morgan's death gains impact from its dispassionate depiction.

This is one way that Stanley routinely got away with stunningly grim finales. Since it's not visually depicted, and since only older, more literate readers could read the speech balloons and connect the dots, "The Mighty Mites" is, technically, still wholesome reading matter for the kiddies.

I admire Stanley's canny ability to work the system to his own benefit. "The Mighty Mites" packs as much horror and weirdness as a year's run of Tales From The Crypt--only it's executed with an adroitness and matter-of-factness the EC comix never achieved.

I hope this story properly rattled your cage. I am sorry that Stanley stopped writing these "Four Color" adventures. The combination of his imagination and the bland licensed characters, in stories such as this, are devastating.