"Tom and Jerry" from Our Gang Comics 11: Ghosts and Seamen Never Mix

The picking have become decidedly slim here, and posts fewer and farther-between. In scraping around for un-posted odds and ends, I hit on this six-page story from 1944.

One of the few "Tom and Jerry" stories not already featured here, it's written and drawn by Stanley, who also did his highly distinctive lettering.

Throughout John Stanley's comics career, he did good stories and bad ones. In the latter, he either wasn't having a good day, was racing against the deadline clock, or just didn't care.

More of these stories exist than we'd like to believe. They are part and parcel of the commercial comics business.

Mainstream print is slapdash and panicky by its very nature. Ultimately, what matters most is that something is on every page of a newspaper, magazine or book. That content doesn't have to be good. It just has to be.

The Last Post of 2010: Potty Humor and Animal Conflict...two very early "Tom and Jerry" stories (Our Gang Comics 6 and 7, 1943)

Here are the last two really early Stanley stories I have on hand. I could swear I've already posted today's first story. It's memorable, and you'll soon notice why. An exhaustive search of the Stanley Stories site showed no evidence of it anywhere. I fully acknowledge that I may have missed it. If so, please excuse my oblivious state of mind.

This first story, from Our Gang Comics #6, brims with Stanley's distinct energy, comedy and sound effects. It also features what may be the comics' first unabridged view of the American bathroom--complete with a visible toilet which prominently features in the action.

The commode was a big no-no in mainstream media. Animated cartoons made before the Production Code show us glimpses of it, as do feature films such as King Vidor's The Crowd (1928). The loo was something that existed, and was a part of every American's daily life. It simply wasn't shown in our mass entertainments. Not too often, anyway...

Did you notice the box of "Kelly's Liver Pills" in the first panel of p.3? Western's comics creators were unanimously fond of dropping one another's names in their stories. Kelly, Carl Barks, Dan Noonan and Stanley are the most frequently referenced.

Much of the charm of Stanley's "Tom and Jerry" stories occurs when the mice Jerry and Tuffy explore the mystifying world of mankind. Their cat-like curiosity brings them to the bathroom, where they encounter a sentient electric razor (an image reminiscent of Chuck Jones' 1939 cartoon Naughty But Mice), the tub, sink, various perfumes, powders and potions and, finally, the verboten commode.

Toilets were the thing people didn't talk about in popular culture. To this day, movies, TV and popular fiction assiduously avoid showing this common everyday item. Think of it: when was the last time the hero of a TV show stopped to relieve himself in a restroom? 

Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho shocked 1960s audiences with its dead-on, confrontational views of a hotel commode (a device that figures prominently in one of the movie's plot points, as it does in this T&J story). The sight of a commode in post-Production Code movies are tangential and fleeting.

Perhaps out of naivete, Stanley gives us fearless toilet comedy in this story. The commode's lid is conveniently removed--the better for the mice to frolic around its innards.

This is one of the funniest and broadest of Stanley's early works. Even tho' the shock value of the potty has long worn off, the bathroom antics of the mice are genuinely ticklish. Stanley SFX trainspotters will relish the unique occurrence of "UFFLE!" on p. 4.

As I've noted elsewhere, there is a strong tie between Stanley's earliest comics work (1943-46) and his most realized, mature material of the 1960s. A major agent in Stanley's mature work is the fearless incorporation of broad, knockabout physical humor. Stanley got away from physical comedy in the most high-profile portion of his career, the Lulu Years (1947-1959).

There is a great deal of physical comedy in Little Lulu, but it's much tighter and more reined-in than the wild, limb-thrashing business we see here, and, later, in Dunc 'n Loo and Thirteen Going On Eighteen.

Those who eschew Stanley's early works might rankle at this statement, but it's true. This very brassy physical farce-comedy is the meat and potatoes of Stanley's late, mature work. The main difference is the issue of narrative stakes.

The 1960s Stanley was a seasoned comics writer who understood the intricacies of status, action and reaction and the plot-point pyramid. He used these tools as their master.

In 1943, the stakes are much lower. In a life and death scenario, none of the characters take their roles really seriously. Jerry and Tuffy don't really fear being caught and eaten by Tom. Tom is an a-hole aggressor who gets his kicks toying with the mice, while striving, in vain, to retain a higher status in the household. The stereotyped Mammy maid holds the upper hand. Hers is the power to shoo them all away or tolerate/ignore them.

Stanley's comedy--and its vivid energy--carry his early stories. From the start, he was a very witty writer--more so than Barks, and certainly Kelly's equal, if not occasionally his superior.

Stanley's next T&J story continues in this vibrant, humorous bent. This story contains one of the first occurrences of a Stanleyism: spots-before-the-eyes. These occur time and again in his later work, to connote dizziness, confusion, stunned silence or sickness.

Both these stories include some of Stanley's earliest YOWs.

Rare references to current events occur in this story. In the last panel of p.3, Tom quips, "I don't need any ration coupons to eat you guys!" Jerry's smart-crack in the succeeding panel is lost to 2010 (or 2011) readers. Even I, seasoned viewer of wartime Warner Brothers cartoons, didn't understand the significance of Jerry's retort.

You can read 1943 a letter at this blog that mentions the no. 17 rationing coupon, and tells that it was for the purchase of leather shoes.

In another, more fatalistic wartime reference, on p.4, the mice mistake a wooden toy soldier for an Allied front for their predator: "WE'RE SUNK! Tom's got the U. S. Marines on his side..." This offers a hint of the rodents' self-acknowledged status as societal outsiders. I'm sure that effect was not consciously intended by Stanley when he wrote this story.

The repetitive staging seen here is one of Stanley's most-used storytelling devices. As seen in the sequence of p.4, panels 5-6 and p.5, panels 1-2, the fixed viewpoint serves the comedy by heightening the futility of the tethered rodents' efforts.

Throughout the story, fixed viewpoints sustain comedy sequences. This is another strong tie to Stanley's mature work. Once again, the 1943 Stanley uses this device with some authority, but is clearly still learning the ropes of comics. The 1963 Stanley would use the fixed viewpoint to highlight his characters' failures, embarrassments, emotional shifts and status gains/losses.

It is fascinating to me to see that the young Stanley had access to the same tools that would so distinguish his late, most masterful work. Stanley grew into them, and made them an essential element of his storytelling, rather than expressive garnishes to rowdy, bright farces.

My Febreze-activated coughing and sneezing has increased during my work on this post. I'll celebrate the New Year with NyQuil. I hope you toast 2011's arrival with a more pleasant beverage, and that this new year brings us all more pleasing results than did '10.

The First Stanley Story? "Tom & Jerry" from Our Gang Comics #3 (January 1943), plus bonus story from OG #9 (January 1944)

Here is what I believe to be Stanley's first "Tom and Jerry" story, from Our Gang Comics #3, cover-dated January-February 1943.

The first Stanley-written "Andy Panda" story appeared in New Funnies #79, cover-dated September 1943. The "Bugs Bunny" Four-Color one-shot Stanley claims to have written (issue #33), was published in the fall of '43. Thus, this appears to be THE first Stanley story.

Like the earliest stories of Carl Barks, Stanley's maiden efforts, while tentative, have a certain freshness, and vaguely hint at the themes and comedic devices their author would hone to sublimity within a few years' worth of constant writing and publication.

WARNING: Stereotyped Afro-American maid character! I find it odd that the comic book version of "Tom and Jerry" elected to show "Mammy Two Shoes"' face front and center. The MGM cartoons, though often cretinous swill, opted to tastefully (?) show "Mammy" from the calves down. The actress Lillian Randolph, who appeared in It's A Wonderful Life, Roots and The Onion Field, did Mammy's voice in full-bodied "honey chile" style.

Several of the cartoons were censored for TV. In some cases, the scenes with Mammy were re-animated to have a white bobby-soxer incongruously spouting Randolph's down-home patois. In others, June Foray did an equally offensive Irish washerwoman voice that was subbed for Randolph's.

If the cartoons had shown Mammy as these early T&J comic book stories depict her, chances are they'd be buried deep in Ted Turner's vaults.

Chances are these early stories will never see an official reprinting, so read 'em here with the always-helpful American Irony Radar unit tuned in on the "Sins of our Fathers" wavelength...











Sacred Moment In Comix History: The First YOW!

OK, so it's a "YOWEECH!" But it's the first of its genus. I'm not quite OCD enough to tabulate all the YOWs in John Stanley's comix. I'd guess the phrase was uttered at least 2,000 times between 1943 and 1963 in his work.

Tain't much to this first story (just as Barks' first "Donald Duck" 10-pager is no great shakes). The crispness of its telling, and the reliance on dialect--mushmouth for Mammy, kid-talk for the mice--plus a few un-punctuated statements in speech balloons, are the strongest Stanley tells.

Other tells: the use of the word "didie;" Tuffy's distorted hand-in-mouth dialogue on p.3, panel 2.

As well, the streamlined depiction of the two mice, and their outsider status in a dangerous, uncertain universe, bring a faint hue of despair to the otherwise-sunshiny pages of this innocent Dell kiddie komik.

I read the "Tom and Jerry" story in issue #2 of Our Gang, in preparation for this post. It does not feel like John Stanley's work. Thus, I believe this to be where it all began, John Stanley-wise.


One year later, John Stanley has begun to find his voice as a writer. The tiptoed steps of the first story become bolder strides.

This T/J story is impressively better than the one you just read. It's faster-paced, funnier, and has stronger, more well-defined stakes. Well, read it and see for yourself...










Like night and day, these two stories... in just one year of comix, Stanley had incorporated most of his major themes. There is a "Tubby Type" (Tuffy, the diapered mouse), percussive dialogue and sound effects, that familiar sense of despair gnawing at the edges of each panel, colorful, playful language with vivid colloquialisms and much stronger staging.

I quite like the background-free passages on pages 5 and 6 of this story. This staging choice really makes the story all about the characters. In such a small fictive world, this is important.

There is only so much a writer--even a good one--can do with the old cat and mouse routine. Stanley compensates by enriching these simple narratives with a heapin' helpin' of wry dialogue.

Nearly every line out of the three characters' mouths tells us something about their inner world. My personal favorite is Tuffy's utterance on the second page: "Gee, it's fun, being carried like this..."

Most tellingly, "Mammy" is nowhere in sight. The story is just about the survival game, and how the two mice endure it with a sense of humor and plenty o' attitude.

I hope this yuletide-free edition of "Stanley Stories" has proven a refreshing escape from all the holiday hoo-hah.

By the way, my fellow comix fiends, if anyone has issues 13, 15 and 18 of Our Gang, and would be willing to scan their contents for purposes of comix research, please contact me.

Our 100th Post: Sarcastic Mice [One Diapered] Foil, Annoy Supercilious, Self-Impressed Feline; Cream Pitcher Shattered, Stereotyped Maid Vexed (1943)

Well, friends, fans, followers, here it is--the star-studded, gala-enriched 100th post of Stanley Stories!

Whoa--hold that deafening applause just a sec! Wow, you guys are loud! Thank you, thank you, thank you...

While not all the 100 posts on this blog are "real" posts (some are political endorsements, some are citations of Stanley-related posts on others' blogs, some are self-promotion, and promos of outstanding print and media products), there are well over 100 complete stories by John Stanley, available for all the world to enjoy, on this blog.

Here's a new discovery (as of yesterday), and one of Stanley's earliest comix efforts--an untitled "Tom and Jerry" story from Our Gang Comics #5, May-June 1943. Our hero had just entered the world of comic book writing this year.

Stanley's earliest stories have elements of his later work. At this stage, each new story was a laboratory for their author to experiment with timing, onomatopoeia, character motivation and dramatic stakes. They seldom achieve the casual sophistication we see in his classic period (1948-1956). As with Barks' early work, Stanley's first stories are so much better than most of their contemporaries that it's easy to forgive their small faults.

With the "Tom and Jerry" series, Stanley had his first taste of writing with an ensemble cast. This was a fine set-up for on-the-job learning. Stanley had much to choose from: the dynamic between Jerry Mouse and his diaper-clad cousin Tuffy; the dynamic of each mouse with the proto-Tubby character of Tom Cat (who swims in a sea of cognitive biases, in classic Stanley manner); the relationship of Tom with the stereotyped Afro-American maid, Dinah; and, most importantly, the uncertain relationship of the two mice and the giant, unknown world that expands around them beyond the horizon of their consciousness.

Stanley would hone this multi-level relational comedy to perfection in his long run on Little Lulu [1945-59]. In these simple, straightforward cat and mouse stories, that skill was first developed and worked out.

I make no claims that this is a great story. It is energetic, funny, and leavened with some surprising, wild details. Read 'n' enjoy; then we'll talk.









Standard predator and prey antics are common material for the funny-animal genre. This may be the first such series to invest its characters with some semblance of personality flaws, skewered world-views, and a margin of believability. Stanley's reinvention of the MGM cartoon series is so much better than the largely witless, barbaric Hanna-Barbera animated version.

This was Stanley's standard MO when given licensed properties: pick out the crap (roughly 87% of the original version) and hone in on the remaining 13%; bring those elements to the fore-front, elaborate on them, and, in the end, create a secondary version that outshines the original.

Stanley did this with the Walter Lantz characters, with Famous Studios would-be stars, with MGM characters and, according to his own claims, with Warner Brothers' already A-OK Bugs Bunny, in two Four Color 1943/4 one-shots. (I do not believe Stanley really wrote the two Bugs Bunny FCs he claimed in his resume-- issues 33 and 51. There are no Stanley "tells" in them whatsoever; they appear to be the product of Dell's California offices, which routinely handled the Warner Brothers licensing.)

Some early Stanley "tells" are evident here: sound effects in word balloons, phonetic spelling of words, and un-punctuated dialogue.

Early in his comix career, Stanley trafficked in racial humor and stereotyped images--as did his peer and friend Walt Kelly. After that final "Li'l Eight Ball" story (which ran here a post or two ago), I don't recall any further Stanley uses of Afro-American characters. In fact, I believe they are completely absent from his post-1947 comix work.

That is a facet of the current popularity of Little Lulu, via those Dark Horse reprint books. There's nothing that un-PC about the stories. (Well, there are the parent-to-child spankings, but I'm sure there are still some parents whose parenting procedure involves this barbaric ritual...)

Carl Barks, who only seldom trod into un-PC territory, has had all the "objectionable material" deleted from his work by those history-revisionists extraordinaire, The Disney Corporation. His handful of stories with Afro-American characters were usually set in Africa, or the Middle East.

(The same fate has met some of his stories with Native American characters, which are much more plentiful. For a truly repugnant reading experience, try the 1980s Gladstone emasculation of his 1950 gem "Land of the Totem Poles." Disney censors rewrote the NA dialogue to read like all parts were played by Ronald Colman and C. Aubrey Smith. It's an object-lesson in how to completely destroy comedy via tampering.)

All this said, Stanley did the best he could with what was required of him. Dinah, in this story, is an active figure in the narrative. She doesn't just have things happen to her; she takes part in what's going on, and affects the outcome of the narrative.

That still doesn't make the visual treatment of Dinah any less upsetting. Oddly, the MGM cartoons chose to [almost] never show the maid's face. As with the parents in Sheldon Mayer's later Sugar and Spike episodes, she's seen only from the mid-torso down.

My guess: that Stanley rightfully realized this would seem weird on the printed page. To make the character a congruent part of the narrative, her face--and facial reactions--needed to be seen by the reader.

He could have done far, far worse--examine the "Tom & Jerry" stories by the anonymous, primitive artist who succeeded him for proof of how wrong this could go.

By far, the finest moments in this story occur when Stanley goes out of his way to stop the action, for the sole purpose of giving the characters added dimension. E.G., this lyrical moment in which Tom Cat rhapsodizes about his favorite high-lipid liquid:



Ditto this TMI moment, in which Tuffy retrieves an essential personal belonging:



Stanley achieves comedy brilliance here. Not only for the info that the garment is Tuffy's "next best didie," but that, in flight from the pee-oh'd feline, he tries to put the diaper back on.

Just bringing to our attention the fact that:

1) a cartoon mouse, clearly able to control his own BMs by now, would long to wear a diaper, in the first place
2) that said mouse owns several different pairs of diapers;
3) that said mouse has his didies ranked, according to a personal code of quality;
4) that his first impulse, even in a life-threatening moment, is to put his diaper on

John Stanley goes far, far beyond the call of duty, in the midst of an alleged "kiddie" comix story.

Moments such as this, in which we get a strong glimpse of an actual inner life and personality on the part of two-dimensional comix characters, distinguishes Stanley's work from even its earliest moments.

There is no good reason, in the traditions of the comic book industry, for precious panels to be squandered on such details. By doing so, Stanley raised the bar on comix writing and mass-media comedy. This is why Little Lulu was a major success as a comic magazine--and one read by adults and children alike.

Without these little details--the loving depiction of quirks, tics and personal biases--Stanley's characters would be just like the majority of witless, soul-less funnybook figures.

We can still learn a great deal, even from John Stanley's earliest efforts.

Well, here's hoping for 100 more posts... see you soon!

Li'l Eight-Ball Endures Trauma of Pet Rejection; Encounters Nightmare Apparition In Deep Woods; Mammy Revives Stereotyped Tot (New Funnies 101)

Hi all...

While we're still in Li'l Eight Ball mode, here is Stanley's greatest, creepiest story of that series. Probably the only Li'l Eight Ball story--or commercial entity--that can be referred to as great in any way.

I ran this story, years back, on the primitive, original Stanley Stories website. It deserves a revival. I believe that Professor Thomas Andrae refers to this story in his new book, Creators of Humor in Comic Books. Dr. Andrae consulted with me during the writing of this book. I contributed some research and text to it. I don't know what work of mine survives in the published volume.

If you're reading this, Thomas, please drop me a line. I'd like to know how you are!

More info on the book H E R E.

Now onto today's story. This appeared in a late WWII issue of New Funnies, in the depths of paper rationing. Most comix published from 1944-6 suffer from low-grade pulp paper, highly susceptible to browning, brittling and foxing.

Dell's in-house printing quality was never worse than in these years. The size of their comics unreliably wavered between 52 and 36 pp., depending on the paper allotments, I'd guess.

This is from one of the 36 page issues. Stories were reformatted to run on less pages. Same thing happened to Carl Barks' work, and to other Dell creators.

This is really a Halloween-type story, but since I ran another Stanley Eight-Ball, now's the time to give this deeply disturbing piece another day in the sun...








I've mentioned before a certain parallel in Stanley's work and writer Roald Dahl's. That dichotomy seems quite strong in this brutal, trauma-ridden story.

Both authors never flinched at the chance to depict the dark side of childhood, and of growing up. Indeed, the antics with the
"Headless Horseman's stableboy," as that nightmarish silhouette tags himself, pales next to these two panels of Li'l Eight-Ball, deep in the vast woods, crying because he's been ordered to rid himself of a lovable pet cat by his irascible, mood-swinging Mammy:



I don't believe this is intended as comical. To devote an entire tier of precious space to this pitiful, private moment of grief is rare and jarring indeed. A moment such as this removes the regrettable racist trappings from this character and reveals him to be, for the blink of an eye, a sympathetic, relatable, deeply human creation.

Today seems a most apt day to appreciate the effects of trauma. 'Nuff said.

Of course, comix history contains a jillion such scenes, of disappointed, scared or discouraged kids bawling, usually over something trivial. I don't want to make too much of this moment, except to note that it exists, and seems to me more disturbing than the life-threatening actions that follow it.

The exchanges between Eight-Ball and the headless dude have a vaudevillian ring to them; they feel like Stanley trying to approximate the cadences of his friend and colleague, Walt Kelly. Perhaps it's the Deep South dialect, but their dialogue has a certain Pogo-esque feel. It isn't hard to imagine Albert the Alligator as the Headless Horseman's stable-boy, and Pogo in the Eight-Ball role.

The story's happy ending doesn't chase away the genuine feeling of trauma evoked in its earlier pages. Were I Eight-Ball, I'd have a hard time trusting Mammy again, and would likely find myself in the therapy process in adulthood.

Ever one to end stories on off-note zingers, Stanley punctuates the fragile stability of the ending with the cat's de-punctuated MROUR

Coming next: a brilliant "Woody Woodpecker" story from the same battered, browned issue of New Funnies!