Deadly-Serious Funnies: Andy Panda in "The Mad Dog Mystery" (Dell one-shot #85, 1945)

There was some interest in seeing this early long John Stanley narrative. By no means is this among Stanley's better work. It is a decent example of his storytelling skills, largely devoid of his characteristic comedy.

A couple of tics emerge throughout this deadly-serious story. One is the eccentric 1940s beardo who appears early in the story. He gives the story a false comedic start that's immediately replaced by a Fredric Brown/Dorothy Hughes-esque mystery, garnished with Hitchcockian suspense set-pieces.

Well, take 15 minutes and read it yourself. Then we'll talk...

There is a fair deal of incidental comedy throughout "The Mad Dog Mystery." I dare say that the phrase "I'd walk a skunk for ten bucks!" is the funniest comment I've encountered so far today.

A mild theme of wartime intrigue gives the narrative some decent stakes. Stanley almost never included topical references in his work. Whereas Walt Kelly and Carl Barks played up the America-at-war angle for maximum drama and laffs in their contemporary stories, John Stanley disengaged from the realities of the day.

Kelly, in particular, played up the fifth-column angle like mad in his "Our Gang" stories, which "The Mad Dog Mystery" rather resembles with its rambly plot and childish protagonists. Barks, as in his "Terror of the River" and "Ghost of the Grotto," would have made the bad guys much more sinister in appearance.

The sequence in the houseboat is particularly Barksian. Left to die in the sinking, scuttled houseboat, Andy Panda and Charlie Chicken stoically prepare to meet their maker. Sheer practical survival-thinking--and a poor plastering job--save the day. The cramped 12-panel grid of the wartime Dell comics adds to the tension and sense of inescapable threat that pervades this sequence--and the whole story.

Stanley often gives a lumpen ordinariness to his antagonists. The traitorous scientist (and member of Stanley's antiques-loving Evil Rich) Klinker is a frumpy, seemingly ineffectual fellow. He's distinguishable from the cops who burst in as an un-needed deus ex machina at story's end. Klinker is slighter, more composed and less earthy than the derbied dicks.

The theme of the Evil Rich was a constant throughout Stanley's comics writing. Here is where he and Carl Barks part ways with a vengeance. Scrooge McDuck is a frequent violator of human rights--a driven individual who will stop at nothing to increase his already-absurd level of wealth. He has almost no time for anything but money.

Stanley's wealthy are idle aesthetes who fiddle with antiques, paintings and other trappings of the good life. Their actual money is almost never seen--in contrast to Scrooge McDuck's iconic Money Bin, and its owner's orgasmic rolls-in-the-hay with his cash. Money is the fetish-object of Scrooge McD's life. The trappings of wealth are the end-goal of Stanley's Evil Rich.

In Stanley's world, it is preferable for the elite to admire their Van Goof canvases, esoteric upholsteries of the 16th century, statuary, rare coins, books and whatnot. This keeps them distracted from the genuine harm and suffering their money and power can cause other people.

"The Mad Dog Mystery," a sorta-sequel to "The Secret Six," Stanley's Oswald Rabbit thriller of the same year, suffers from the vagueness of Klinker's actions. We never learn exactly what Klinker does--or how it helps "the enemy."

There is that canister of carefully-labeled lethal gas--the agent of Klinker's undoing, and a rare moment when Stanley's work aligns with the crude doings of the super-hero comics genre. Comics' mad scientists always seem to have such a clearly-marked supply of dangerous acid, gas or poison on hand. I'm pretty sure it was in their contracts to do so.

Stanley was usually alert about genre cliches and how to bend them. Such occurrences are usually tongue-in-cheek in his work.

Of course, this is from the early period of Stanley's career as a comics writer. He was still learning, and still forming the vision that became so distinct by the later 1940s. The relentless flow of the narrative may have eddied into a corner, and forced this obvious plot-point.

"The Mad Dog Mystery" has one of many occurrences of consequential cross-dressing in Stanley's oeuvre. Boys dressed as girls, and vice versa, are a common sub-theme in Little Lulu and Tubby. The stakes for these kids are as high as Prof. Klinker's herein.

Stanley's minor stories, among which "The Mad Dog Mystery" resides, reveal as much about their creator as his most acclaimed and important work. Like his characters, John Stanley was driven by apparent compulsions to repeat certain themes, actions and devices.  He refined them, over time, but they remained central to his work as a storyteller and artist.

The HaLLoween Spirit 2: Magician's Aide Suspected in Cruel Hoax; Large Cardboard Tube Baffles Community; Evil Scion of Wealth Duped By Clever Commoner

Howdy, one and all. These are stressful times for me. I'm moving--to a much better and more affordable place, but moving is always stressful. And, as usual, I'm flat broke. Jobs of any kind are nigh-impossible to find. I'm hanging by a slender thread of faith in the universe that I'll make it through this winter.

Thus, my plans to do a lot of posts in October are somewhat hindered. I'll do my best to do a post a week. Thanks for your patience.

Here are the next three stories from the 1958 Little Lulu and Tubby Halloween Fun giant. Today's selections are very Tubby-centric. That is always good news in the Luluverse.

I've been asked to write an essay about characters in popular media with heavy cognitive biases. Tubby is, of course, one of the great examples. I think Larry David's character in Curb Your Enthusiasm and Ricky Gervais and Steve Carell's roles in both versions of The Office have much in common with good ol' Tub.

We are drawn to characters who create disaster via their tenacious hold on warped world-views and askew justifications. I think there is something cathartic about seeing such characters make huge gaffes and disrupt the order of the world around them.

This is especially true when said characters sincerely believe that what they're doing is right--perhaps the only way to achieve their goals. It is a huge societal fear that we will be exposed as someone who has made flagrantly wrong choices, and upset the applecart of routine life via our misinformed decisions.

Tubby's wrong choices don't make my sphincter turn inside out, as do Larry David's or Michael Scott's. Horror movies don't scare me; The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm both do.

Tub's is a kindler, gentler set of cognitive biases. Speaking of which, let's enjoy the Tubster in action...

"The Frog In The Hat" sidesteps the Hallo-theme, although a stage magician's mystique does border on the supernatural for the kids in this story. Tubby's logic system is a runaway train here, with Lulu its bewildered passenger.








As usual, it's just Tub's overactive, unmedicated imagination, and nothing more. But Tub's belief system rescues Mysto the magician from a horde of menopausal female fans, on whom he apparently has a Tom Jones-like effect.

By simply believing in his misinformed thesis, and following it to an illogical conclusion, Tubby (and Lulu) are rewarded by their most grateful idol. It's fascinating to see Lulu--always the voice of reason and logic--so taken in by Tub's flights of fantasy.

That Stanley's characters are malleable and inconsistent makes them all the more real, appealing and compelling. We want to see what will happen to them. Like us, they are uncertain vessels on the sea of life. They do not react robotically to circumstances.

Tubby edges Lulu completely out of the picture for the next two stories. "Missle Fizzle" offers a fascinating and rare glimpse inside the home of Lulu's best friend, Annie. In many stories, Annie is depicted as a poor child. Her home seems no better or worse than the Moppets' or the Tompkins'. Perhaps Annie's family came into some money in the mid-1950s.






"Missle Fizzle" is built around topical references to Space Age weaponry--an unusual move for John Stanley in Little Lulu. The series, as a whole, occurs in a comfortable vacuum. Their timeframe is a vague "now" that could be any year from 1945to 1960.

The stories seem, im particular, to take place in the prosperous, relaxed later 1940s. It's genuinely surprising to see the intrustions of the present-day in "Little Lulu."

Stanley would aggressively embrace pop culture references in his post-Lulu work. "Missle Fizzle" is a fascinating preview of his 1960s writing.

It is also a brilliantly dense dose of character-driven comedy. Annie's brother, Iggy, instigates the mishaps. For once, Tubby (plus the other "fellers") completely buys another person'a sincere-but-misguided concept.

The rich visual-verbal comedy that ensues is top-drawer stuff. Stanley had a great deal invested in these characters. All that thinking and planning had given him a foolproof foundation to write hilarious and delightfully absurd stories such as this.


Tubby emerges triumphant, in "The Bragging Mirror," against his greatest foe, the amoral, wealthy Wilbur van Snobbe. Wilbur is unusually nasty here. Again, this anticipates Stanley's coming tenure on the Nancy comics. Stanley's treatment of the equivalent Rollo Haveall character, in that series, is among his harshest depiction of the heartless, manipulative rich.









The main situation of this story is gimmicky sitcomix. Stanley just barely gets away with its artifice. You know something's up when Tub keeps his scheme to himself. An egomaniac of his caliber would typically obsess over his scheme, savoring each detail in detail.

Of course, if Tub did that, the story would fall apart. It works because we have seen Tubby try to get along with Wilbur so many times in the past--and has had his sincere efforts trampled and his kindness mocked. As well, Wilbur, who needs no extra money, has duped Tub out of "at least twenty dollars" over the years.

We want to see this comeuppance--especially impressive since it is a no-budget affair. All Tubby needs is his vivid imagination and a "ventriloquist gadget." The latter, seen in many 1940s animated cartoons, comic books and '50s TV shows, apparently was a miraculous device.

The tacit moral of the story is that Tubby, lower middle class kid of no great means, can outfox lazy, self-indulgent, wealthy Wilbur with nothing more than a colorful, clever story. Wilbur is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, despite his social and financial pedigree.

Were "The Bragging Mirror" not so rich in detail, and seated in such a high-stakes unsettled score, it would be just like another 100 dumb funny-book stories. It's to Stanley's credit that he transcends the gimmick with convincing characterization and geniune, well-depicted human emotion.

We'll take a temporary break from this Halloween giant, as I've had requests for some of Stanley's whacked-out serious horror stories of the early 1960s. I'll offer up some of those subconscious wonders next time around.

Volatile, Addled Woodpecker Seeks Chinese Food; Is Rewarded With Temp Work; Attempts Bank Take-Over; Ends Up In Ashcan (New Funnies 101, 1945)

While I had my brittle issue of New Funnies #101 in the scanner, I decided it was high time to preserve the Woody Woodpecker story in that issue. I hope you've recovered, emotionally, from the Li'l Eight Ball piece I last posted.

Today's story was the one that hepped me, back in 1982, to a distinctive quality that I would come to attribute to John Stanley. I'd started collecting New Funnies because it was the only Dell anthology comic of the period that was then valueless. These prime Stanley-driven issues could be purchased for a buck or two, while contemporary issues of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, Our Gang, Animal, et al, went for 20, 30, or 40 bucks.

Cheapness drove me to New Funnies as a comics-starved college student. But I quickly discovered that a great mind was at work within its pages.

Though fellow writers Frank Thomas and Gaylord Dubois penned similar stories for New Funnies, neither person captured the same droll, dry quality, nor the cramped urban settings that I associate with John Stanley's efforts on the title. Before I became familiar with Little Lulu, New Funnies served as my introduction to his comix work.

Most importantly, Stanley gave his characters a rich selection of what behavioral science calls "cognitive biases"-- fractured logic-systems, created by the mosaic of good and bad experiences we all face in our lives.

H E R E is a list of cognitive biases. This guide is a handy supplement to your enjoyment of Stanley Stories. John Stanley didn't have this list, but he was a student of cognitive biases. They inform the personality and choice-making of all his characters.

The Stanley ur-character is Tubby Tompkins, who embodies nearly every bias on this Wikipedia list. I've discussed the qualities of the central Stanley anti-hero protagonist elsewhere in this blog. Just scan this list and you'll recognize major aspects of the Tubby-type.

Before Tubby became Stanley's primary flawed hero, Woody Woodpecker was the author's major cognitive bias figure.

Woody, in a much-improved variant of his '40s animated cartoon persona, is a fringe-dweller in a rough, heartless urban world.

He drifts from place to place--nothing steady under his feet except the pavement. Like the screen Woody, he's an impulsive being,easily seduced by whims, wherever they lead him. Unlike the movie Woodpecker, he lacks malice, unless sufficiently provoked by a genuine nemesis.

He's content to wander through the world--sometimes as an adult, sometimes as a schoolboy. Most often, as in this story, Woody is a man-child--completely out of step with the cares and goals of the bustling, anxious world around him.

In this story, simply by following his assumptions, and believing in them, Woody goes places and does things--but ends up where he started. Well, read it and see for yourself...








This is a beautifully constructed story, full of status shifts and neurotic human behavior. I pity poor Plunkett, the harried employment agency owner, with his passive-aggressive outbursts, and his sad mantra, "I got enough troubles!"

Woody's free-associative, innocent actions in this story remind me of Bill Griffith's 1970s Zippy the Pinhead pieces. In those stories Zippy beatifically wandered in and out of other people's angst-ridden struggles, was endowed with authority, wreaked havoc without an effort, and exited, stage right, no worse for the wear.

Woody hasn't Zippy's skill at spinning non-sequiturs and Spoonerisms. He is quite good at misinterpreting others' verbal signals, making rapid assumptions, and changing course, based on those wrong guesses.

Via Woody, Tubby, Loo and other anti-social characters, Stanley indulged in anarchic behavior on the printed page. I love the sequence of Woody opening the bank vault with a match-stick, then rifling through piles of large bills, in search of 15 cents, which he ultimately borrows from the errand boy!

The idea of wealth is meaningless to Woody. Getting pocket change for lunch at a Chinese restaurant is what he really wants out of life.

Status is king in Stanley's world, and via Plunkett's misinterpreted endowment, Woody assumes the role of a bank manager. Without question, he's accepted by the other bank employees. Were he capable of remembering where he was, and staying with his impulses, Woody could probably remain the bank's president, and retire a wealthy woodpecker.

Personal note; I wish real-life employment agencies were as active as the Placem outfit in this story! Seattle's temp agencies just ain't hiring these days. Where are the real-life Plunketts when a feller needs 'em?