A Couple of Woodies For You: proto-Little Lulu items from New Funnies, 1945

The above detail is from the cover to New Funnies 97, which isn't featured here today. The focus is on a pair of early "Woody Woodpecker" stories that remarkably anticipate the themes of John Stanley's classic Little Lulu narratives--in both story and art.

Stanley's version of Woody Woodpecker is the gateway to his single finest characterization: Tubby Tompkins, from Lulu. This comparison has been noted, in depth, already in this blog. 

Today's first story, from New Funnies 96, has strong ties to the classic Little Lulu era. The use of snowball fights as a comedic status war is common in Lulu. Stories such as "The Big Snow Fight" (Four-Color 139, 1947), "The Snowball War" (LL 9, 1949) and "Prisoner of War" (LL 66, 1953), to choose just three, show Stanley's clever, vivid use of this childhood aggression-play as a ground zero of narrative stakes-raising.

Woody fights solo against "the South Side Gang," a cut-throat mob of dog-kids. Unlike Tubby, the woodpecker is a disenfranchised loner, and no mercy is accorded him at any point.

The theater-of-cruelty that would inform Stanley's Thirteen Going on Eighteen is evident here. Before Woody can perform his two acts of aggression, he has been repaid tenfold by the cute-yet-vicious humanoid tots.

After those two incidents, the South Side Gang literally attempts to seal his fate. They freeze him inside a snowball, then shove him downhill to his intended doom.

Woody's soliloquy, while the kids send him rolling, is almost chilling. "I must be SOMEPLACE... I can't be NO PLACE!"

Woody, in Stanley's hands, is forever "no place." Try as he may, he never fits into the world around him. He puts up a good fight, but the universe dishes out indifference all the same. Tubby never suffered anything remotely as bad--even in the clutches of the feared West Side guys!

Our second story, from New Funnies 104, is written and drawn by Stanley, in the style of his earliest Little Lulu stories. This story, cover-dated October, 1945, was drawn shortly after the first Lulu one-shot. Unlike the debut Lulu, which is crisply inked in pen, this story is finished with a brush. It gives the artwork a softer feel, and its style is obviously infected by the Marge Buell look.

It's worth comparing that first Lulu (there are two stories from that debut issue elsewhere on this blog) with this and other 1945-46 "Woody" stories drawn by Stanley. (Yep, you guessed it--many of those stories are also found deep inside Stanley Stories.)

Trainspotters will note an early instance of "ZAZ," plus moments of windmill action, a Charlie Chicken clone, one "YALP!" and a large, plump "YOW," as the 'pecker attempts to be helpful down on the farm. (Spoiler alert: he fails.)

Once again, the Thirteen-esque ballet of cruelty runs the show. Woody wants to please, to conform to normal routines. But he can't; no matter how carefully prepared, no matter how alert of conscious of his surroundings, objects living and inanimate are set to do him in.

For once, Woody is not an a-hole, and is genuinely sympathetic. The painful, humiliating battery he endures is, like some of Val's more awkward moments in Thirteen, almost too much. Stanley trafficked in such knockabout comedy, for his entire career, but he sometimes didn't know when to turn it off. But it takes someone going too far to know, indeed, how far "too far" really is.

At his best, Stanley pushed the boundaries of "too far" daringly, and endowed formulaic stories with a bracing comedic zest. This gives his stories an edge which makes them still relevant and funny.

Temper Tantrums and Crab-Apple Theft: Two Early Stanleys from New Funnies 89, 1944

Praise be unto the anonymous scanners who post entire issues of old funny-books online. Via their tireless efforts, we can actually read vintage comics, and regard them not as investments, to be sealed in a lucite cube, but as examples of American mass-media.

Here's an early New Funnies issue I've been searching for, free of charge, thanks to the kindness of "Sooth." These early 1944 efforts show us John Stanley still working out how to do comic book stories.  The results are hit or miss, but his hand is quite evident--especially in the first story.

Before that, a moment of time-worn patriotism:

Andy appears eager to obtain one of those war bonds! Does he have $100.00 in that piggy bank? We'll never know...

Stanley's cartooning enlivens this scrappy "Andy Panda" story. It proceeds, as do many of Stanley's early efforts, in a Carl Barks-ian fashion. The narrative stakes, as in Barks' early "Donald Duck" short stories, hang on the protagonist's ability to keep a promise or meet a clearly defined goal.

With his remarkable 1945 "Oswald the Rabbit" one-shot (found HERE and HERE), Stanley made his first foray into higher narrative stakes. Those two stories were a major step forward for John Stanley.

The stakes here are much lower. Again, as with the early Barks, 1944 Stanley stories stick close to the ground, and take place in a recognizable, habitable everyday world.

Stanley uses the time-honored ODTAA (One Damned Thing After Another) formula, in which the hero undergoes a pummeling series of frustrations. These take him from normalcy to anti-social isolation. This schematic was a mainstay of Barks' work, right to his career's end.

Stanley soon moved beyond this scenario, given his interest in richer characterizations and higher stakes. In this story, Andy and Charlie Chicken also swap status roles. Charlie is the anti-social rowdy at story's start. Andy, driven by his attempts to set a good example, despite overwhelming odds, ends up fuming behind bars, while his loose-cannon companion enjoys unfettered freedom.

This status swap would inform many of Stanley's classic "Little Lulu" and "Tubby" stories.  

Stanley's cartooning is over-wrought in this early effort. His style would become one of under-statement and economy. The background details of the first few pages take our attention frequently away from the actions of the protagonist and antagonists. By story's end, Stanley uses simpler, more diagrammatic images. 

The human figures in Stanley's early stories have a distinct look. The cat lady in this story is seen in many iterations, including the female adults in the earliest Little Lulu stories. These highly stylized humans are another reliable Stanley art "tell."

Notice the odd "Walter Lantz" signature on p.7, panel 4. What was up with that? It's worth noting that the signature appears in a panel in which Lantz's character runs in pain and terror. 

Less refined is this issue's "Woody Woodpecker" story. Most certainly not drawn by Stanley, it shows little care or concern. Stanley's next "Woody" story would inaugurate a series of strong, high-stakes narratives in this series that would last through 1947. 

Here, Woody is just an anti-social pest, dropped into a rustic situation where he encounters adversity and humiliation. He never eschews his gadfly status, bless his psychotic li'l heart!

As in Stanley's first Woody story (seen HERE), the world is very much against the woodpecker from panel one. He wants something that's not acceptable, or negotiable, to the world around him. Woody is a true "Tubby Type"-- see his self-justifying babble on p.1, panel 6. In his eyes, anything he thinks or does is A-OK. It's the failing of the world around him that it can't buy in to his desires.

This sounds exactly like Larry David's persona on Curb Your Enthusiasm. As I wrote in this somewhat controversial post, there is a direct link from Stanley's comics work to the recent trend of humiliation comedy on TV.

Even in his least significant stories--of which this is certainly is--Stanley's intelligence and comedic sense are evident. To read John Stanley's 1940s stories, with knowledge of what he would do in the '50s and '60s, is enlightening.

The Late Late Show: Selections From The Last Thirteen Going on Eighteen Issue, 1967

I've focused extensively on the early work of John Stanley in this blog. It's been fascinating for me (and, I hope, you as well) to see early glimmers of Stanley's mature style in his work of the 1940s. (That much of this material will likely never be reprinted is another deciding factor.)

I've accorded less space to Stanley's 1960s work. I've avoided it because much of it has been reprinted (the entirety of Melvin Monster, for example), or is being reprinted.

It will be awhile before Drawn + Quarterly gets to the last issues of Stanley's 1960s original, Thirteen Going on Eighteen. Thus, I thought to examine the final issue of this series, which has a cover date of December, 1967.

In mainstream comics of the late 1960s, it was very rare for one person to do everything in the creative process. Sheldon Mayer wrote and drew his increasingly baroque Sugar and Spike for DC Comics, although he left the lettering to other staffers. John Stanley and Carl Barks (who would retire from comics in this year) were able to complete their comics from concept to final inking, lettering and drawing of panel borders.

In this light, they worked more like syndicated newspaper cartoonists (although, unlike comic book artists, newspaper cartoonists often had assistants and go-fers). The humble art of comic books had been long turned into a team effort, and, with the advent of "the Marvel method," more of an assembly-line process. Fans of Jack Kirby know the often-deleterious effects this comics-by-committee process had on his work.

Stanley, Barks and Mayer had the luxury of making their decisions (and acting upon them) alone, at their drawing board. Editors might demand after-the-fact changes, but these creators were trusted to produce professional-level, marketable comic book stories.

Though Mayer struggled with worsening vision, as his book-length Sugar and Spike stories became more byzantine and visually complex, Barks and Stanley strove to simplify their work. Barks was burned out on comics by 1967. To judge by the stories you're about to read, John Stanley may have been, as well.

By this time, Stanley had substantially slowed the tempo of the book. The frantic, addled physical comedy of earlier issues has mellowed. Stanley's drawings are much simpler and stiller than in earlier issues. By this time, he has written and drawn the series for over four years. His hand is confident and reserved. As a writer, Stanley had let a lot of his former determination go by this time.

I wonder if John Stanley knew this would be the final new issue of this series, while he worked on it. Nothing in any of its stories betrays a sign of a finale. It's business as usual, although with lower narrative stakes than usual.

Thirteen's world was hopelessly out of date by 1967. America had undergone enormous societal changes during the book's run. Youth culture, which was underground (and frowned upon) when the series debuted, was strongly felt, and had rent the status quo of American life, by '67.

Teenagers were no longer wannabe adults. They embraced a coded culture of music, movies, literature and visuals that often alienated their parents and other elders. While much of this material was callously manufactured by adults, eager to cash in on this lucrative youth market, it still caused a breach in American life. The youth market is stronger than ever in 2011, and, ironically, is now very much a part of the status quo.

That sense of societal change barely exists in Thirteen Going on Eighteen. A 21st century reader can intuit more of a sense of the 1960s' changes from the Archie Comics titles of the same era, which embraced topical themes to a fault.

Never one to exploit current events, Stanley felt most comfortable creating a world, detailing it, and letting it run in perpetuity. This strategy worked remarkably well for Little Lulu, his most successful series. Though his 1950s Lulu run embodies the general societal vibe of that anxious decade, the stories contain almost no nods to fads, fancies or new technology--aside from really general items like TV.

For much of Thirteen's run, Stanley's isolationist formula-world was viable and fruitful. The series' middle-range issues, with their enormous vitality and sweep, are Stanley's finest late work. You can sample the start of this period in the last third of D + Q's first (and, so far, only) Thirteen reprint volume.

Formulas, no matter how solid or thoughtful, eventually pall. While there's nothing bad about this final Thirteen Going on Eighteen, it does lack the sparkle of earlier issues. Perhaps Stanley was simply written out. He achieved an earlier brilliance with the series, via the deftly wrought characters of the series' twin protagonists, Val and Judy. They are Stanley's most fully realized figures, and inspired some of his finest writing and cartooning.

This would not be Stanley's final published work as a writer-cartoonist. He did the giant-size "Bridget" strip for Wham-O Giant Comics, and wrote/laid out two more books--the one-shot licensed property Choo-Choo Charlie and his final original creation for comics, O. G. Whiz. Dig around on this blog and you'll find all of these late works.

Here are five stories from this final issue.

As noted earlier, the narrative stakes of the stories are quite low-key by Stanley standards. No event has great import, or truly affects any of the characters. The first two stories are basically longish set-ups for a single punchline. There is little investment by the author and, thus, little reward for the reader.

The last two stories here present slightly stronger stakes, and are endowed with more spirit by Stanley the cartoonist. "The Waswolf," our final glimpse at the imperfect relationship of Judy and Wilbur, concludes with a display of comedic physical violence reminiscent of earlier issues.

In the otherwise throwaway "Judy" story "Downside Up," we get one fleeting acknowledgment of 1960s youth culture. The image of 'Ronnie Knowse,' in the story's second panel, suggests a furry cross of David Crosby and John Denver. Like the network sitcoms of the '60s, which struggled to recognize trends in the world around them, Stanley made a few awkward attempts to inject a sense of currency to this otherwise-hermetic universe. The image is jarring, and it's apt that it occurs in the final new issue of the series.

In this final issue, Stanley also chose to alter Val's hairstyle from her sock-hop ponytail to a more modern coiffure. The issue's lead story makes a big deal about this change, but the point of the story is about boy-next-door Billy's admitted shallowness.

What the heck--here's that story, too:

"Strange Girl" is more in line with the classic period of Thirteen. The longest story in this final issue, it has the most complex character interactions, and the closest thing to high narrative stakes, as we know them in Stanley's fictive world.

It is more satisfying to read that opening story as a closer. It makes up for the flyweight quality of the other stories. "Strange Girl" is Stanley's final burst of inspiration at the end of a long series.

I look forward to D+Q's second volume of the Thirteen series. Having these brilliant stories restored to currency will be a great gift to the comics-reading world.