Lulu and Tubby's 1957 summer camp epic, pt.2

Here's installment two of the Dell Giant Lulu/Tubby Summer Camp book of 1957.

It's a pity these summer camp comix have never been reprinted. It would be impossible to chop these up into isolated stories. Stanley, in these giant books, remarkably weaves a simple, casual narrative. Each story's events quietly pushes the story along its arc, like a local bus that makes many brief stops.

Each vignette depends on what's come before it--and what will happen beyond it--to properly work.

In a sense, these summer camp giants are prehistoric graphic novels. More-so than any other giant comix of the era, Stanley's make a conscientious effort to stay on-course, and to tell a story from start to end.

This subtlety has doomed them to extinction, it would seem. I don't know if Dark Horse, or Drawn + Quarterly, plan to include the many giants Stanley wrote between 1955 and 1962 in their respective reprint projects. If not, modern-day readers will miss out on some of Stanley's best writing.

"Camp Shakatot," our opening story, offers a first page of intense verbal humor. It rivals "Two Foots Are Feet" [see earlier post for that story] in its carom of repetition.

Therein, we meet the obese, oblivious Ada Bump, a sort of female Tubby. Our hero indulges in some non-PC fat jokes, but leavens them with absurdity and more wordplay. The story's climax is like Samuel Beckett--only funny.













Tubby and bratty Alvin spice up "High Dive Expert," which is an otherwise slight story, distinguished by some delightful status switcheroos. Stanley indulges in more naturalistic kid chatter, as well.








Here's a page of Tubby-pleasing tips on how to prepare snacks in the wild--even in your backyard or airshaft!



And for our final feature today, "Paddle Your Own Canoe" shows the other side of the status fence in the girls' camp. A so-so story, it has some late instances of "windmill action" in the canoeing scenes. This Stanley device was largely abandoned after the late '40s.






More camp comix tomorrow, depending on how my lower back holds out...

Summer Camp, 1957-style, with Lulu and Tubby , pt. 1

Summer rapidly approaches. Here in the Pacific Northwest, while sunshine has mostly replaced rain and overcast grey, the temperatures remain in the highly reasonable 50s, 60s and (at worse) 70s.

I'm no fan of warm weather, so that's as hot as it ever need get for me. Alas, it will get hotter, and brighter, and increasingly less pleasant in the months to come.

I have no real cause for complaint--I live in one of the most temperate climate zones on this continent. If it's any consolation, I spent most of the first 30 years of my life in the dank jungles of the Southeast--Florida and Georgia--and I know all too well what summertime in a southern clime is like.

That said, John Stanley's summer camp comix transcend my adult perceptions of the season. How enjoyable summer seems in this handful of Lulu and Nancy summer camp giants! Tho' often fraught with peril, Stanley's camp comix capture, in crappily-printed words and pictures, the meaning summer has to kids.

To celebrate what little positive spin I can put on the upcoming season of squint and sweat, I'll be posting the entirety of Stanley's much-beloved, ne'er-reprinted 1957 Lulu and Tubby summer camp special.

I'm gonna try to do five posts, each with 20 pp., including all those easy-to-solve puzzle pages (which usually bear the ancient, frustrated scrawl of the c.1957 child who valiantly attempted their solution).

I'll write more actual commentary as the posts roll on. One thing that immediately strikes me is how formulaic these summer camp comics of Stanley's are. They tend to follow the same overall plot arc:

1) kids excited about immiment summer camp departure; attempt to take all personal belonging with them; action denied by sensible parents

2) one child, usu. aggressive male, denied camp attendance; said child sinks into isolation, depression

3) neglected child, via clever ruse or godlike financial endowment, gets to go to camp; is reunited with chums, regains status

That's about as far as we get in the first two stories presented here.

I'm fascinated by the work of cartoonists who are creative within strict formulae. This is something John Stanley and George Herriman share as comix creators. Come to think of it, Barks, Kelly, Mayer, Eisner, and Kurtzman also thrived while hewing to formula plots and hard-set guidelines.

Well, as said, there's more to come...

*******

Aw, shucks... [blush]

I just noticed that animation/comics historian Michael Barrier commented on this blog (and its website equivalent) in a recent post on his blog of notable things... ( http://www.michaelbarrier.com/ )

"Finally (for the moment), let me recommend most heartily Frank Young's Stanley Stories. The Stanley in question is John, the brilliant cartoonist and writer whose name is most readily associated with Little Lulu but who, as Frank makes clear, has a lot of other great things on his resume. Frank Young is not just a Stanley fan, but also a student of his work who can identify it even when it's under the veneer of another cartoonist's drawings, as it usually was. Stanley Stories reproduces some of Stanley's best (and most obscure) stories and includes a glossary of "Stanleyisms," the distinctive characteristics of his writing. A biography is promised. This is the internet at its best."

I'm honored, sir... I hope this blog can continue to please. I enjoy doing it very much!

Snowpocalypse now: "Andy Panda" from New Funnies 82, 1943

Here's another super-early John Stanley "Andy Panda" story.

The refreshing wintry landscape should be a balm to those already suffering the onset of spring/summer heat and humidity.

This early on, Stanley's work has much in common with his transcontinental rival, Carl Barks. Both creators gave their 1943 efforts an open, bouncy, spacious feeling, with an emphasis on high-speed, knockabout comedy.

When wartime paper restrictions doomed the three-tier page layouts of most Dell features, in 1944, that sunny spaciousness almost never returned to their collective pages.

Barks and Stanley would indulge in pastoral pieces (Barks far more than Stanley), but the space restrictions permanently altered both creators' approaches towards making comix. Through force of habit, both artists became instilled with the desire to cram more action into less space.

This story is a prime example of the "open" 1943 sensibility. Altho' filled with vibrant slapstick and wild physical action, there is a sense of space in these panels that is refreshing.

As well, the narrative is akin to many a Barks farce, with our heroes ending up in some far-flung place, due to their cheerful ineptness, which unleashes a [literally] snowballing chain of events.

This is a type of story Stanley would quickly stop writing. From 1944 on, his stories' conclusions have a gravity that is often deeply felt by the reader. One always feels that Barks' Donald and the nephews, even if stranded in Timbuktu at story's end, will easily make their way back to Duckburg in time for next month's romp.

Stanley characters regularly face sobering and bracing finales. They will, just as often, be evicted from their homes at story's end, or have to accept a mixed bag of good and bad outcomes.

I'm not saying one approach outdoes the other; both are potent formulae. Both served these two towering comix creators very well during their long careers.

It is neat to see Stanley "doing a Donald" with this very funny, lively early farce.

The 1943 issue I scanned this story from must have gotten damp some time ago. Opening its bag unleashes an assault of vintage mold and mildew fragments. Tho' unseen on the pulp paper pages, they are deeply noticed by my sensitive sinuses. Whew!

By scanning this story, I no longer need to reopen this bio-degradable Pandora's Box. Hurrah!

Love finds Woody Woodpecker: from New Funnies 90, 1944

Here is an charming early Woody Woodpecker story written and drawn by John Stanley. Though the on-screen Woody had, by 1944, received a most attractive make-over by Walter Lantz layout artist Art Heinemann, the comic-book version retained the butt-ugly pre-1944 look.

Someone finally noticed that the funnybook Woody didn't match up with his most current screen version, and fixed the situation.  Woody looked best in his John Stanley-written stories when Stanley drew them himself. (You'll find some later, more refined examples of Stanley-drawn Woodys throughout this blog's past posts.)

This story anticipates Stanley's soon-to-happen assignment to do the comic book version of Marge Buell's Little Lulu. Woody and his human girlfriend, Patricia, could be exchanged for Lulu and Tubby without altering much of the story.

The piece shows Stanley's ability to juggle hard-knocks comedy and a more sensitive emotional approach. The combination works very well, and would continue to serve Stanley well for the 15-year run of Little Lulu.

The children in this story look like refugees from contemporary Famous Studios "Noveltoons" cartoons. Famous animators moonlighted in comics for Western Publications in the early '40s. John Stanley's distinctive lettering provides the "tell" that this is his work as an artist. That said, another hand may have inked the drawings. The spike and zing of Stanley's pen line aren't evident here.

Woody's closing lines are pure, Grade-A "Tubby talk." Stanley was ready to write Little Lulu--whether he knew it or not!

This one's for Thad: "Andy Panda" from New Funnies #80, 1943

Thad K. wrote and asked me if I had the second John Stanley-written "Andy Panda" story (see last post for the third installment).

I do, and I had to confront my collector side in presenting this rare early piece to you all. In order to scan this 8-page story, I degraded a VF+ copy of this 1943 funnybook, probably to VG+. So it goes. These eight pages are the only worthwhile content in the whole shebang, aside from reprints of Otto Messmer's Felix the Cat newspaper strips. And the story does no one any good languishing in a sealed plastic bag. I doubt these early stories will ever be reprinted. So screw condition... it's all about what's printed on the pages, not what some "authority" sez they're worth!

Thad pointed out something I'd overlooked... that Andy's domestic partner, Charlie Chicken, ages in the first three stories. In #79's piece, Charlie is a chick-like thing--the equivalent of a 7 year-old kid.

In this story, he's half-grown... perhaps a teenage chicken. In the following story (again, check out previous post), Charlie is the more-or-less adult-size squab he would remain ever after.

You don't often see radical changes in such characters. I suppose that, because Charlie wasn't really an official part of the Walter Lantz world, he could be quickly re-thought. (A Charlie-esque chicken--actually, a lot of them--appear in Shamus Culhane's 1943 Meatless Thursday, the first of the innovative director's Andy Panda cartoons. This may be what inspired the idea for Charlie.)

On the other side of the continent, Carl Barks also worked non-standard, recurring characters into the world of "Donald Duck." These outside-the-box figures, including Uncle Scrooge, the Beagle Boys and Gyro Gearloose, also changed dramatically in each of their early story appearances.

In all cases, a standard design was quickly settled upon, and never again changed.

In this story, we see one of Stanley's earliest YOWs, plus a whole lotta commotion, as bear and chicken destroy their domicile, in conflict with one grade-A smart-ass insect. Said insect indulges in some mind-fudgery with Andy and Charlie, and then requests another playdate.

Charlie turns white on one page of the story. Oops!

Enjoy.