John Stanley Draws "Lulu" in 1956: Selections From Little Lulu and her Friends #4

200 pages of prime mid-1950s John Stanley material comprise a pair of Dell Giants published in 1955 and '56. Snatches of these may have been reprinted in the 1960s and '70s, but these stories remain unknown to most modern-day Little Lulu readers.

Of particular interest to this blog are a scattering of stories, in the 1956 edition, that have finished artwork by John Stanley. This is not Stanley's best cartooning. Perhaps it was an eleventh-hour effort, done to meet a deadline that Stanley's typical Lulu collaborator, Irving Tripp, could not fulfill. (You'll find a similar-looking effort from 1951 in THIS POST.)

Stanley's yearly Little Lulu workload, by today's standards, is staggering: one dozen 36-to-52 page comic books, plus a quarterly satellite title, Tubby, and an 80-to-100 page annual. Stanley found time for side projects, as well, throughout his long tenure on Lulu.

He must have had a great work ethic. Small wonder that he ever found time for cartooning, between 1950 and 1963.

His best-known work of this period is the eight-issue run of Tubby (issues 2-9) that he wrote and drew solo. The scattered pages in this '56 giant are the only other published examples (that I know of) of his finished 1950s cartoon art.

That is, aside from the covers for Little Lulu, which he continued to draw through his 135-issue stint on the series. Speaking of which, here's his cover for this giant funnybook:

A sure-fire indicator of John Stanley cartooning, on the Lulu series, is what I call the "angry profile." As you'll see in these selections, Stanley tended to draw his characters looking POd, in a particularly angular profile.

A static ink line, so controlled it looks like it came from a technical or drafting pen, is another "tell" of Stanley's Lulu artwork.

Here is a comparison of the "angry profile" by both artists. Theirs is a subtle difference, but a telling one. Tripp tends to draw the characters with larger eyes, and their angry profiles have a softer look. Stanley's are far more severe, almost like a hawk's profile.

Stanley strived to conform to the house style Tripp quickly set up, when he took over the artwork on the Lulu book in 1948. But the characters gave Stanley trouble in the 1950s.

Marge's characters are not particularly attractive or graceful. Tripp managed to make them work; Stanley, aside from his earliest mid-1940s Lulus, which look far different from Tripp's typical cartooning, had a hard time making the badly-designed figures live and breathe on the page.

Here are all the Stanley-drawn stories from this Lulu giant. They provide a rare mid-decade glimpse of Stanley's neglected cartooning.

Expressive, effective cartooning graces the story above. Vivid character poses and body language sell the humor of the piece superbly.

The last Stanley-drawn story is the longest, and, by far, funniest. It demonstrates that, while the Stanley-Tripp collaboration was an ideal one, Tripp leached a certain amount of energy out of Stanley's raw materials.

The irony is that Tripp made Stanley's Little Lulu palatable to the masses. He softened the agitation and darkness of Stanley's input just enough to enable it to pass by the reader without causing abrasion or alarm. Tripp's work was a boon to Stanley's. Although I mourn the lack of published 1950s Stanley cartooning, I appreciate the balance that Tripp brought to the table.

The first two tiers of the story's third page are flat-out brilliant. That's John Stanley at his best--taking liberties with the comics medium, while putting everything on the table for the benefit of his characters. That's great comics writing--and it isn't about anything plotty or significant!

It's probable that the 1955 and '56 Lulu giants will never be reprinted, so I'll run more stories from them in future posts. As always, I'd like to know what you wish to see here. As DJs used to say, "we take requests!"

Chicken, Bear Fear Dark Future As Implied Kidnapper Looms; Convert Cottage To Fortified Death-Trap; Brutalize Various Civil Servants: 'Andy Panda,' New Funnies 83, 1943

This post could not have happened without the kind help of Mark Kausler. He scanned his disintegrating copy of New Funnies #83 for me. Thank you sincerely, sir!

Since these early New Funnies have less John Stanley content, more pablum, and command high prices on the accursed "collector's market," they're seldom encountered. The Stanley material is worth studying and reading.

As well, since these early stories will, likely, never be reprinted (Universal Media--'nuff said!), I feel duty-bound to present them here, as I acquire them.

To fully appreciate how good these early Stanley stories are, one must attempt to read some of the New Funnies issues that preceded Stanley's run.

They are competent, sometimes lovely to look at, but achingly devoid of strong content. Even the one "Andy Panda" story Carl Barks drew is gormless, la-de-dah stuff.

Although these earliest Stanley stories lack the intensity of focus, and the fearless tragicomedy of his best work, they are an enormous improvement on the stories that preceded them.

Storage space is at a premium here on Blogger. At some point, I'll use up all my alloted space here, and have to create "Stanley Stories II"--or else break down and buy some storage space on the Internet. Otherwise, I'd post a couple of the pre-Stanley "Andy" stories, just so you can appreciate the upgrade Stanley brought to the table.

This is John Stanley's fifth "Andy Panda" story. It's among the most Carl Barksian of his early work. I honestly don't know if Stanley followed Barks' work, or, if so, what he thought of it. Perhaps it's a zeitgeist thing.

There is an undeniable crossover in themes and characterization in the pre-1945 work of Barks and Stanley. Early on, both men frequently fashioned stories from flimsy premises. They infused them with enough slapstick, chutzpah and characterization to transcend their usually weak starts.

That's what this story is all about. Read it an' see...

The story's premise--of a rich person ready to fork out big bucks for a talking panda--is a limp noodle of an idea. It's only there to set up the sublime chain of events that follow.

Andy and Charlie fortify their cottage--with fatal potential--and leave an inverted invitation that summons person after person through their portal. Postman, iceman, and cop are rendered unconscious in the cute couple's living room.

The stakes are surprisingly low here. Stanley had not sufficiently developed as a writer to make the most of his own plot devices. The story is more about the event of KO-ing these three scions of civil service--which is funny enough for a 1943 Dell comic.

The story's ending is an early instance of the Stanley off-beat. It would make more sense, from a traditional story structure (and comedy structure) to have one more panel showing the comatose panda out like a light, with Charlie Chicken fretting over him. Instead, our ostensible hero gets clocked with the Rube Goldberg-style contrivance. The look of "oh, sh!t" surprise, in that last panel, is a nice touch.

No masterpiece here--just a young comic book writer still learning the ropes. Even in his most larval state, Stanley upped the quality of the funny animal genre. John Stanley's earliest work should, by no means, be dismissed.

Stanley's Most Curious Project: Linda Lark, Student Nurse

The early part of John Stanley's comics career is about innovation. In his 1940s and early '50s comics, Stanley developed a unique, often eccentric visual-verbal lexicon that enabled him to write vividly and sincerely (and to cartoon with gusto).

The latter part is often about following trends. Most of Stanley's post-1955 comics output is designed to align with hot pop-culture resonances--the "kooky monster" fad (Melvin Monster), Dobie Gillis-esque satirical sitcom (Kookie, Dunc 'n' Loo), school-of-Archie teen comics (Thirteen Going on Eighteen), Twilight Zone-like stories of fantasy and fear (Tales From The Tomb, Ghost Stories) and medical dramas-cum-soap operas (Linda Lark).

Linda remains among Stanley's most obscure work. Its highly checkered existence tells us as much about the bellwether nature of publishing as of its era's fads and fashions.

Linda Lark's first issue, dated October-December 1961, hit the stands alongside the debut of Stanley's Around The Block With Dunc 'n' Loo.

These comics preceded the amoebic split of what had once been "Dell Comics" into Western Printing and Lithographing's independent, newly-christened Gold Key and what remained of the Dell line, as now published and edited in-house by the bewildered Dell itself.

I assume that both comics were original ideas of Stanley's, and not in-house creations. Their creation may have been dictated by Dell's editors, who would desire a newsstand presence in two popular genres.

Both series are riven with Stanley's quirks and fascinations. They share familiar urban settings, sexual tension and the eternal struggle for status. Dunc 'n Loo is driven by a duo of male characters; Linda Lark is--rare for Stanley--built around an ensemble cast of females.

These are the two sides of Little Lulu, Stanley's most successful work in comics. In its first issue, despite some eye-rolling romance-comix cliches, and Stanley's struggle to adapt his brassy comedic writing to a more sober narrative, Linda Lark is a surprisingly solid effort.

It's fascinating to compare it to the "Four Color" one-shot based on the sub-standard newspaper gag cartoon Nellie The Nurse (an excerpt of which can be sampled HERE.

Nellie appeared after Linda's debut. The humor present in Linda is a tamped-down, composed element in the mix. The overall result is an odd inversion of Stanley's usual humor-above-all approach. In this first issue, Stanley tries to maintain a light tone--enough so that it appears the stories are intended to be funny.

Competent but dead "realistic" art takes much of the punch out of the finished product. The Grand Comic-book Database suggests this possible art team:

Pencils: John Tartaglione

Inks: Sal Trapani; Dick Giordano; Frank McLaughlin

In later issues, that maven of Mobland Comix, Vince Colletta, makes an appearance.

Stanley may not have written all eight issues of the series, which underwent two title changes. Again, from the GCBD:

Issue #1 was Linda Lark Student Nurse. Issues #2-5 are confirmed to be Linda Lark Registered Nurse. #5 cover is 'Nurse Linda Lark', indica is 'Linda Lark Registered Nurse'. #6 - 8 are Nurse Linda Lark.

Well, enough pre-show chat. Given the rarity of this comic, I've opted to run the whole thing, sans text fillers, starting with the paperback-novel style painted cover:

A meet-cute scene introduces us to Dr. Allan Mayne and, most significantly, to Linda Lark. She is akin to Lulu Moppet--the straight woman, taking what she says and does seriously, and striving to appear intelligent and in control.

We're also acquainted with Charley Stahk, who serves as a stand-in for both Annie and Tubby. She's the impulsive one, the outspoken, talk-first-think-last figure who is so essential to John Stanley's world.

With her buck teeth and her odd hairstyle, she even resembles Lulu's pal Annie. 

We also get a dose of the sexual/societal head-butting between female characters that would soon become a staple of Thirteen Going On 18.

In a miniature version of Stanley's summer camp giants, the stories in this comic are chapters in a loose overall story-arc.

Things get a bit broader in this second story, with the horny male serial-kisser embarrassing the terribly status-conscious Linda. Comparisons to the antic Nellie the Nurse are inevitable.

Note how the static artwork sucks all the life out of the characters. And dig Linda's two tiers of self-doubt monologue on the next-to-last page!

More typical teen comix elements appear in the third story, altho' it takes a detour into some intense drama, with no humor present.

Stanley lets out some fascinating, dark information about the heroic young Doctor Mayne--enough to give Linda some reasonable doubt of romantic pursuit. (Like Thirteen's similarly-named Paul Vayne, Allan Mayne is a handsome, vague individual--seemingly calm and centered, but with an air of enigma.)

Yet Linda saves the suicidal ex of the doc, and, like Lulu, proves herself a steadfast, reliant individual who takes decisive action.

Her "reward" is embarrassment, via the types of newspapers which only exist in mass media--apparently instant pipelines to the most intimate events of the protagonists' lives. (Among my favorite example of this is the sarcastic TV newscasters in the 1958 movie Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman: they, truly, give the misbegotten main characters no privacy or mercy.)

This story features another Stanley Standard Plot Device [TM]--the Tubby Type's Relative. This figure is typically introduced as a romantic possibility for the protagonist, and typically, as here, turns out to be a nutjob. This figure is, as here, quickly brushed aside for the Dashing Alpha Male character to make a surprise entrance, thus sweeping the protagonist off her feet, sort-of.

In our last two stories, we see more female verbal sparring (commented upon by Charley); a tense sequence of Linda evading what she perceives as the invasive press; and another meet-cute moment, to stoke the readers' appetite for the next issue.

A humorous Charley solo story winds up this issue.

Hooray for eccentric beatniks! And what better way to wrap up one of the esoteric highlights of John Stanley's comix career?

Again, stagnant drawings drain most of the humor from the story. Easy to imagine this drawn by Bill Williams, and bristling with comedic life. Charley's sardonic commentary in the final panel is an apropos finale for this funny-book.

Prominent Stanleyisms here include lots... of... ellipses... in... speech..., aggressive, anti-social male characters, confident Adonis-like alpha males, concerned monologues, status wars, a constant battle of the sexes, and the presence of the Stanley Archetype Trio (Voice of Reason, Tubby Type and Terrible Thwarter/Obstacle) in every story.

Linda Lark, in its first issue, is John Stanley's most successful effort at writing a more-or-less realistic comic book narrative. Humor would be progressively down-played in subsequent issues. As said, I'm not sure that Stanley even wrote the last couple of issues.

This title, like Dunc 'n' Loo, straddled the end of Dell Comics, as it had existed since the 1930s, and its miserable final phase of the 1960s. They were fortunate to have a creator of Stanley's caliber to bridge this shattering transition.

I've been a postin' fool here lately. March promises to be a hectic month for me, so you may not be seeing so much of me here for awhile.