Post #200: Bird, Rabbit Enter American Work-Force, Encounter Hostility, Arrogance; Woodpecker Defects From Cruelty of Streetcar Operation; Rabbit's Job Imploded

 

Here we are at post #200 for Stanley Stories. I've written some 100,000 words of chit-chat, criticism and insight in the prior 199 posts. I've also featured 303 complete stories to date.

The statistician in me wanted to know how all this fascinating data. I'll risk boring you with some factoids. I've even prepared a column chart!

[Feel free to skip this part if your personal risk of being bored is too intense. There are two 10-page stories at the end of this accountancy!]

Stanley Stories Stats:

From left to right on our primitive graph:
 

LITTLE LULU (LL) leads with 79 complete stories. I was surprised at how many Lulus were here, but, as I've run pieces from all of the 100-page giants, including several complete issues, that big number makes sense.

TUBBY comes in second place with 36 stories, followed by NANCY & SLUGGO (32), TOM & JERRY (18 stories), Stanley's horror stories (17) and ANDY PANDA (14 stories). Those are the Top 6 subjects of posting on this blog.

WOODY WOODPECKER leads the second wave with 10 stories (one which includes 18 one-pagers drawn by our hero). DUNC 'n' LOO, which I've kinda held off on, as Drawn + Quarterly will eventually publish in beautiful hardcover form, is represented with 8 stories.

HOWDY DOODY, JIGGER & MOOCH and CHRISTMAS STORIES (asst'd) are tied at 7 stories.

PETERKIN POTTLE and OSWALD RABBIT have 6 stories apiece herein.

RAGGEDY ANN & ANDY, LINDA LARK and NEW TERRYTOONS (asst'd):5 stories per.

O.G. WHIZ, LITTLE KING and KRAZY KAT have 4 stories each here.

NELLIE THE NURSE, ROOTIE KAZOOTIE, HENRY ALDRICH*, CLYDE CRASHCUP, THIRTEEN GOING ON EIGHTEEN and KOOKIE: 3 pieces apiece.

LI'L EIGHT-BALL, HECTOR THE HEN-PECKED ROOSTER and JOHNNY MOLE: 2 each.

MELVIN MONSTER, ALVIN (from LITTLE LULU), FUZZY & WUZZY*, BLACKIE THE LAMB and FLIP & DIP have each been represented by--you guessed it!--1 story.

The * means that these stories may not be Stanley's work, but they're here all the same. This goes without question for the Stan Lee-authored "Little Lizzie" stories I posted in a fit of pique sometime last year.

[END OF BORING STATISTICS]

For this special bicentenary post, we return to the first days of Stanley Stories--long before it was a blog!

Today's first story is a rescan and re-post of the very first Stanley story I ever presented, back about 2001, on the old, long-gone first incarnation of the site. This was the story that first made me aware of the work of John Stanley.

My first Stanley exposure was via a pile of mid-1940s issues of Walter Lantz New Funnies in the early 1980s. As a starving college student (hungry for both food and comics), I purchased a pile of 1945-7 issues of New Funnies from a long-gone side-street comic book and paperback shop in Tallahassee, Florida. They were cheap--a buck or two each. I didn't expect much from them. The shock-value of the "Li'l Eight Ball" stories, and the surprised reaction of friends and colleagues to them, was my initial attraction to these funny-books.

Then I sat down and read the things. I became aware that two or more creative teams supplied each issue's contents. Furthermore, all but one of them sucked. The "Andy Panda," "Woody Woodpecker" and "Oswald Rabbit" stories, especially from 1946 on, were genuinely good--funny, literate and surprising in their narrative stakes.

I wouldn't connect these stories with Stanley until a decade later, when I'd read enough of his Little Lulu work to realize these were indeed his efforts. The story you're about to read, from NF #120, was the clincher. Its black comedy, grungy urban settings and unexpected, slightly moving finale were clearly of John Stanley's hand.

Stanley's stories run in themes. A theme of his New Funnies stories is the characters' usually failed pursuit of jobs. As I scanned the story you're about to read, a quick browse of the preceding issue offered another job-failure story. (There are several such stories in the 1946 and '47 issues of New Funnies.)

Jobs and job growth are in the news these days. The general consensus is that things are getting better. I hope it's true--our economy needs all the help it can get. Perhaps the playful, perverse nature of these two stories will help things along.

In today's first feature, outsider Woody Woodpecker becomes a streetcar conductor. It's a job best suited for gleeful sadists and misanthropes. Our bird is indeed odd, but he's got a heart--a fatal flaw in this brutal business...

I don't know if Stanley lived in Manhattan in 1947. According to his son, James **, Stanley and his family lived in Greenwich Village in the late 1950s. The story you've just read reveals a cynicism towards public transportation--black comedy worthy of Roald Dahl.

Woody, at story's start, is an agitated outsider, his status unsecured. This hire is a big moment in his fragmented life. Stanley plays Woody's tension for satirical humor. His words and body language parody the melodrama of every WWII Air Force movie ever made, past, present or future. In a key moment, the bird makes a naked confession to us:

The military genre parody continues on the next four pages. Woody easily passes through the red tape of signing up. He then meets his mentor, a beefy, nameless Alan Hale Jr. type with homicidal tendencies. His cognitive bias is that the passengers are potential agents of harm.

He preps the 'pecker to expect physical and emotional abuse from the streetcar riders. The opposite proves true. Nameless Mentor gets off on the physical/psychological torment of his passengers. He takes great pride in his work--note the sublime middle tier of p.8, in which he brags about the sharp timing of his enmity--and passes the torch of torture to his new charge.

Woody has reservations about this line of work; it just isn't in his makeup to be intentionally cruel to others. Here is where Stanley's hand most deeply touches this story. His Woody is the polar opposite of the brassy, aggressive animated cartoon version. He has a conscience, is humble, and considers the impact of his words and deeds on others.

In Stanley's cruel urban landscape, this brands Woody as a loser, albeit with a heart of gold. Woody is unable to zoom past stops, mangle his riders, or refuse their requests.

On the story's final page, Woody loses control of the street car, and creates a new, nicer career for himself. The silent final frame is both funny and touching. Woody has passed through--and surpassed--the careless cruelty of the world around him, and found a niche he can, indeed, scratch.

John Stanley's Working continues with an "Oswald the Rabbit" story from NF 119. Oswald is more connected to the mainstream than Woody Woodpecker. He has a home, a domestic partner, and a cheerier disposition. At story's start, he's on his way to the first day of a new occupation...

Oswald jauntily makes the best of a job others might find humiliating. His cheerful march through Stanley's mean streets, clad in a tuxedo and walking on stilts, makes him a moving target for abuse--both intentional and accidental.

Oswald remains passive; the events happen to him, and he doesn't make pains to prevent or halt them. He finds a quarter; while he retrieves it, a man lazily picks his pocket. Oswald's Tubby-like reaction to the theft bears repeating:

He arouses the ire of a beat cop, who sees Os as an agent of chaos--which he, quite unwittingly, is. Whereas Woody is more of an alienated adult, Oswald is a man-child. He follows his whims, even when they take him into awkward places.

In a vivid comedic set-piece, Oswald uses his heightened status to sneak a free peek at a ball game. A clamber of street kids scramble up his stilt-legs to partake, and Os is bludgeoned, pawed and badly shaken for his trouble.

An innocent phone call turns Oswald into a cheery fugitive. He makes a crucial mistake: he figures he'll be safest amidst the crowds of downtown. "There's a feeling of security here," he says, more to reassure himself than to inform the reader.

Oswald escapes with his life, and his sunny outlook, at story's end. It's clear that this first day on the job is also the last, but our furry hero is none the worse for the wear. Not quite a happy ending, this finale suggests that Oswald is as deluded as any other Stanley character. Even when things aren't right, and mounting evidence proves this point. his characters choose to look on the bright side.

These, like Stanley's other "working" stories, tell us that to take a job is to risk one's status (if not one's life), and to supremely test one's personal ethics and will. Anyone who's ever held a job would have to agree this is true, to some extent. I could tell you stories--anyone could as well. Most of us also have positive job stories, too, and thank goodness for that. We all want to do something that helps us prosper, but also gives us something to do that we like. Work, for many, is a necessary evil. It pays the bills, but it also takes a toll on our collective soul.

This is a silent but commonly held belief about the world of employment. Rarely is it expressed forthrightly in popular culture. Mike Judge's brilliant film, Office Space, which has echoes of Stanley's viewpoint and comedic tendencies, may be the single finest articulation of the futility of the American workplace in pop culture. It's fascinating to see this message in Stanley's work of the 1940s--at a moment in time when America was approaching one of its most prosperous, worker-friendly eras.

May your work week be unlike Woody's or Oswald's--if, indeed, you are among America's employed! See you soon with post #201...

(** PS to Jim Stanley: if you're reading this, I hope all is well with you...)

Beatniks, Bongos and Bourgeois Boobys: selections from Kookie #1, 1961

1961 marked a turning point in John Stanley's comic book career. He wrote the last issues of his final significant licensed-character series, Nancy and Sluggo. From then on, with three exceptions, Stanley never again worked with anyone else's characters.

It was a shot in the arm for Stanley. His two years on the Nancy title, added to 15 years on Little Lulu, left him apparently (and understandably) weary of the task of  adapting outside characters to the comic book narrative form. Save for mid-1960s comics adaptations of Alvin and the Chipmunks and Clyde Crashcup, and 1969's curious Choo-Choo Charlie one-shot, Stanley only created original concepts, characters and series from 1962 forward.

His earnest attempts to get original series going in the late '40s failed. Although "Jigger and Mooch" and "Peterkin Pottle" have their rightful admirers, they simply didn't cut it, sales-wise and audience-wise, back in the day. It may have discouraged Stanley from using precious time--energy that could more productively go into Little Lulu and his other steady gigs--on the high-stakes risk of floating unknown creations.

Thank goodness the comics industry was in a state of flux in 1961. Super-heroes noodged their way back onto the shelves, while steadfast genres such as crime, western, romance and what passed for horror, post-Comics Code, dwindled or died. War comics continued to sell, as did many varieties of action-adventure and humor.

At this time, Stanley and his family lived in Greenwich Village. Perhaps this daily exposure to the bohemian vibes of that ultra-hip neighborhood inspired Stanley to try something different. For the first time in his career, Stanley created a title that was clearly aimed not at kids but at young adults, teens and college students.

Kookie, launched two months after Stanley's first original success in comics, Dunc 'n Loo, proved a quick flop. Both were collaborations with Stanley's finest artist, Bill Williams. Why one clicked and the other didn't is puzzling.

Perhaps Kookie was a little too libertine for mainstream comics. It's among Stanley's only comics with any acknowledgment of adult desires. Kookie is cast as a sorta-Candide of the espresso house scene. Given time, her role would have been more well-defined. She is, certainly, no Little Annie Fanny, but she's a great deal more voluptuous--and inspires more, shall we say, grown-up reactions from her male pursuers and admirers--than any Stanley character, before or since.

By late 1961, when its first issue hit America's news stands, beatniks were a bit on the wane. The Beat Generation still existed, and some of its more notable authors and artists continued to create vibrant, striking work. But the whole scene was already reduced to a handful of popcult cliches--Maynard G. Krebs from TV's Dobie Gillis, Ernie Bushmiller's outrageous put-downs in the newspaper version of Nancy, and countless beatnik wanna-bes in popular fiction.

Stanley's take on the beat scene owes a little to Max Shulman's Dobie Gillis sitcom, which it resembles in its cramped, grubby urban settings and with its risible, exaggerated characters. Dobie was only peripherally related to the beat scene, but the program's snappy pace and colorful patter has much in common with Stanley's work of 1962.

Here's "The Scene," the first story from the first Kookie issue. I posted a story from the second, and last issue, here. In that post, I posit some other theories about Kookie's marketplace failure.

But first, dig that righteous cover! Bill Williams' beautiful cartooning looks gorgeous in watercolor or gouache, whichever medium it's painted in.

Here's the inside front cover gag--a format among John Stanley's fortes as a comics creator.

 And now, "The Scene..."

"The Scene" is unusual for Stanley. Its narrative doesn't hinge on a single, escalating event. Rather, it paints a leisurely paced series of highly comedic vignettes--expertly designed to ease us into its quirky urban world.

Though Kookie is the star of the story, she isn't really its main focus. Like Jacques Tati's 1967 movie Playtime, "The Scene" isn't married to any one character or occurrence. Big things happen--roomie Clara's creative revenge on the bongo-mad dudes who plague her sleep; the wonderful beat poetry performance of Fleahaven; the entrance and exit of the two "bourgeois booby" richfolk; the epic cleaving of the sculptor Herman's three-story statue. Big characters crowd the stage, one after another, as Kookie watches and reacts.

Stanley does not condescend to his bohemian cast, nor exploit them for a cheap laugh. The buffoons of the piece are the two uptown types who wander into the world of Mama Pappa's expresso house--and pay for their slumming with social humiliation (witnessed by an audience who doesn't really notice or care) and a scorched leather car-seat.

Something decidedly different happens in the 18 pages of "The Scene." There's not another John Stanley story quite like it--which is a pity. "The Scene"'s expansive, democratic approach, and its creation of a world both gently and vigorously funny, suggests unfulfilled possibilities for this series (and for Stanley's work), had it lasted more than two issues.

1962 comics had to have an unrelated second feature, in order to qualify for postal distribution. "Bongo and Bop" was Stanley's solution to that need. It's a more hard-edged, brilliantly funny piece that anticipates the 1970s underground comix humor of Gilbert Shelton.

The urban landscapes of "A Breather" are familiar to Little Lulu readers. Unlike Stanley's scores of lark-in-the-park stories, this achieves a sublime level of character and black comedy, in five easy pieces (er, pages).

Bongo and Bop look somewhat alien and insectoid, with their berets, gaunt cheeks and oversized dark glasses, but Stanley once again doesn't treat them with condescension. They are a refreshing twist on his typical "Tubby Type." They're deluded, but susceptible to outside influence.

In the story's sublime ending, Bongo and Bop temporarily morph into "squares"-- until a lungful of carbon monoxide revives their true selves.

This return to form distinguishes Stanley's work. Most other humorists would have played the change to "normalcy" for boffo laffs, as if to say "See? This beatnik thing is just an affectation!" In John Stanley's world, you are what you are. Hero or zero, his characters are true to their tendencies and tics.

Stanley never again had--or gave himself--the luxury of pacing, nor the openness of his comedic attitude, that is evident in the brief life of Kookie. This is John Stanley at his warmest and most down to earth.

My next post will be the 200th for Stanley Stories. I hope to have something special to mark the occasion.

OCD Eating and a Convergence of Creeps: Nancy and Sluggo Summer Camp special pt. III (conclusion)

As promised, here is the conclusion of the 1960 Nancy and Sluggo Summer Camp shebang.

"The Dinner Belle" contrasts two schools of cognitive biases towards food: the anti-anorexia of Eadie and the smug entitlement of Camp directory Simply.

John Stanley, like Little Orphan Annie's Harold Gray, tended to give supporting characters Dickensian names--ones that sum up their shortcomings or hang-ups. In Simply's case, his smug, naive expectations fully justify this type-naming.

Everything in this rambling book comes to a head in "Lost in the Woods." All storylines intersect, and McOnion gets a terrifying-yet-appropos comeuppance.

Also like Harold Gray, John Stanley was a strong believer in comics karma. Gray's comeuppances are usually of a brutal nature. Stanley's threaten their characters, but never result in death or serious injury. Mind-fudgery and status demotion are typical results of Stanley's comic karma.

"Lost in the Woods" is by far the liveliest, most genuine sequence in this narrative. Stanley weaves together the book's various threads into a colorful, amusing fabric.

Moments of strong physical/verbal comedy include McOnion's Page-O'-Terror (the larger one here) and Nancy's mistaking of the wild bear's "GRRRRLLLLS" for an echo of her panic-stricken cry to her peers.

Also impressive is how Oona and her world is suddenly whipped into the formula. We're glad to see Sluggo reach Camp Fafamama intact, tho' too late in the game to achieve anything more than arrival.

Stanley would do far better in the second and last Nancy & Sluggo special, which I'll run here sometime.

Stanley brings this narrative to a rousing close with a finale that anticipates the over-reaching anarchy of It's A Mad, Mad, Mad World, while also suggesting the madcap quality of Frank Tashlin's or Jacques Tati's movies. Rollo Haveall is the stimulus of "The Tiger Hunt."

 

Rollo's need for/contempt for his protector-slave Keggly is darkly amusing. I find especially funny Rollo's move into Keggly's shirt.

The energy level surges in "The Tiger Hunt," after maintaining too much of an even keel in earlier pages. It's a welcome shot-in-the-arm, and shows Stanley finally investing something of value into this rambling piece.

After a rare and striking full-page panel, this story resolves on an almost-heart-warming note, with the emotional reformation of McOnion. He still has it in himself to send Sluggo one psycho post-card, and this event gives the book's finale a slight kicker of anxiety. (So does the last-panel Pledge to Parents!)

Inside-cover gag page, anyone?

My feeling about this book, overall, is a qualified Meh. It has its moments, and contains some striking anticipations of Stanley's more assured, solid 1960s comedy style. It feels a bit dashed-off, and shows the clear limitations of the "Nancy" cast, in Stanley's estimation. Nancy is a cipher--brilliantly manipulated in Ernie Bushmiller's comics world, but not a strong narrative leader. She exists as a foil for Bushmiller's factory-fresh gag machine, and nothing more.

Only when Stanley works with his creations--McOnion, Oona, and Tweak--does this narrative reach out and grab us. As Rob Clough notes in his recent review of the first Drawn + Quarterly Tubby book:

[b]y nature, Stanley was a world-builder; he felt the need to introduce various comic foils, friends and antagonists for his central characters.  Part of that, I would guess, was Stanley’s way of giving himself raw material to work with; it’s his way of coming up with the variables for his comics writing formulas.

Stanley's Little Lulu casts a long shadow over his Nancy work. If I seem overly hard on this material, it's because it is regressive. Stanley did not grow as a writer with his time on Nancy. He reached into his recent past, and recycled formulas that had grown thin in Lulu's late issues. Though competent, and sometimes inspired, it lays listlessly next to Dunc 'n' Loo or his finest moments in Thirteen Going on Eighteen.

Half-strength Stanley is still far superior to most contemporary comics creators' efforts. Even when dialed down, Stanley couldn't help writing quality material. We remember McOnion's freaky pursuit of Sluggo, and the vagaries of Oona's mystical world. Other Stanley Nancy add-ons of note include the inept house-burglar, Bill Bungle (another Gray-hued name!) and Oona's self-obsessed miniature magician Uncle Eek.

I promise to be more enthusiastic in my next post, whatever it may be...