This may now be the oldest comic in my collection, and of course I just picked it up randomly! From 1949,
Monkeyshines Comics #25, featuring stories and art from Vince Fago, Irving Dressler, Milt Stein, and more.
Publisher
Ace Magazines went under in 1956, and their roster of heroes is largely forgotten today: I had vaguely heard of Magno, and occasional X-Men character
Dr. Nemesis was from there. How Marvel got him; uh, I think he just went public domain and Marvel just lumped him in with
the Invaders.
This particular issue is funny-animal hijinks, starting with cat vs. mouse vs. dog class warfare with Pat & Mike; then Nutty Squirrel "helps" Sherlock Hound find a stolen wig. Slick-talker Professor Penguin wants a pet of his own, which logically leads to selling refrigerators to Eskimos; Tuffy Bear gets tried of the baby games in his neighborhood so tries out Murder Hill; and Marmaduke Monk is a cranky Donald Duck-type first irritated by then missing his nephews. I don't think I'd heard of any of them!
I picked this up for maybe fifty cents from EntertainMart; but I have to wonder how many hands it passed through before then? Enough that somebody did the connect the dots puzzle, anyway.
3 comments:
I know humor is both subjective and generational, but stuff like this...just sucks. Makes you wonder with what was considered funny back then, how the hell Bugs Bunny cartoons aged as well as they did.
Oh, and that last panel....yeah....that really didn't age well did it?
That Tuffy Bear one has its moments, as he just gets repeatedly clobbered on Murder Hill; used as a soccer ball, beat up for saying he didn't hit a guy in the back of the head by the guy and the guy who hit the guy...When he tries to pick a fight with the only person he's seen smaller then himself, he gets his ass handed to him by the "fleaweight" champ. He then returns home for a friendly game of tag, lesson learned!
I like it. It doesn't seem that far off from some of the Looney Tunes stuff but they've been replaying them so often that we've gotten used to the format, whereas funny animal comics have basically disappeared. It makes sense- comics readership keeps going down, so they're only going to print and reprint the best selling stuff. Still, I wish there was room for more genres both in new material and reprints.
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