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Every book I. W. Publishing did were reprints.
Can any of you 'Funny Animal' aficionados tell us where Tippy Terry came from?
Doesn't look too bad. |
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Little Groucho #1 from Reston /?dlid=35296 |
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Was there ever a character named Tippy Terry, or just a name Waldman made up for the cover? |
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t was from a short-lived series published by Reston Publications, in 1955, first titled "Little Groucho", and quickly changed to "Little Grouchy", after the first issue, because Groucho Marx's people noticed it, and had a problem with their using the name, "Groucho", as Marx was the only one in The World using it, and thus, people might think it is about him as a child. The remaining single issue of "Little Grouchy" didn't sell very well, and the series stopped. I don't think it came from a newspaper strip, but it seems to have that type of visual style, and tempo, as well. It was just another "Dennis The Menace" clone. |
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Wow, there really was no lower limit for IW, was there? Little Groucho is not among the best Dennis the Menace ... er.. tributes, but it appears they not only gave it a bogus name but slapped identical, differently colored covers with two different numbers on books from the same press run. Take a look at page 15 - the red plate is way off register in exactly the same way. It seems to me this "publisher" was largely an accounting scam. |
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Waldman watched the list of publishers shutting down operations and selling-off-assets sales, and grabbed printing machines, plates, artwork, and unsold books, as well as disposable coverless books, whose covers had been torn off and sent to the distributors for refund (so, it was illegal to resell them. Apparently, he had new artwork done for new covers, and sometimes changed the name of the lead characters, or named the books after lesser characters, whose names were changed, and never had their own books. In addition, it may also be that he used his I.W. Comics and Super Comics for a tax shelter by taking the standard writeoffs for various operations, or, he, potentially, at least, ran large personal expenses through the not-so-profitable company. |
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There's something else going on here. The inside and outside covers are new, but the interior scans...
Pages 1-2 of "Anchors Aweigh" in Issue 1 are different scans from those in Issue 14. Compare the right-hand margins of Page 1. But from Page 3 on, the story page scans are identical, both in dimension and file size, in both issues.
The file for Issue 1 was created on Aug 22 2006, and for Issue 14 on Jan 5 2007. The names of the copied files were renamed appropriately, so the dates are appropriate too.
My guess is that someone set out to scan Issue 1, got a couple of pages in when he (or she) realized that it was essentially identical to the already-scanned Issue 14, and decided to borrow those pages. Whether it was because the scans in Issue 14 looked better than the ones he was getting from his copy of Issue 1, or just to save time and effort, we'll probably never know.
And then there's the matter of Page 33 of Issue 14 actually being the inside front cover of Blazing Six Guns -- complete with indicia. Tsk.
Eventually both were uploaded to DCM by Prime User on Apr 30, 2011. Where they were in between, I don't know but I'd guess on the small BBSes that were around back then. Regardless, apparently we really don't have a legitimate c2c scan of Issue 1 yet. |
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I'm not aware of any other character named "Tippy Terry", but the name is very similar to Tower's Archie clone, "Tippy Teen". I've always suspected Waldman was inspired by that, but that's only a guess. Now that I think of it, there was also a song that I think was called "Tippy Tin". I only know of it from old Little Rascals reruns when one of the girls would sing it (presumably a popular tune of that era). So I guess it's possible Waldman may have remembered the song, though that might be a stretch. |
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Additional Information |
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Publication | 1958 | Price: 0.10 USD | Pages: 1 |
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Featuring | Little Groucho |
Credits | Pencils: Al Grenet? | Inks: Al Grenet? |
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Comic Story | Anchors Aweigh (3 pages) |
Featuring | Little Groucho |
Credits | Pencils: Vic Martin | Inks: Vic Martin |
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Comic Story | Welcome Home (1 page) |
Featuring | Little Groucho |
Credits | Pencils: Vic Martin | Inks: Vic Martin |
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Comic Story | Fit to Be Tied (7 pages) |
Featuring | Little Groucho |
Credits | Pencils: Vic Martin | Inks: Vic Martin |
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Featuring | Little Groucho |
Credits | Pencils: Vic Martin | Inks: Vic Martin |
Content | Genre: Humor; Children |
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Comic Story | Sentry Duty (3 pages) |
Featuring | Little Groucho |
Credits | Pencils: Vic Martin | Inks: Vic Martin |
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Comic Story | Mudder Knows Best (1 page) |
Featuring | Little Groucho |
Credits | Pencils: Vic Martin | Inks: Vic Martin |
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Comic Story | Fishing Trip (6 pages) |
Featuring | Angel Face |
Credits | Pencils: Vic Martin | Inks: Vic Martin |
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Featuring | Little Groucho |
Credits | Pencils: Vic Martin | Inks: Vic Martin |
Content | Genre: Humor; Children |
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Comic Story | Big Business (5 pages) |
Featuring | Little Groucho |
Credits | Pencils: Vic Martin | Inks: Vic Martin |
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The data in the additional content section is courtesy of the Grand Comics Database under a
Creative Commons Attribution License.
More details about this comic may be available in their page here |