[SuperScrounge]

When I was reminded that this would be the first reading group of 2026 a theme came to mind. I won't mention it as you're all smart people and can figure it out in less than three guesses. I went with three choices this time as one is a book of cartoons and might take longer to read than a regular comic.

New Adventure Comics #12 https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=11644

The New Big Hit Comics https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=90335

New Sad Sack https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=78376

[Quirky Quokka]

Too easy, SuperScrounge. The theme is that they're all comic books. Can't fool us 

Cheers

QQ

[Robb_K]

When I was reminded that this would be the first reading group of 2026 a theme came to mind. I won't mention it as you're all smart people and can figure it out in less than three guesses. I went with three choices this time as one is a book of cartoons and might take longer to read than a regular comic.

New Adventure Comics #12 https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=11644

The New Big Hit Comics https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=90335

New Sad Sack https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=78376

Nice new Year theme - 3 books that recently were determined PD, and contained World War II stories.  Thanks for choosing these=, as  they bring me a New Year's gift!  I've been waiting for this Australian Frank Johnson publication, containing another previously missing episode of this Emile Mercier Tripalong Hoppity story, which I was awaiting, and had missed discovering that Downunder Dan had found it and uploaded it on CB+!  It also contains some nice WWII continuing stories.  I knew "Sad Sack" had started in a US Army magazine during WWII, but only had ever seen a few stray pages of the creator's earliest work.  This is a nice book to have on CB+, and I didn't know we already had it.  I never cared much for the Harvey Sad Sack comic books' work.  But they had gotten stale, and much less inspired by Baker, by the mid 1950s, than when he had first created the character and his wartime scenario.  His humour was very fresh, inspired, and funny back then, and had much more irony in his vignettes.  It's also nice to have access to those early National Allied, pre-DC publications' books, with art and stories from The 1930s and beginning of the '40s, during the early portion of The Golden Age, when the publishers and creators were still fishing around to nfind the best formats and stylers foir the new comic book industry.

[The Australian Panther]

Scrounge,

Thanks for this 'New' post.
Actually, the 'New Adventure Comics #12' has enough to discuss that it could have been a single post.
And Robb, the book was published in 1937, so no WWII story there.

[Morgus]

Robb, the selections were a lot of fun. If you didn't like the story you were reading it would be gone in a page or two. TRIPALONG HOPPITY really reminded me of Harey Krutzman a lot. The Johnson Smith ad on the inside of New Adenture was blurry so I couldn't spend all day reading their cool copy. "Noiseless" Remington typewriter, huh?
I'm impressed just how closely Sad Sack stayed to his roots visually right up to the Harvey days. And eerry now and then, Baker would have a strip that was more in tone with Bill Mauldin's work, like the last panel in WIDE OPEN TOWN. The more adult plots were also a revelation.
Nice way to start off the new year.

[gregjh]

New Big Hit Comics was interesting. A weird mix of myth, comedy and more regular police/detective style storytelling. It would have been intriguing to make the Burmese sun God spawn a hero instead of just re-telling the rather gruesome myth, in my opinion.

By the way the comic pages  themselves loaded very quickly.

[Quirky Quokka]

New Sad Sack

I'm doing them out of order this time because the Sad Sack one caught my eye. I remember seeing those Harvey Sad Sack comics when I was a kid, but they weren't something that interested me at the time. However, I was pleasantly surprised with this collection. It took me a while to realise that each two-page spread had to be read/viewed right across the top and then across the bottom. Once I worked that out, it made a lot more sense - LOL

The art and the sight gags were really good. It's amazing how much can be said with just art and minimal words on signage. It certainly shows the downtrodden private doing all the leg work while the officers get the credit. I wonder if it was as popular among the officers as among the enlisted men, because the officers are always portrayed in a bad light.

As Baker says in the intro, he was sent to various army camps across the world so he could keep abreast of developments. That shines through in the varous strips, as we see sad Sack in Europe and the Pacific. There are some interesting cultural observations. For example, in 'Safety in Numbers' (133-134), he thinks he's going on a date with a Filipino girl alone, but ends up having to pay for her whole family to see the movie. Also, an interesting cultural/political comment in 'The Enemy' (149-150) where he is presumably in Tokyo after the war and finds the 'enemy' polite and respectful, whereas he still gets a roasting from his US army officers.

Also, an interesting take on how combat fatigue is handled in 'Rest Cure' (81-82), with the answer being 'not very well'. Back in those days of course, there wasn't as much known about PTSD and its treatment. The treatment of returning vets also gets some attention in Room Racket' and 'Happy Day' (151-154) and the collection finishes on the rather sombre note of impending nuclear war.

The art was excellent and there was a lot of humour, but I was surprised by the more sophisticated humour which verged on satire and political/social commentary. Much more than I was expecting.

Thanks for a great find, SuperScrounge.

Cheers

QQ

[The Australian Panther]

New Adventure Comics #12
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=11644

This one is interesting to me as an historical artifact.
Clearly, as the first comics were, a collection of current newspaper strips.
Here we have Horatio Alger, Bill Patrick, A strip of 'SHE"  by H Rider Haggard. 'Tale of Two cities' Early Siegal and Schuster. Excellent scan and the overall quality of the work is quite high.
I will come back to this one when I have more time.
What does horrify me is the fact that I can't get information on most of these through a search engine.
So much for the myth that you can find anything on the internet.
Used to be that when you searched for anything you would get a line at the bottom of the page that listed over 100000 hits.  Now you get pages of ads.         

[The Australian Panther]

The New Big Hit Comics
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=90335

These were unobtainable in second hand shops when I was but a lad.
Emile Mercer was still working and regularly providing single panel cartoons to the Australian Newspapers into the 60's. The base of the illustration was unique in that it was always a wooden floor on springs - like mattress springs.
Calamity Ethel on a horse named Dulcibell! Dulcie and Ethel being fairly common Australian female names of the period. 
The Death Pearl
This is a very unusual story.
Detective Sergeant Milt Grey.
I very much like Carl Lyon's work.     
Thanks for bringing this book to wider attention. It's a puzzle why Stanley Pitt began his career by drawing such distorted legs on his characters, but the work is otherwise excellent. 
Thanks Scrounge. 

[The Australian Panther]

New Sad Sack
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=78376

It's a puzzle why this book is called, 'New'
It's a collection of most of the work that Baker did on the character during the duration of his military service. 
It's a revelation to me. When I was much younger, the Harvey comics were available in Australia while many other US comics were not.I read many of them. Harvey still published 'Sad Sack' in the 50's and early 60's. I don't know why, it was an anomaly among books like Casper and Richie Rich. It never did much for me.
But the original work, as we have it here, was very much aimed at adults. One or two of these strips would be X-rated if Baker hadn't made his point very subtly!
One interesting element is that 'To keep the Sad Sack abreast of developments, YANK magazine sent George Baker to dozens of Army Camps, to Panama, Africa, Italy, the Philippines, Okinawa and Tokyo.'
So the Sad Sack followed the progress of the US Army through the duration of the war.
Which means that the stories are probably records of what life was actually like for many of the 'Privates'. It's not a pretty picture. The main theme is that the Sad Sack is constantly victimized by the Officer class and the bureaucracy.
It's deliberate that 'The Sad Sack' is anonymous, never given a name. If the strip was continued throughout the duration of the war, it must have been popular and therefore it must have been well-observed and accurate.
From my perspective today, it's more sad than funny.
Something that confused me at first - the strips are actually double page spreads and to make sense of them you need to read from left to right across the top and then go back to the previous page and read left to right across the bottom tier.     
Another historic gem for the CB+ collection. 

Something different tomorrow!               

[Robb_K]

New Adventure Comics #12
Nice for a nostalgist to see a comic book from the very beginning of  1937(actually produced in 1936, during the first few years of the new comic book industry), to see what was available then.  When I was little, the stash of comic books my cousins had built up went as far back as 1939.  So, January 1937 was "ancient" to me in the late 1940s.  I didn't like being able to read only 2 pages of a continuing story, and having to wait a whole month to read the following 2 pages.  So, I enjoyed the more "modern" comic books of the 40s (late '40s and early '50s), more.  I liked "Don Coyote", "Loopy", "Rock Age Roy", and some of the one-page cartoony gags.  But, there wasn't much clever content.  It was mostly Vaudevillian-style gags. 

New Big Hit Comics
I was waiting for this book to read one of the Tripalong Hoppity episodes of this story thgat we were missing.  I LOVE Emile Mercier's loose cartoony style, and his tongue-in-cheek humour.  And I especially love the Australianisms he uses from a Frenchman's point-of-view.  Calamity Ethel looks like a female version of a male cartoon comic character, but I cant place him.  Her nose looks like Lambiek's.  But her face is too long.  It must be a British character.  Tripalong is a superstrong superhero, who can carry the weight of an adult horse!  I like the combination of Mercier's parody of American "Cowboy films" and Western stars, spouting Australianisms. 

I liked the interesting artwork of "The Death Pearl".  And I liked Mercier's "Wilberforce" 1-Page gag. 

"New Sad Sack"
I like Baker's sketchlike artwork in this book much better than his art in the 1950s and 1960s Harvey Comics.  You can tell that most, if not all of these gags came directly from Baker's own experiences, or from what his colleagues told him happened to them.  I like its harder edged style much more than the comic strip  and Harvey stories and vignettes.  Great funny and expressive drawings!

[SuperScrounge]

Too easy, SuperScrounge. The theme is that they're all comic books. Can't fool us 

Ya got me! 

New Sad Sack
It's a puzzle why this book is called, 'New'

I believe it was the second Sad Sack book that collected the Sad Sack cartoons. I imagine the first book has mostly strips from 1941 and 1942, while this book seems to have comics published in 1943-45.

After the Yank run I think Baker tried running civilian Sad Sack strips in the newspapers (just like a number of military strips attempted, I'm not sure how many of them had successful post-war runs though.) then he sold it to Harvey in 1949 where they restored Sad Sack to a military setting and made other changes, although I believe Baker drew covers for the comic books for years.

New Big Hit Comics
I was waiting for this book to read one of the Tripalong Hoppity episodes of this story that we were missing.

Yeah, I figured you'd like that one. 

---

My Reviews

New Adventure Comics #12

Captain Jim of the Texas Rangers
An exciting installment.

Janey
Interesting gag.

Goofo
Interesting that we hear about how good a magician he is and yet we never see his act.

The Vikings
Okay. Although I was wondering why they went the caption route instead of word balloons & realized the story might have taken longer if they had the characters talk. Well, that and the writer was probably a fan of Prince Valiant.

Don Coyote
Ehhh... if only the king would sentence the bratty kid to the rack. ;-)

Captain Quick
Okay.

The Blood Pearls
Baslyn needs to calm down. How does the Chinaman know where Baslyn went? Did he Lojack the pearls?

Rattlesnake Pete
Okay.

17-20 On The Black
Eh, okay.

Andy Handy
Cute.

Ebony
Ehh...

Ol' Oz Bopp
Is Juniper a metaphor for Humor?

She
Probably works better in the book.

Loopy
Weak joke.

Castaway Island
A problem with these old 2-pagers, a dull setting up for a climax that will happen next issue.

Golden Dragon
Huh. One of the Major's stories adapted to a comic. I wonder if he paid himself for the adaptation rights? ;-)

Maginnis of the Mounties
Nice wrap-up.

Rock-Age Roy
Cute.

Steve Conrad
Now this is the way to fill in those build up moments. Include a little action as well.

Cal 'n' Alec
Slow and filled with dialect 'humor'.

Sandor and the Lost Civilization
Okay.

A Tale of Two Cities
Interesting.

Chikko Chakko
Well you can hardly blame Chikko for confusing a politician with a bandit. ;-)

Sam the Porter
Okay.

Hardluck Harry
Bit of a shaggy dog story.

Federal Men
Kind of funny that sci-fi story was just a story dreamed up by a present day scientist. I think it would have been better if they would have just let Jerry do it as a straight sci-fi story rather than tieing it into the straight crime series.

It's a Dern Lie
Interesting premise.


The New Big Hit Comics

Aussies In Action
Lovely drawing.

Tripalong Hoppity
Funny, as usual for Emile.

The Death Pearl
Interesting use of greed.

Milt Grey
Okay.

Pilot of Death
Okay.

The Adventures of Jim Atlas
The story is a little off like it's an early attempt at writing. Jim having legs about 2/3s of his body is also a sign of an early art job.

Wilberforce
Okay.


New Sad Sack

Funny.

One thing I noticed was how Lt. Pacratt (& some other Lts.) all had fangs. At first I thought he was going for a snakelike look, until I saw his name was Pacratt and realized that they kinda look ratty.

[The Australian Panther]

Just looked at the Odds and Ends section and found that we have a 'Military' section and the 'New Sad Sack' is not in that section. 

[MarkWarner]

Thanks for picking this up ... it has been moved now