This comic proves that no matter how many comics you've read, there's always one you haven't heard of. I had no idea Charles Biro had produced a Code approved kid's comic. This is filed with Lev Gleason comics, but the indicia suggests someone else--perhaps Biro himself?--was the publisher. That said, the more I read this comic (and I read it several times) the stranger it seemed. It's not that it's bad; it isn't. But its many peculiarities make it tough to figure out.
The star character, Jim Dandy, resembles the troubled kids in Biro's old Boy Comics and Crime Does Not Pay stories. Like them he is desperate to be liked and has boundless admiration for a creep. In the earlier comics the kid would either have been straightened out by Crimebuster (Boy) or turned into a criminal (CDnP). Here he just goes on prancing around the bully's heels begging for acceptance no matter how viciously he's treated. It's pathetic the way Jim tells Dash, "I wouldn't do that to you! I'm your friend!"
It'd be easier to shrug off if it there weren't an uncomfortable kernel of truth in his behavior. Biro captures some of the angst of a nerdy adolescent boy in the 1950s--wishing he were physically tough, yearning for the cute girls who preferred the jocks. I ought to know. Jim's Dad expresses perfectly the 50s concept of manhood: athletic excellence and ready fists. The kids in my town seldom had fistfights, but our media was saturated with that cowboy fantasy, which has survived to the present in the form of our national conviction that all the world's problems can be solved with a gun. Okay, this stuff is true to the period. The troublesome part is that we're supposed to sympathize with, even admire, Jim's masochistic striving to be loved by this asshole.
With the sudden injection of Cup the story turns from an Archie-style comic into My Favorite Martian. Some of the situations are funny and Cup is a likeable guy. But his invisible antics don't always mesh with the more serious character interaction. Jim is right, his impressive athletic feats are mostly Cup's doing, as is the punch that heralds the dawn of his manhood. No wonder Jim hates himself even more after learning the truth. I haven't read the other two issues (I'm amazed there was more than one), so I wonder whether the angst was later soft-pedaled in favor of hijinks.
The artwork is also strange. It's quite good, almost too good for the story. In it is an awkward tension between cartoony and realistic. Many characters seem to have been based on specific individuals, and this clashes with the silly stories. But considered apart from story, these are remarkable drawings. The artist has put great effort into designing characters with distinct personalities. Take the dads for example. There's nothing generic about them. The girls are almost dangerously cute and their fashions are rendered with meticulous care. In fact the artist puts the same care into dressing all his actors. Even though exaggerated the poses are true to life. When the kids stand around they stand the way kids stand.
These drawings remind me of advertising storyboard art. That combination of fine detail with broad posing is the mark of a great sketch artist. I have no idea if it is Charles Biro. The art I definitely know was Biro's is very early stuff and not too good. It's generally accepted that Biro didn't draw most of the covers he signed at Gleason. Who knows, by 1956 he may have learned to draw like this. Whoever it is, it's good. My only gripe is the way the inking of the mouths makes all the guys appear buck-toothed.
One quirk about the writing: the characters call each other by name incessantly! You'd think it was radio dialogue.
Bammy Boozle...whose crazy idea is this? A vaudeville dancer, her medicine-show dad and their rolling house? There's a real 1920s concept. Shorty Shiner doesn't inspire confidence either.
