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[MarkWarner]

Last week's book was a Joe Palooka (which I thoroughly enjoyed). When I introduced it I explained how it came to be chosen. To recap a while back our highly esteemed member Narfstar said  "Someone should suggest a Joe Palooka or Curly Kayoe for consideration, if anyone has a favorite."

So I plumped for Joe Palooka, but during the week I thought it might be a cool idea to ALSO read Curly Kayoe. So here he is appearing in a Dell Four Color https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=34810. The story we are concentrating on is the first one "Knockout" where Curly defends his title against Swampy Glades, the Bayou Blockbuster.

After this I promise we'll have a bit of a break from boxers!

[betaraybdw]

Sports Comics are not normally my Cup of Tea, but I gave it whirl. I'm thinking the resemblance to Elvis of Swampy in some panels was quite deliberate given when this comic was made. And I know it was just the times, but boy do Swampy and his brothers fill a stereotype. Actually I liked the "Fit to Fight" story better,  reminded me of some the basic story principles of The Karate Kid. I like the cover art and I like how even though it was 1958, Dell said Code/shmode did not bother with that.

[SuperScrounge]

After this I promise we'll have a bit of a break from boxers!

Perhaps jockeys, or just go commando? *buh dum bump* (A hook from the wings pulls Super Scrounge offstage)

[SuperScrounge]

Sparring With Curly Kayoe - Okay, if dull, factoid.

Knockout - Not bad

Ring Tactics - Good advice if you're in a fight.

Keeping Fit - Okay, if dull, factoid.

Fit To Fight - Good advice, if a little preachy.

History of Boxing - Interesting.

The Long Count - The question shouldn't be would Dempsey have won if it hadn't been for the long count, the question should be would Dempsey have won if he had followed the rules.

[crashryan]

This makes an interesting contrast to last week's comic. They couldn't be more different, beginning with the fact that Joe Palooka was reprinted comic strips and Curly Kayoe is new material created for the comic. Despite my complaints about it, Joe Palooka was more interesting. It offered a more complex storyline and just gave you more stuff to read.

Curly Kayoe is very basic. The credits say Ben Brown wrote the stories. Maybe so, but the first story has all the hallmarks of a Paul S. Newman script: efficient to the point of being bland, very light dialogue, and especially Newman's quirk of always putting don't and can't in boldface even when the context doesn't call for it. The story isn't exactly bad, just dull.

The rest of the book reads like a sponsored comic. The emphasis on physical fitness takes over the second story reducing Curly to a supporting role. One of my gripes with the book as a whole is that the title character has no personality. I didn't care for Joe Palooka's personality but at least we knew what it was. Curly is a cipher.

The art is also efficient but dull. Except for the cover, one of those nice paintings Dell was famous for.

For comparison's sake I'd like to see how closely this comic reflects the original newspaper strip.

[Mazzucchelli]

I must admit that while reading the first story

[narfstar]

Pretty much what Mazz said. I knew immediately when they showed the curled toes that was the tell. Oh and the taping of the toes was accidental and at just the right time. Cover great story NOT.

[Morgus]

A wonderful cover painting, even by Dell's high standards...I hope the original was saved someplace..The story was dumb, but god help me I read the whole thing and the whole comic by the way. Don't know why. Thought at first the art in the comic itself might be done by two guys at once...there seemed to be two styles...a  'cartooney' one when they drew folks like the manager, and a more realistic style when they drew the ladies who just happened to pass by. But nope, just one artist, and not a  bad one at that...Yes, Swampy looked like Elvis, YEARS before Kid Galahad, and one of the older relatives looked a lot like The King in the later years. Sort of sad, in a way. Hey, just remembered...Dell did POPEYE for a while and ALSO featured excerises if I am not mistaken.

[crashryan]

I pulled a random Curly Kayoe strip reprint to see how it stacked up against the Dell comic. There was hardly any similarity beyond the character names. The reprint I read--the legendary fight between Curly and Dynamite Dunn--actually held my interest even though I'm not big on boxing. Dynamite Dunn was the first fighter managed by Curly's first manager, Joe Jinks, who was replaced by Happy (his manager in the comic book) in 1947.

It seems almost certain that the comic book writer didn't know anything about the strip. He probably was given a simple character list and had to make everything else up. When the comic book came out in 1958 the newspaper strip was long past its heyday--in fact a couple of years later (1961) it would morph into a seagoing adventure strip, Davy Jones!

Under those circumstances I can't blame the comic book author for faking it. He might however have researched boxing more. Like Joe Palooka, Curly Kayoe was very heavy into the technicalities and lore of boxing.

By the way, Morgus mentioned the clash between cartoony and semi-realistic art styles. I think one reason Joe Jinks was sent West and replaced by Happy in the newspaper strip is that Jinks was drawn in a very broad 1920's cartoon style (the strip had debuted in 1918 as the story of a man and his car). By 1947 the rest of the strip's characters had been "modernized." I suspect that rather than suddenly re-design Joe the syndicate decided to replace him with someone more in synch with the strip's current art style.

[bowers]

Just couldn't get into this one. Curley lacked even the basic charm of Joe Palooka and the art was nothing special. Not so much bad as boring.

Seeing the date on this comic leads me to believe that this was Dell's attempt to cash in on the wildly popular TV boxing of the time. Gillette Razors sponsored "Friday Night at the Fights" every week with such greats as Floyd Patterson and Sugar Ray Robinson. All the neighborhood dads would congregate at somebody's house and make a night of it. (Great snacks!) Later, a Wednesday night bout was added.

I'll have to give this one a rare thumbs down. Cheers, Bowers

[MarkWarner]

I know zero about this character and have just found out he is a boxer and world champion. Mind you what a shower of contenders he had to "deal with" on our page 6. I think even I might be able to sorted them out.

This also featured some rather sloppy dialogue:

"Swampy threw just TWO punches --- a jab and then the BLOCKBUSTER! He needed only ONE MINUTE to polish of Curly's leading contender!"

A couple of frames later

"If I remember correctly the BLOCKBUSTER IS COMING UP!"

So the first story is over and no way is this a patch on the Joe Palooka we read last week. So I am unsure what I would be saying if the comparison wasn't there to be had.

A two page physical training tutorial really doesn't tell us anything new.

A rather moralist story that still involved a lot of punching people. A one page history of boxing is followed by the best bit of the whole book which is on the back page. "The Long Count" is about the 1927 fight between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney. I have heard of the Long Count before, now I know what it was about!

Verdict: A hit, on a split decision (see what i did there??). The last page sealed the verdict. No way was this as good as last week's Joe Palooka. But I thought it was unfair to use that comparison as a judgement. We've certainly read worse books than this.