[The Australian Panther]

It is already Monday here where I am, so here is the next Reading group choice.
When Mark created the new 'Put your book suggestions here thread' , he wrote,

I thought I'd kick this thread off so my recommendation is Merry-Go-Round (La Salle Publishing) It is a Giant at well over 100 pages so I'd suggest maybe a free-style read week and choose what you like?   

It turns out that there are two books called 'Merry-go-round' on CB+, both of them scanned by Narfstar. (And thank you!)
One of them is by Nedor and one by ACG. Same masthead, similiar contents.
No doubt Narfstar can tell us more about their publishing history. Should he choose to do so.
I had been thinking I might like to try posting more than one book at a time, for comparisons and so on.
So I decided that I would post both of them.
Mark's reaction?

Yes it was the ACG one ... and great idea open it up ... the more words the better! 

So here have 
Mery-Go-round #1 [ACG]
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=39472   
and Merry-go-round #2  [Nedor]
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=12088

Both funny animal books Robb!

So to all, have a good read, go for it and sink your teeth into them! 

[Robb_K]

Here is the next Reading group choice.
When Mark created the new 'Put your book suggestions here thread' , he wrote, I thought I'd kick this thread off so my recommendation is Merry-Go-Round (La Salle Publishing).
It turns out that there are two books called 'Merry-go-round' on CB+
One of them is by Nedor and one by ACG. Same masthead, similar contents.
No doubt Narfstar can tell us more about their publishing history. Should he choose to do so.
So here we have Merry-Go-Round #1 [ACG]
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=39472   
and Merry-Go-Round #2  [Nedor]
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=12088

I think I can clear up the questions about why the 2 different "Merry-Go-Round" series issued by 2 different publishers have the same logo.  It was all in the family. 

In 1928, wanting to take advantage of the newly-burgeoning pulp book and magazine industry's success, real estate lawyer for The Hearst Newspaper Syndicate, and successful businessman, Ben Sangor, started a publishing company to publish French pulp novels. In 1930, he hired his future son-in-law, Ned Pines, as a distribution promoter for his publications, and Pines immediately set up a publishing company to publish pulp novels and magazines. In 1938, Sangor's daughter married Pines.  In 1939, Sangor, wanting to take advantage of the new comic book industry's success, founded The Ben Sangor Studio, using moonlighting animators to draw comic book stories for the comic book publishing companies who wanted to add newly-written and drawn stories to their books, which had here-to-fore consisted of only reprinted newspaper comic strips.  He used mainly animators from The Fleischer Brothers' animation studio in Miami, and ex Van Beuren Studio veterans from New York.  That Studio was run by Richard Hughes.  In 1941, they also set up a studio in Hollywood California, filled by artists from Disney, Warner Brothers, and MGM's studios, especially after the first 2 studios' strikes.  Jim Davis ran that studio.  Also in 1939, Pines started "Standard Comics".  He used "Nedor Comics" as his main operating brand name, and used Sangor's Studio artists for his comics production.  In 1943, Sangor started his own comic book production, American Comics Group(ACG)/Creston Publishing, with "Giggle" and Ha Ha Comics".

Pines worked basically under Sangor's umbrella, until Sangor closed down his studios, and sold off his comic book publishing company, ACG, which continued to publish several lines, but the funny animal series, "Giggle Comics", "HaHa Comics", and "Funny Films" were shut down in 1955.  Pines then hired about a quarter of the 2 studios' artists to work directly for his Standard Comics, while several others followed Jim Davis to work exclusively for DC's line of funny animal comics, or went on to work for Western Publishing (Dell Comics) either in their New York or Los Angeles studios.

So, Pines' Nedor/Standard and Sangor's ACG had been basically 2 sides of the same house from 1943-1953 or so. 

"Merry-Go Round Comics"

During 1943-1946 both ACG and Standard/Nedor farmed out some of their product to other publishers, usually for special annual or semi-annual giant comics, but sometimes to tiny publishers who were testing out the market, and not sure whether or not they would give it a serious try, and also to some publishers who DIDN'T ordinarily publish comicbooks, because Sangor ran out of his firm's WWII's paper allotment, so he farmed out the excess of his production to those publishers.  So, that is why several Sangor-produced giant books were farmed out to William H. Wise Co., La Salle Publishing, and why 2 issues of "Laffy-Daffy Comics" (basically Giggle/HaHa/CooCoo/Goofy format) were produced for Rural Home/Croydon Publishing. 

The First "Merry-Go-Round Comics" was a 132-page giant comic (basically the size of 2 68-page early '40s showcase/belleweather series for a publisher(minus a couple pages), or the size of 4 budget 36-page comic books of the early '40s).  It came out in late 1944 (despite being listed often as 1945).  It was published by LaSalle Publishing, used as a supplementary outlet for ACG ("Merry-Go-Round Comics", "Funnybone Comics",  "ChuckleComics", and "Hi-Jinx Comics"); whereas William H. Wise Co. was used as an extra outlet by both ACG ("America's Funniest Comics" Nedor ("America's Biggest Comics").

Both "Merry-Go-Round Comics" and "Hi-Jinx Comics" were titles first issued as one-shot giant comics in the 1944-45 period, during World War II, skipped some years, and then used again in a regular series in the late 1940s.  The bi-monthly 10

[Electricmastro]

Definitely one of the most distinct artists on these books is Pazmino. With his geometric style and flailing poses, it would be hard to mistake him for another artist even if he didn

[ComicMike]

I think I can clear up the questions about why the 2 different "Merry-Go-Round" series issued by 2 different publishers have the same logo. It was all in the family.  [...]

Thank you Robb for this information. As you can probably guess, they are already on my computer as a text file. 

[Robb_K]

It turns out that there are two books called 'Merry-go-round' on CB+
I decided that I would post both of them. So here we have: 

Merry-Go-round #0 [ACG]
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=39472   
and Merry-go-round #2  [Nedor]
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=12088

Normally, I review EVERY story in depth, including text stories.  But having 184 pages of comic book stories to review is a LOT of unpaid work.  I'll probably say something about every drawn story, but some of my "reviews" will likely be limited to one-liners.

I'm honoured to review one of "my own" Canadian comics for the first time on this forum.  But, I think I'll start with La Salle's Jan. 1945 132-page Giant. By the way, I have uploaded an upgraded copy, which has added the first 2 pages of its first shown story (which, I believe was really the 2nd story in the book, because after adding the 2 pages, and removing the duplicated pages, found that we really only have 122 pages.  The inside front cover, inside back cover (1 page gag), and back cover (poster-style drawing of inside characters) are missing, as well as 5 other pages (1 unknown story).  This book is not yet indexed in detail in GCD.

***************************************************************************************

Merry-Go-Round [nn] ACG/La Salle Giant (1945) - 132 P

Judge Beaver
Firstly, I must mention that one of my favourite artists, Ken Hultgren, drew this well-drawn story.  I believe that Hubie Karp (animator, Lynn Karp's, and storywriter Bob Karp's brother) wrote it.  Like so many early 1940s funny animal comics drawn by animators, it shows a lot of great action and great expressions on the characters' faces, showing the emotions clearly.  The ending is nicely, ironic.

Mutt Machree 1-Page Gag
Silly gag, but funny.  The art is pretty good.  It looks to me like Dan Gordon's work.  He was the artist who drew the "Superkatt" feature in "Giggle Comics", monthly from early 1944 through 1954, and he also drew most of ACG's "Funny Films" stories from 1948-1955.

"Officer Oof (Hippo)"
This was certainly drawn by Victor Pazmi

[SuperScrounge]

Merry-Go-Round Comics (Lasalle)

Judge Beaver

[Robb_K]

Merry-Go-Round Comics (Lasalle)
Judge Beaver

[narfstar]

Robb anyone can download a book, change to zip and the missing files and reup.

[narfstar]

Well I seldom read the whole book and surely not now I have gotten more enjoyment out of funny animal comics in later years than long ago. I am more able to just accept the nonsense. For that reason I enjoy VEP stories. Officer Oof was stupid fun. I also liked the Mutt Machree agreeing with Scrounge. I did not like any of the first three stories in the Nedor book so I would go with ACG

[Robb_K]

Robb anyone can download a book, change to zip and the missing files and reup.

I have submitted my upgraded version of The un-numbered La Salle Publishing's 132-Page giant comic book January 1945 issue, "Merry-Go-Round [nn]", which completes the book's first story, "Judge Beaver" by adding its first 2 previously missing pages, and also removes 8 duplicate pages.  It hasn't yet been processed and posted its own page in ACG's "One Shots" section, but should be up soon. 

[SuperScrounge]

The GCD index for the ACG book is https://www.comics.org/issue/351502/

[gregjh]

MGR #1

I read the first 25 pages or so. I quickly realized it wasn't my style of comic but I enjoyed reading the very brief stories. They have a Hanna-Barbera feel about them and although they were clearly designed to be innocent and aimed at young readers, I still liked them. I can understand criticisms of the artwork others have made, though I still enjoyed the simplistic color scheme in this setting.

MGR #2
As a dog lover I enjoyed the opening story (the only one I read), I found the artwork to be slightly more advanced than MGR #1 and again, the innocent story was a very brief but enjoyable read. I didn't understand the reference to the teaspoon in the second-to-last panel, perhaps I read too quickly, can anyone explain?

[Robb_K]

MGR #1

I read the first 25 pages or so. I quickly realized it wasn't my style of comic but I enjoyed reading the very brief stories. They have a Hanna-Barbera feel about them and although they were clearly designed to be innocent and aimed at young readers, I still liked them. I can understand criticisms of the artwork others have made, though I still enjoyed the simplistic color scheme in this setting.

MGR #2
As a dog lover I enjoyed the opening story (the only one I read), I found the artwork to be slightly more advanced than MGR #1 and again, the innocent story was a very brief but enjoyable read. I didn't understand the reference to the teaspoon in the second-to-last panel, perhaps I read too quickly, can anyone explain?

It's not a terrific joke.  But the dog , trying to get even with the hare for the latter's having tricked him, bothered him, and wasted his time, by giving the latter the time-wasting job of emptying the water out of the basement using a tiny teaspoon.

Personally, I think the artwork in BOTH books' first stories is excellent, based on the average level of funny animal artwork in comic books in the early 1940s (which, in my opinion, was better than it became in the 1950s and miles better than in the 1960s.

[crashryan]

This was a lot of reading. As so often happens, I felt compelled to read everything even though I didn't have to.

In general the artwork is superior to the stories. Hultgren, Bradbury, Fitzgerald, and co. are a pleasure to behold. I am relieved to learn that I'm not the only one who dislikes Pazmino's art. He has a fan following, apparently, but for me his work  has "that elusive charm that eludes me completely."

From Merry-Go-Round #1:

Judge Beaver is beautifully drawn. I don't buy the idea that just by sitting behind the radio and talking the wolf convinces the judge he 's hearing a newscast.

Along with unattractive VEP artwork Officer Oof has a clumsy story that raises no smiles.

Puggsy Pup has funny moments but the art is the real star. This and several other stories use annoying color gimmicks: thick, colored parallel lines as a background, and a thick color outline around a foreground figure.

Stork Delivery, Inc. is amusing mostly because of Dunn's expressive drawings of the increasingly bedraggled stork. I got a chuckle from his heading for the "Maternity Hospital" and finding the "Fraternity Hospital" instead.

I expected that Koo Koo Koala from "way down under" would offer a story connected somehow to Australia. Instead it's a generic take on Jack and the Beanstalk. Would have been exactly the same story with Pepe LePew.

We all know Sleepin' Lena by now. What an odd combination of story and art.

The Great Holmlock boasts great artwork. The odd gimmick of having Holmes lie about while Watson does the work might come off better on film.

Laffy's lively artwork suits its over-the-top story perfectly.

I didn't get Angus McSnoot's joke the first time through, but I didn't care because Jack Bradbury's art was so good.

I don't like Maxwell Moth's artwork at all, but I enjoyed the love-conquers-all story.

Dum and Dummer is a likeable story with good art. The arbitrary colors almost sink the whole thing.

Oscar the Ugly Duckling delivers an ambiguous message. Oscar's siblings acknowledge they abused Oscar as a child, but they're off the hook now that Oscar's making money taking the same sort of abuse?

Mortimer Mutt's story is a tangled mess. It might have worked on the screen. In fact the story is paced like a cartoon with visual and timing gimmicks like the bearded guy who keeps popping up. He'd be a funny running gag in animation, ambling in when least expected, speaking with a lazy Droopy-style voice.

Bagdad Bear is a better story than VEP's first try, but the art does it no favors.

Buster Butterfinger has such a disjointed, illogical story that I should hate it. Instead the craziness really works here, Mexican jumping beans and all. It's a pity that awful coloring obscures some excellent art. Whenever there's a detailed area (e.g. Buster's machinery, wide shots of the Mexican town) the colorist slaps a blob of solid red over it.

Rowdy and Dowdy doesn't make much sense and even though it's a cartoon the horse looks misshapen.

Hard-Hearted Hannah starts like a thousand other battleax-wife-won't-let-hubby-go-out stories (Maggie and Jiggs, anybody?). That's why the ending is an enjoyable surprise. You still wonder why Hannah is so rough on the guys in her attempt to keep them at home, but the idea of a brawny wife actually doing something nice for her spouse is downright refreshing.

I was starting to get groggy by the time I reached Buzz Bear. Adequate version of an old story.

Mr Mutt reads like an animation storyboard. Main character not altogether likeable.

Randy Rabbit and Dilly Duck: Okay gag.

Sleeping Lena reminds me strongly of a b&w 1930s cartoon. I haven't seen it in years and I don't recall its title. It used the same gimmick of retail products and their mascots cavorting about a grocery store. I wonder if this story was inspired by (or knocked off from) that cartoon. Note this: Lena actually performs her job and does it in record time. It's only spoiled when she falls asleep. This suggests Lena is more competent than we're led to believe.

Blowaway is another job by Sleeping Lena's artist. His semi-realistic style is even more incongruous here. I can't make sense of the ending. Is there a page missing?

Overall: plenty of good art, some good stories. But way too much material for one sitting.

[Robb_K]

Blowaway is another job by Sleeping Lena's artist. His semi-realistic style is even more incongruous here. I can't make sense of the ending. Is there a page missing?   

Could well be anywhere from 2 to 8 pages (1 to 4 papers) missing from the end of the book.  The only page from the front and back covers we have is the front cover.  The ifc, ibc, and bc are all missing.  So, I suspect that the scan of the front cover was taken from an Internet sale advert.  In addition, there are 4 other pages missing (in addition to the reprint-restored first 2 pages of "Judge Beaver".  So, there is either a 4-page story missing from the front of the book from before "Judge Beaver", or missing from the end of the book, after "Blowaway", OR, perhaps 3 additional pages from the end of the "Blowaway" story, and a 1-page gag or advert also missing before the ibc.  We have only 122 pages out of the advertised 130.

I noticed that the 3 stories that you singled out as being really well drawn were all drawn by Ken Hultgren, probably my favourite comic book artist after Carl Barks.  I think it is no coincidence.  But, of course, Jack Bradbury, Lynn Karp, Thurston Harper, Owen Fitzgerald, and Al Hubbard were no slouches.  Preston Blair, Al Taliaferro, Gil Turner, Don R. Christensen, Frank Frazetta, Jim Davis, Bob Wickersham, Jim Tyer, Ken Champin, Milt Stein, Ed Dunn, Hawley Pratt, and so many other great animators also worked for Sangor, and so, for "Giggle", "Ha Ha", "Funny Films", "Hi-Jinx", "Coo Coo", "Barnyard", "Goofy", "Happy", "Merry-Go-Round", "Dizzy Duck", "Super Mouse", and "Spunky" Comics.

[gregjh]

MGR #1

I read the first 25 pages or so. I quickly realized it wasn't my style of comic but I enjoyed reading the very brief stories. They have a Hanna-Barbera feel about them and although they were clearly designed to be innocent and aimed at young readers, I still liked them. I can understand criticisms of the artwork others have made, though I still enjoyed the simplistic color scheme in this setting.

MGR #2
As a dog lover I enjoyed the opening story (the only one I read), I found the artwork to be slightly more advanced than MGR #1 and again, the innocent story was a very brief but enjoyable read. I didn't understand the reference to the teaspoon in the second-to-last panel, perhaps I read too quickly, can anyone explain?

It's not a terrific joke.  But the dog , trying to get even with the hare for the latter's having tricked him, bothered him, and wasted his time, by giving the latter the time-wasting job of emptying the water out of the basement using a tiny teaspoon.

Personally, I think the artwork in BOTH books' first stories is excellent, based on the average level of funny animal artwork in comic books in the early 1940s (which, in my opinion, was better than it became in the 1950s and miles better than in the 1960s.

Thanks for clearing it up!

[crashryan]

Having recovered from ACG's Merry-Go-Round #1, I'm ready to glance at Nedor's Merry-Go-Round #2. I'm grateful for Robb's explainer, because this looks exactly like another issue of ACG's title, right down to the gimmicky background color. I had no idea that the lives of ACG and Nedor/Standard were so closely intertwined.

Hurry Hare starts slow but improves as it goes along. By the time HH gets to "Hold my air hose, will y', pal?" I was smiling.

I was put off by Paxton Penguin at first because it doesn't explain why a penguin would fear cold water. Once you accept the premise, though, the story isn't bad. I love the good-natured whale. The artwork isn't flashy but it's enjoyable nonetheless and fits the story nicely.

Marty is one of those strips I've criticized for trying to do in a comic something that would work much better in animation. Take our page 16. Whack-a-mole gags like this are tailor-made for screen cartoons. The character's increasingly frenzied attempts to stem the tide are a sure-fire laugh getter. On paper the gag falls flat no matter how lively the drawing because you just can't get the same effect in four or five static panels. The only way I can think to pull it off would be to do a Bernie Krigstein and divide the page into 20 little panels, each one a bit more frantic than the last. It'd require very good drawing--lots of it. I still don't know if it'd work. And funny-animal comics are not the usual venue for experimental storytelling.

Jack Bradbury delivers the book's best art in Doc Kwak. The doctor himself is a marvel of personality and action. The story kind of meanders.

Wirey has pleasant art and the story runs smoothly until the end. Although Wirey didn't take the wrong bone deliberately, the conclusion makes him a little less sympathetic.

Compared to Butch the VEP shorts in MGR #1 are downright readable. The same unpleasant artwork is combined with a nonsensical story that strains painfully for each gag. It's not helped by the fact that Butch is so damned stupid.

The Whiz Horse is three pages of filler to set up an unfunny punch line. Art is okay.

Sammy suffers from the worst of the gimmick coloring, especially the blue spots on the dog. They busy up the page and detract from the drawings. Sammy the squirrel is a little jerk. I was rooting for the dog and didn't find the situations very funny.

The end. Whew! Much nice stuff, but too much of it. After close to 200 pages of Merry-Go-Round I'm surfeited with funny animals for a while.

[Robb_K]

Having recovered from ACG's Merry-Go-Round #1, I'm ready to glance at Nedor's Merry-Go-Round #2. I'm grateful for Robb's explainer, because this looks exactly like another issue of ACG's title, right down to the gimmicky background color. I had no idea that the lives of ACG and Nedor/Standard were so closely intertwined. 

It looks like an ACG issue, and has an ACG book title, because ALL it's stories were produced for, and for the most part, produced by ACG.  And, those stories were ALL reprinted in different ACG books (either "Giggle" or "Ha Ha"), years later, because they were OWNED by ACG.  Otherwise, those stories would have been reprinted in Nedor/Standard books, rather than in Creston/ACG books. 

Although I've never seen this explained specifically in writing, what I DO know, together with logic, tells me that because Ned Pines' Better/Nedor Publishing had a distributor for their comic books in Canada, and his father-in-law Ben Sangor's smaller comic book operation did not, and Sangor wanted to get in on Canada's burgeoning comic book market, once the ban on US comic books importation into Canada was lifted in 1946, Sangor asked Pines to distribute his new Canadian line, through the latter's distribution channel, in a partnership operation, with Pines' Better/Nedor getting maybe 10-15% of the profits, but ACG keeping ownership. 

Sangor's publishing companies (with magazines and pulp books) were larger than Pines', but Pines' comic book operations were quite a bit bigger than Sangors'.  The latter's comic book operations in Canada in a test-marketing situation would be way too small to invest in paying a big cut of profits to a Canadian import distributor, or for Sangor to start up his own comic book distributorship in Canada (if that would even have even been allowed) and incur substantial overhead/fixed costs.  The prudent thing to do was to piggyback on his son-in-law's already reasonably successful operation.  Then, if things would prove to be very favourable, he could always choose to sell a much higher volume of additional series there, later, and go into partnership with a Canadian distributor; or he could ratchet up his participation with Pines.

[The Australian Panther]

OK. Here we go!

Merry-Go--Round [ACG]
Random Comments.
I like the cover.
If I was a kid I'd probably want to pick this up.
If I was a parent buying for a kid, I might hesitate. 
Officer Oof!
The off-kilter artwork makes this work, otherwise its just a series of verbal gags.
Ko Koo Koala
A mash-up of Jack and the Beanstalk Well done. But, why, I don't know.
Sleeping Lena. As Crash said, indescribable!
The Great Homlock. [Hultgren]
Sherlock is always good for a laugh.
Angus McSnoot
(Jack Bradbury)
Maxwell Moth
Visually keeps your attention
Dum and Dumber.
There is nothing new under the sun, is there?
Buster Butterfinger
An actual story. Well drawn too!
Sleeping Lena
The first recurring character.
This is something of a variation of Little Nemo.
Well-done too.
Erich F. T. Schenk
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/s/schenk_erich.htm
Couple of pages from this book reproduced here.
Blowaway also Schenk.
Also memorable.
MERRY-GO- GROUND 2
It may not be a good idea to read and comment on two of these at once.  180+ pages?
The Whiz horse.
Not bad!
So over-all impression.
I'm surprised that these guys, who were 'the best there is at what they do' - mainly visual slapstick- used so many puns and verbal jokes. This probably works better on the screen as the punchline to a visual gag - with sound effects.
Clearly, At the time the editors only wanted filler, they weren't thinking of regular series character, so filler was what they got. So most of these are anecdotes, not stories, not narratives. And that's the problem. The reader has no incentive to pick up the next issue, if there is one. I assume that the market for this type of comic was healthy enough at the time, that that didn't matter very much to the publisher
A nice artefact from the period.

So next week a new choice!
Can't wait.     

[Robb_K]

OK. Here we go!

Merry-Go--Round [ACG]
Random Comments.
I like the cover.
If I was a kid I'd probably want to pick this up.
If I was a parent buying for a kid, I might hesitate. 
Officer Oof!
The off-kilter artwork makes this work, otherwise its just a series of verbal gags.
Ko Koo Koala
A mash-up of Jack and the Beanstalk Well done. But, why, I don't know.
Sleeping Lena. As Crash said, indescribable!
The Great Homlock. [Hultgren]
Sherlock is always good for a laugh.
Angus McSnoot
(Jack Bradbury)
Maxwell Moth
Visually keeps your attention
Dum and Dumber.
There is nothing new under the sun, is there?
Buster Butterfinger
An actual story. Well drawn too!
Sleeping Lena
The first recurring character.
This is something of a variation of Little Nemo.
Well-done too.
Erich F. T. Schenk
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/s/schenk_erich.htm
Couple of pages from this book reproduced here.
Blowaway also Schenk.
Also memorable.
MERRY-GO- GROUND 2
It may not be a good idea to read and comment on two of these at once.  180+ pages?
The Whiz horse.
Not bad!
So over-all impression.
I'm surprised that these guys, who were 'the best there is at what they do' - mainly visual slapstick- used so many puns and verbal jokes. This probably works better on the screen as the punchline to a visual gag - with sound effects.
Clearly, At the time the editors only wanted filler, they weren't thinking of regular series character, so filler was what they got. So most of these are anecdotes, not stories, not narratives. And that's the problem. The reader has no incentive to pick up the next issue, if there is one. I assume that the market for this type of comic was healthy enough at the time, that that didn't matter very much to the publisher
A nice artifact from the period.  So next week a new choice!  Can't wait.     

If you had been a parent wanting to buy a comic book for your children, why would you hesitate to buy THIS book of 130 pages at 25 cents, containing high-quality funny animal character art, when its main competition, the film cartoon-based character books (Disney, WB, MGM, and Walter Lantz) offered only 52-page, less sturdy books at 10 cents?

[The Australian Panther]

Another one of my posts that seems to have disappeared. Happens to me now and then. Not sure why.
Old age and senility on my part?
Here it is again.

If you had been a parent wanting to buy a comic book for your children, why would you hesitate to buy THIS book of 130 pages at 25 cents? 

My observation was based on my reading of the [ACG] cover. Parents and adults generally, in that era tended to be sceptical about letting their children read comics. There are those among us who had their collections destroyed because ' You need to grow up and stop reading comics' A Kid would probably have snapped the book up because of the cover, but 25c would have meant less to a parent. That cover is a long way from the kind of scene you find on the front of a Dell or Harvey comic. Those animals aren't just having fun, they look positively deranged. So I speculated that might be a negative for a parent buying the comic.
The Gag on the Nedor cover is what you expect for a comic like this.
Cheers! 
The Next reading group choice is due now that we have cut back to 2 weeks. Can't wait to see what Andrew and Robb have lined up!