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[Robb_K]

This fortnight's books are a from a fairly short-lived Funny Animal series, and a VERY short-lived mixed Action Hero/Funny Animal Golden Age series, both from the mid 1940s.  Both of these series seem to be related in some way to Max Gaines, but were not published directly under the E.C. Umbrella, at a time when the latter publishing firm was named "Educational Comics", before changing to "Entertaining Comics".  Both contained stories starring a Funny Animal superhero named "Freddy Firefly", who was the Funny Animal version of "The Human Torch", ostensibly trying to mirror the success of "Hoppy The Marvel Bunny" copying "Captain Marvel", and "Super Rabbit" copying "Superman".  I wonder if CB+'s own comic book scanning hero, "Freddy Fly", named himself after "Freddy Firefly"? 


Here is the front cover of "Animal Fables 5":


It can be found here:    https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=75892


Here is the front cover of "Mad Hatter 1":


It can be found here:   https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=26872

I look forward to reading your comments on the stories and artwork, as well as your opinions on why Gaines chose to not publish these series under the EC banner, and why "Mad Hatter Comics" had that title, given that hero had seemingly not been driven "mad" as a result of being overexposed to, and thus, poisoned by the mercury used in hat-making, and not only not being a hat-maker, but not even wearing a hat in the stories!

[Robb_K]

I am bumping this current thread up to the top, as we have more or less closed out the previous fortnight's (277).  And I want to make sure members don't miss this one.  Although it is heavy into the Funny Animal genre, it also deals a fair amount with a very obscure Spirit-type hero, GA legendary publisher Max Gaines, GA classic artist, John Giunta, a ridiculous series title, for a series, a copycat superhero, a bumbling detective vs. a maniacal murderer, who marks him for execution, a schoolteacher who teaches his pupils to do evil, and unbelievably, a publisher, that lasted only 2 issues, and more areas of Golden Age interest.

[solarpenguin]

Animal Fables 5

I like the way the Firefly story keeps switching settings and styles. It makes the tale feel bigger and more substantial than you might expect. We start off in a Western setting, then switch to a modern day American-style city with oppressed, downtrodden black servants and police brutality, and finish on a totally different political allegory with evil Reds to be defeated! Maybe all this chopping and changing might annoy some readers, but I enjoyed it.

On the down side, the gruesome way the red ant leader was killed doesn't seem right for a children's funny animal comic. Yes, it happened off-panel, but only just off-panel and we're left in no doubt what happened. For a children's audience maybe it might've been better to have him disraced, humbled, and reduced to a slave like those he oppressed.

OTOH it's great that Myrtle is in on Firefly's secret identity. That automatically makes him a more likeable character than most Golden Age superheroes!

*

Little Danny Demon has a nice premise but might get a bit predictable and same-y over several stories. BTW The Screwtape Letters had been published in 1942. I wonder if the idea of a young trainee demon might've been inspired by that? This is in a very different style though.

*

Talking of inspiration, Hector the Inspector was inspired by The Empty House. Naturally. (Famous detective tricks master criminal into attacking dummy of him rather than the real thing! Can't be a coincidence.) A fun variation on the theme, but that Watson character who kept saying "Naturally" over and over again soon got annoying. Naturally.

*

The two Aesop's Fables had the best art in the comic. I preferred the dog one, but they were both very well done and I liked the way the format was a cross between a traditional comic and an illustrated text story.

*

And finally, the elephant in the room. Or rather, the lack of an elephant or any other animal in the four Fat & Slat strips. They don't fit the comic's animal theme, and they really draw attention to themselves clumped together like that. If they'd been spread out across the comic, they might've been less noticeable.

Being all put together right after that three page advert for Comics McCormick makes me wonder if another story might've been dropped at the last minute and this was all hasty filler to make up the space. I might have to check out some other issues of Animal Fables to see if this was a regular thing or not.

(Thoughts on Mad Hatter 1 to follow)

[solarpenguin]

Mad Hatter 1

Who is this comic supposed to be aimed at? It calls itself "A New Kind Of Comic Book." The new thing appears to be not having any sort of target demographic at all!

The title character is a typical two-fisted superhero, so probably for a teenage audience. The other strips are aimed at kids 6 or 7 years old. Any teenager who bought this comic based on that great dramatic cover won't want Little Danny Demon playing with his cute animal friends. Any child young enough for that won't be allowed to read the comic because their parent will take one look at the cover and say, "Wait until you're older."

(To make things even worse, that story on the cover isn't even in this issue at all! Were they deliberately trying to lose money? Did they invent that con from The Producers decades before Mel Brooks did?)

Anyway, let's look at the stories that are there...

The two Mad Hatter stories both mix superherism with traditonal fair-play whodunnits, with the Hatter working out the villain's identity from clues in the story. I liked it. The second one even pausing to give the readers a chance to work it out too.

But it seems we're also expected to work out what the Mad Hatter's deal is too. Even though this is issue 1, we're not given an origin story or told anything about him. His adventures begin with him already famous enough that a newspaper is trying to expose his real identity!

There's some good use of negative space in the first strip, especially when highlighting Barbara's emotions as she faces the truth. The rest of the art in that story is very intense, angular, and scratchy. It can be really dramatic when it works, and fails badly when it doesn't. The other story has more consistent artwork (easy over only two pages) with some nice shading in places but nothing to match the very best or very worst of the first one.

Apart from Mad Hatter, we get the origin story for Little Danny Demon, which confirms my feeling that his stories are a bit formulaic with his animal friends always rescuing him from his latest moral dilemma each time.

The Firefly story feels simpler than the one we saw in Animal Fables but there are some nice touches with the character of Grandpa Moth I like the revelation of how he really caught those crooks in his youth! We also get to see a bit more of Freddy and Myrtle's relationship since she's not reduced to just being the damsel in distress here.

[Robb_K]

Animal Fables 5

And finally, the elephant in the room. Or rather, the lack of an elephant or any other animal in the four Fat & Slat strips. They don't fit the comic's animal theme, and they really draw attention to themselves clumped together like that. If they'd been spread out across the comic, they might've been less noticeable.

Being all put together right after that three page advert for Comics McCormick makes me wonder if another story might've been dropped at the last minute and this was all hasty filler to make up the space. I might have to check out some other issues of Animal Fables to see if this was a regular thing or not. 

Insightful observation, Solarpenguin. 
Might I dare to ask how you thought up your interesting member name?

In answer to your question, none of the other 6 issues of "Animal Fables" contained a run of 4 or more "Fat & Slat" 1-page gags. Only one other issue had even one publisher-owned filler added (a single "Fat & Slat" gag page).  All the rest included only Funny Animal/young children's fare.  So, your theory is most likely exactly what happened.

Max Gaines-related "Mad Hatter Comics" #2 contained a lone Funny Animal story (Hasty Rabbit & Tardy Bear), that not only didn't seem to fit, at all, with the remaining non-comedy action/crime-based stories, but was tailored for even younger kids than the edgy Funny Animal stories in "Mad Hatter " #1.  So, that out-of- place "Hasty & Tardy" story, may have originally been slated for "Animal Fables" #1, but wasn't finished by the printing deadline; and so, was tossed into "Mad Hatter" #2, which was issued just one month later, and a full month before "Animal Fables" #2. 

Max Gaines didn't even have his name on the 2 O.W. Publishing "Mad Hatter" issues, unlike all of "Animal Fables" issues, published by "Fables Publishing".  I wonder what Gaines' relationship was to "Mad Hatter"?  It may have been a joint venture of Gaines and O.W.'s President, J.G. Oxton, or Gaines selling 3 Funny Animal stories to a related publisher, who was desperate for filler pages, being behind schedule on receiving 2 stories for "Mad Hatter" #1, and one story for Issue #2. 

But Gaines clearly owned the copyrights to "Freddy Firefly" and "Danny Demon" characters and stories, and character trademarks.  And, apparently, they were produced by E.C. , as they were written and edited by Gaines' E.C. business partner, Bill Woolfolk, and the art seems to have been drawn by the same Jason Comics Studio (JCA) artists who drew them for E.C.  Even the "Hasty & Tardy" story seems to have been drawn by another Jason artist, or one from one of the other New York comic book studios.  Most of the E.C. young children's artwork was drawn by their in-house artist, Burton Geller, plus Leon Jason's Jason Cartoon Art (Orestes Calpini), Fago Studios (Al and Vince Fago) and a few other outside studio artists.  So, apparently, Oxton used the same sources as Gaines, for his artwork.

My guess is that Mad Hatter was intended to be a fully action-based human figure superhero/detective genre comic book, which is why Gaines did not place it under the E.C. banner, because E.C., at that time, stood for Educational Comics, rather than Entertaining Comics (to which it was later changed).  But, missed deadlines left a dearth of 3 filler stories' worth of pages missing at printing time, and Gaines felt that the edginess of superhero Freddy Fly, and Danny Demon's evil demon schoolteacher would fit better with the Mad Hatter stories than would Fat & Slat's slapstick, old-fashioned silly comedy.  And he had no other comic book filler pages to offer, other than newspaper comedy one and two-page gag stories similar to "Fat & Slat" in style. That problem became moot when Gaines and Oxton decided to close down "Mad Hatter" after 2 issues that both sold poorly.

[Robb_K]

Mad Hatter 1

Who is this comic supposed to be aimed at? It calls itself "A New Kind Of Comic Book." The new thing appears to be not having any sort of target demographic at all!

The title character is a typical two-fisted superhero, so probably for a teenage audience. The other strips are aimed at kids 6 or 7 years old. Any teenager who bought this comic based on that great dramatic cover won't want Little Danny Demon playing with his cute animal friends. Any child young enough for that won't be allowed to read the comic because their parent will take one look at the cover and say, "Wait until you're older."

(To make things even worse, that story on the cover isn't even in this issue at all! Were they deliberately trying to lose money? Did they invent that con from The Producers decades before Mel Brooks did?)

Exactly! And the cover even mentions death!  How do you explain death to a 6-year old child???  That is hard enough when a death in the close family occurs.  No need to bring that up if that doesn't happen.  I doubt that young children would have opened up this book seeing the cover.  Basically, it just would have angered the teenagers who wanted to read superhero and crime stories, to find out about a third of the book was devoted to "little kid stuff".  I am sure that, originally, there was no plan to have funny animal stories in this series.  But, they had the bad luck of not having any appropriate filler available when short of print-ready pages. 

What bothers me is the premise for the series.  You might find an "attention grabber" of a series title.  But, then, you need your series to relate to that name.  It is much easier to come up with an attention grabbing name AFTER you have chosen a series premise that is audience tested and seemingly is something the target audience is likely to enjoy and be willing to pay for it. I have been a Disney comics writer and artist for just about 40 years.  I and my work partners have always tested out our story ideas, and even conceptual drawings (rough scribbles) on children of a cross section of ages (6 to about 11 or 12, and up to 14 for Uncle Scrooge and Gyro Gearloose stories).  Doing that regularly for each story (family members, neighbours' children, and friends who are elementary school teachers running these by their students) has helped us make our stories better and better over the years.  If I were marketing a new comic book series, I would buy issues of each of the best few comic book series, and have the "test kids" compare what they like and dislike about them to mock-ups of a few (2 or 3) of my proposed forthcoming series first issue choices.  Kids who love comics are flabbergasted to see comic books before they are made (the chance to see original art), and our artists (including myself) would draw a pencil sketch for them as a reward for taking their time.  I guess that because the industry was relatively new during the mid 1940s, and so many people were thinking that comic book publishing was a chance to get in on "the gold mine", they rushed into it without thinking carefully, and not being prepared.  The "Mad Hatter" does not behave in a crazy manner, does not wear a hat.  The reader has a big letdown related to what he or she expected.  Then, getting all excited, seeing, on the front cover, that a man died and returned to life as a gorilla, only to find that THAT story is NOT inside this book, is too much to bear!  I would have thrown the book down on the ground and jumped up and down on it a thousand times, if I had plunked down my hard-earned 10 cents to buy it!

It all seems totally irrational!  I guess "The Mad Hatter" was, indeed, driven mad from overexposure to the mercury fumes one was forced to breathe in when making hats using the 18th and early 19th Century methods.  He quit his retro hat-making business too late, and decide to become a comic book publisher.  But,  unfortunately, his disability kept him from thinking clearly enough to make mistakes that even a twelve-year old wouldn't have made. 

[The Australian Panther]

Exactly! And the cover even mentions death!  How do you explain death to a 6-year old child???  That is hard enough when a death in the close family occurs.  No need to bring that up if that doesn't happen.   

Well! Yes, probably not a good idea to mention death on a comic cover. Agreed.
It's my belief tho, that one of the fundamental problems of modern 'civilized' life, is that we sanatize death, hide the reality of it out of sight., Whereas, for most of history death was -and in many countries still is - just a normal part of human existence.
When I was 6 years old I had already watched my grandfather and my mother kill chickens with an axe, so I knew perfectly well what death was.
I had also watched movies and heard radio plays where people were killed, Westerns and Mysteries for instance.
I was also somewhat traumatized when my paternal grandmother died, when I was that age, as we we not sat down and had what happened to her explained to us, and we were forbidden to attend the funeral.
6 year-olds are well able to understand death and should not be protected from that knowledge.
Yes, it can be difficult for adults to deal with explaining death to children.
No, Carl Barks never dealth with death in most [I was going to say any -but I will come back to that]  of his stories but he never, I repeat never! underestimated the intelligence of 6 year-old children.
The lightbulb just went off as I wrote that!
Barks did a Donald Duck story called if I remember rightly, ' Donald in Ancient Persia'. I thought it the creepiest thing Barks ever wrote and drew and one of the most memorable. Had a huge effect on my memory.
Donald ends up in a crypt in Ancient Persia where there are dead people preserved as dust in bottles.
A mad scientist brings a prince back to life who is Donald's physical double. 
Barks used a lot of mood - darkness, the moon and so on in his drawings in this story, - scared the crap out of me as a 6/7 year old, but in a good way. Kids like to be scared, as long as they know they are really safe at the same time.
I remember, as an adult camp leader, putting a group of primary school boys to bed and scaring them with ghost stories! And I think I was pretty good at it too! They loved it!
Death?
As a song from a very popular Australian group says, ' Horror Movie! Horror Movie! Right there on my TV!
Shockin' me right of my brain! Its the 6:30 news!'       
Skyhooks - Horror Movie 1975
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjEQq_6yWKQ
So was Fredric Wertham right? Should all those horror comics which CB+ has preserved have been banned as not suitable for children?
If you haved children, grandchildren, neices and nephews, you will know that as much as you want to protect them, and yes, guidance is a very good thing -they will go their own way.
Probably grow up to watch Hammer movies and worse and watch 'Game of thrones' [ which incidentally, I refuse to watch.]
Anyway, I'm on a roll and should stop now! End of rave!
Cheers!       
 

[SuperScrounge]

Animal Fables #5

An Entertaining Comic? I didn't think they started using that name while M.C. Gaines was still alive? I thought it was a Bill Gaines creation. I guess M.C. realized kids didn't like the word 'educational' on their comics. This issue was possibly still on the stands when M.C. died August 20, 1947.

Freddy Firefly - For a hero who is on fire, he just punches bad guys instead of burning them? Is his fire just an illusion? Otherwise not bad.

The Dog and the Bone - Okay retelling of the story. Better artist than the first story. Although when I first saw it I thought it was an adaptation that I read in a Classics Illustrated, but it's not. Just both stories were drawn in a more realistic art style.

Little Danny Demon - Not a bad version of this type of story, but not very funny either. *shrug*

Comics McCormick - Basically just an introduction to Comics and his friends.

Fat and Slat - Discount Mutt and Jeff (which is appropriate as M. C. Gaines was a big Mutt and Jeff fan. I guess the question should be did Gaines ask Wheelan to do a M&J knockoff or did Wheelan do it because he knew Gaines would buy it?)

The Sun and the Wind... - So the moral is force versus persuasion? Forcing someone to do something by torturing them with heat is a sinister form of "persuasion". I should think the real lesson is "know your strength" as the Sun knew what would happen when the wind blew vs. the temperature getting hotter.

The Herring-Bone Zebra - Cute, perhaps a little too zany and wacky (like you'd expect in a cartoon), but it worked.

Hector the Inspector - Kind of obvious where the winning suggestion would come from, but who is the Unknown drawn to look like? That "no one would follow a leader who looked like that" seems like the kind of joke someone would pull on their boss. It does not look like pictures of Max Gaines. Perhaps a comics studio owner?

[Robb_K]

Animal Fables #5

(1)An Entertaining Comic? I didn't think they started using that name while M.C. Gaines was still alive? I thought it was a Bill Gaines creation. I guess M.C. realized kids didn't like the word 'educational' on their comics. This issue was possibly still on the stands when M.C. died August 20, 1947.

Freddy Firefly - (2) For a hero who is on fire, he just punches bad guys instead of burning them? Is his fire just an illusion? Otherwise not bad.

The Dog and the Bone - Okay retelling of the story. Better artist than the first story. Although when I first saw it I thought it was an adaptation that I read in a Classics Illustrated, but it's not. Just both stories were drawn in a more realistic art style.

Little Danny Demon - Not a bad version of this type of story, but not very funny either. *shrug*

Comics McCormick - Basically just an introduction to Comics and his friends.

Fat and Slat - Discount Mutt and Jeff (which is appropriate as M. C. Gaines was a big Mutt and Jeff fan. I guess the question should be did Gaines ask Wheelan to do a M&J knockoff or did Wheelan do it because he knew Gaines would buy it?)

The Sun and the Wind... - So the moral is force versus persuasion? Forcing someone to do something by torturing them with heat is a sinister form of "persuasion". I should think the real lesson is "know your strength" as the Sun knew what would happen when the wind blew vs. the temperature getting hotter.

The Herring-Bone Zebra - Cute, perhaps a little too zany and wacky (like you'd expect in a cartoon), but it worked.

Hector the Inspector - Kind of obvious where the winning suggestion would come from, but who is the Unknown drawn to look like? That "no one would follow a leader who looked like that"(3) seems like the kind of joke someone would pull on their boss. It does not look like pictures of Max Gaines. Perhaps a comics studio owner?

(1) Comic books were released to hit the shelves at least a full month before the start (first month) printed on the book.  So, this one hit the shelves on June 1, 1947.  However, it was issue #2, Winter 1946, that first showed "Entertaining Comics" on the front cover, and on the indicia page.  So, that idea of the changeover had to have been decided upon by about November, 1946.  Max Gaines died near the end of August (almost 10 months later).  So, it is almost a certainty that Max approved of the change.  Bill, unlike his father, NOT having started the business as an educational book company, and thus, not having an emotional attachment to the original idea of it, would likely have been more objective and practical about it.  So, the latter may well have come up with the idea of the changeover, and Max seeing sales fall, or grow less than those of competitors' lines, accepted his idea.

(2) Did The Human Torch burn his villainous victims???

(3) "The Unknown" looks too young to be most of the publishers from that time.  But, I doubt that the artist who drew this story would have made fun of E.C.'s boss, in any case, as he almost certainly worked for a New York comic book art studio and comic book packager.  From what I've read, E.C. only had one single Funny Animal artist employed directly by them, and working on their premises (that was Burton Geller, who drew all 14 of their "Tiny Tot Comics" series).  Almost all the non cover pages of all their other Funny Animal series.  So, there were almost no colleagues to enjoy the joke. "The Unknown", like all the other stories in this book, and indeed, in this series, appear to possibly have been drawn by Jason Cartoon Artists, but the JCA sign usually is visible on stories' first page, and there are none on any of the E.C. Funny Animal stories.  So, it must have been another New York Comic book studio.  The style doesn't look like Louis Ferstadt's, or Al   or Vince Fago's.  Bernard Baily's Studio list of clients doesn't include E.C.  Maybe it was Funnies, Inc.  In any case, I don't know what the staff managers looked like for most of those studios.  But, my guess is that "The Unknown" 's body and face were patterned after the "shop foreman" (asst. editor) of the artist crew of one of the NY comic book studios.

[Robb_K]

Yes, probably not a good idea to mention death on a comic cover. Agreed.
It's my belief tho, that one of the fundamental problems of modern 'civilized' life, is that we sanatize death, hide the reality of it out of sight., Whereas, for most of history death was -and in many countries still is - just a normal part of human existence.
When I was 6 years old I had already watched my grandfather and my mother kill chickens with an axe, so I knew perfectly well what death was.
I had also watched movies and heard radio plays where people were killed, Westerns and Mysteries for instance.
I was also somewhat traumatized when my paternal grandmother died, when I was that age, as we we not sat down and had what happened to her explained to us, and we were forbidden to attend the funeral.
6 year-olds are well able to understand death and should not be protected from that knowledge.
Yes, it can be difficult for adults to deal with explaining death to children.

Barks did a Donald Duck story called if I remember rightly, ' Donald in Ancient Persia'. I thought it the creepiest thing Barks ever wrote and drew and one of the most memorable. Had a huge effect on my memory.
Donald ends up in a crypt in Ancient Persia where there are dead people preserved as dust in bottles.
A mad scientist brings a prince back to life who is Donald's physical double. 
Barks used a lot of mood - darkness, the moon and so on in his drawings in this story, - scared the crap out of me as a 6/7 year old, but in a good way. Kids like to be scared, as long as they know they are really safe at the same time.
I remember, as an adult camp leader, putting a group of primary school boys to bed and scaring them with ghost stories! And I think I was pretty good at it too! They loved it!  Death?
So was Fredric Wertham right? Should all those horror comics which CB+ has preserved have been banned as not suitable for children?
If you have children, grandchildren, neices and nephews, you will know that as much as you want to protect them, and yes, guidance is a very good thing - But they will go their own way.   

I agree 100% that death is a normal part of life, and children shouldn't be sheltered from it when they are old enough to understand what it means.  IF a close family member or friend dies when they are 5 or 6 years old., then I agree that we should try to get them to understand that they are gone from us, and, unfortunately, they won't come back, so we can never see them again, and that is sad for us.  And we explain that that will happen to everyone eventually.  But, as a publisher, I wouldn't write about death on the front cover of a comic book that MIGHT be interesting to very young children (especially this one, which has 2 Funny Animal stories in it that might attract their eye, IF it is opened, and they see pages from those stories.  It is more dangerous to have the risk of the parent seeing that, as THEY will be buying the books for their 5 and six, and sometimes 7-year old children.  I know that a LOT of 6 year olds see death depicted in cartoons, westerns, military films and TV programmes, and video games, but I suspect that many of them don't really understand that they will thereafter be gone from us forever, and do not exist anywhere, anymore.  I have a hard time understanding that and believing that, myself at over 75.  If anyone should be against sheltering young children from the unpleasant realities of life, it should be me, based on how restrictive Disney Comics rules are now, regarding death, violence of any type, and even depicting ill will between people.  It is getting such that there is no way to show that wrong choices are made by people in life that hurt others (no villains!).  How can we show that it is good, and our duty to stand up against wrong-doing and people who hurt others if we can't show that such things are still going on in this World?

[SuperScrounge]

Bill, unlike his father, NOT having started the business as an educational book company, and thus, not having an emotional attachment to the original idea of it

By his own words (in an issue of Writer's Digest) Bill wanted to have nothing to do with comics and he only took over EC because his mother knew how much his father loved the business. He did learn to love comics, but it's interesting to imagine a universe where Bill just sold off EC and returned to being a chemistry teacher.

(2) Did The Human Torch burn his villainous victims???

The original Human Torch (the android) did burn Hitler. I don't believe the second Human Torch (Johnny Storm) ever did.

There's a nitpicking term that we at NitCentral use, BILC (Because It Looks Cool). And that's one of the problems with fire-based heroes. Drawing somebody on fire looks cool, but if you have them use their power logically they'll kill people, which people tend to frown upon when it comes to heroes (villains, no problem).

Some of the problems is Firefly is supposedly burning, but he touches and grabs things while burning, but nothing catches fire.
Page 2, panel 7. He grabs a red ant's bandanna, but when he drops the guy on the next page the bandana isn't even singed.
Page 8, panel 5. He's standing in the cart holding the reins while burning, but nothing is catching fire.
Page 8, panel 6. He's about to shake hands with a guy while his hand is still burning (unlike page 4, panel 6 where we see he turned off the flame to his hand while putting his hand on a black ant's shoulder.)
And throughout the story he punches various bad guys, but nothing catches fire, so I wonder if Firefly's flame is just an illusion rather than actual flame.

[SuperScrounge]

Mad Hatter #1

A Date With The Mad Hatter! - The art looks vaguely like Carmine Infantino.

Page 9, panel 7. Barbara says, "Jim Murray-- a criminal! I can't believe it! Oh, what shall I do?"
Revise your resume, Barbara! You'll need to look for a new job now that your boss is about to be arrested! 

Little Danny Demon - Seems like the first story in the series. Not much to say about it. Okay.

Dogs Are Good Medicine - Eh. Nothing really wrong with the story, just not my cup of tea.

The Case of the Scornful Girl! - Short and quick so the readers don't have time to think about it. How long did the twin brother plan to disguise himself as his sister? Was it just to get away or was he going to try to keep this up for days, months, years? The fact his sister was still alive indicated that she would be found eventually. But still he had to act like his sister for a few hours. The comedian in me imagines him walking like a man, burping, scratching his pits, ogling women, but it's his adam's apple that gives him away. 

Freddy the Firefly - Why is grandpa more human looking than the other insects?

Freddy and Myrtle don't look much like the version seen in Animal Fables and Freddy's magic word has changed as well. Almost as if two different teams were involved in producing these stories that supposedly about the same characters.

[K1ngcat]

Robb knows this already, but I just don't "get" Funny  Animal comics! So with that in mind, I'd like to take the opportunity to discuss some of the other subjects brought up by Robb's choices, I hope that makes sense.

Firstly, on the matter of WM Gaines' involvement, well it's right out there on Animal Fables as it's an EC comic, albeit Educational rather than Entertaining. But though the strips like Freddy Firefly and Danny Demon overlap with Mad Hatter, which I see comes chronologically before Animal Fables, I haven't been able to track down any more info on OW Comics Corp. so I'm at a bit of a loss there.

I did notice, however, that Freddy changed his cry of "Flame On" to "Take Fire" somewhere between the two publications, suggesting Timely might have had a word or two to say about his similarity to the Human Torch. And then there's a whole bunch of mix-ups around Mad Hatter that leave me only more confused.

First off, this is really NOT a new kind of comic, though it may have been for Gaines. Otherwise, the Hatter's a standard "long underwear" character. Like the Blue Beetle he has a "sign," though I can't see how he emits it.  Still, like Robb, I fail to see what's mad about him apart from his annoying habit of combatting crimes with rhymes.

It's even more confusing that the cover to #1 refers to a story in #2 (IMHO a far more coherent effort than #1) and I really find it hard to see where anyone thought this whole thing was going. Plus which #1 is a 36 pager, with only one real Hatter adventure, and the rest of the mag padded out with funny animals, which as solarpenguin points out, was surely never intended to appeal to the average superhero reader. By contrast, #2's a 52-pager chock full of Hatter adventures, and features some very nice art from Mort Leav, whose style I rather prefer to Giunta's.

I keep asking myself what happened. Leav and Woolfolk thought enough of their work to sign the front pages. Did they fail to make the deadlines? It seems like they put what they had available into #1 then just chucked everything they had left over into the second mag, and junked the whole thing before it'd had a chance to prove itself. Which is a kind of a shame, because the Hatter's not all bad.

I'm not sure I agree with Robb's description of MH being a "Spirit-like hero," though The Golden City in #2 is the kind of story that The Spirit wouldn't have seemed out-of-place in. He wouldn't have been wearing a garish costume though. The illo of MH in his civvies (panel 5, page 44 of #2) looks remarkably like The Spirit stepping out, but I think the similarities end there.  Richmond's employers Fuddy & Bustle are a joke as a law firm, and a joke that'd very soon tire if there'd been more than two issues.

And I don't know if I'd call Freddy Firefly "edgy" although he may have been in the world of Funny Animals, about which I admit I know very little. The story with the red ants could easily be a fairly standard superhero tale with the hero saving the damsel in distress from a fate worse than death, if you rewrote it with people. I'm sure I've read that plot often enough in Planet Comics. But if Freddy's already a Firefly, how come none of the other fireflies have his powers? Or is he just an ordinary fly who transforms?

On the plus side, the artwork on the actual fables, the Dog & the Bone and the Wind & the Sun, is quite lovely, I'm sure Robb or someone else knowledgeable can tell me who's responsible. The art on Freddy and Danny and Hasty & Tardy all seems pretty unremarkable but then again I'm hardly an expert in the field.

Well, that's all I got. I'm old and set in my ways and I like what I like! Thanks for putting these up for discussion.
All the best
K1ngcat

[paw broon]

As with K1ngcat, so with me,  not a fan of many funny animal comics.  Freddy Firefly I read and it was ok.  Seeing him shout "Flame On" surprised me, as did his flame when it didn't burn anyone/thing.  He still has his wings when aflame so perhaps the flame is an illusion and It's his wings that get him flying. It seems like a basic daft superhero story adapted for a funny animal strip.
The wee demon bloke is just not funny and dull. I thought of how well Harvey did with Spooky and Casper.
What can I say about Hector?  Not a lot, apart from not funny.
The Mad Hatter is of much more interest to me and I've read one of his stories but years ago.  The deal with him always getting knocked on the napper was old hat (see what I did there?) by then as even I get tired of The Black Terror getting bonked on the bonce every other story.
As with many GA costumed heroes, there often isn't a lot of logic, and often no particular origin given. Doesn't bother me and I quite like the Mad Hatter.  I enjoyed the pictures.
The 2 pager is a bad example of spot the clue as the reader would need a clear look at the villain while drinking. 
The rest of the comic did nothing for me.

The EC LOGO,  both versions are clearly shown in one of the issues. 
I haven't a clue what the publisher was playing at with Mad Hatter comic.  Wrong cover and all.  It's a mess.  But I still quite like the (not) Mad Hatter.

[Robb_K]

As with K1ngcat, so with me,  not a fan of many funny animal comics.  Freddy Firefly I read and it was ok.  Seeing him shout "Flame On" surprised me, as did his flame when it didn't burn anyone/thing.  He still has his wings when aflame so perhaps the flame is an illusion and It's his wings that get him flying. It seems like a basic daft superhero story adapted for a funny animal strip.
The wee demon bloke is just not funny and dull. I thought of how well Harvey did with Spooky and Casper.
What can I say about Hector?  Not a lot, apart from not funny.
The Mad Hatter is of much more interest to me and I've read one of his stories but years ago.  The deal with him always getting knocked on the napper was old hat (see what I did there?) by then as even I get tired of The Black Terror getting bonked on the bonce every other story.
As with many GA costumed heroes, there often isn't a lot of logic, and often no particular origin given. Doesn't bother me and I quite like the Mad Hatter.  I enjoyed the pictures.
The 2 pager is a bad example of spot the clue as the reader would need a clear look at the villain while drinking. 
The rest of the comic did nothing for me.

(1) The EC LOGO,  both versions are clearly shown in one of the issues.

(2) I haven't a clue what the publisher was playing at with Mad Hatter comic.  Wrong cover and all.  It's a mess.  But I still quite like the (not) Mad Hatter.

(1) The EC Logo on the front cover of Animal Fables #1 had only EC on it.  NO writing of the word, "EDUCATIONAL", or "ENTERTAINING".  On the Indicia Page there was NO LOGO displayed. 

For Animal Fables #2 and #3, the cover displayed a logo stating: "ENTERTAINING Comics".  The indicia Page displayed only "ENTERTAINING Comics".  Issues #4 and #5 displayed BOTH  "ENTERTAINING Comics", and "EDUCATIONAL Comics".  Every issue after that displayed only "ENTERTAINING Comics".  So, I assume that the changeover occurred between Issues #1 and #2, around November, 1946.  And, it seems that Issues $3-#5 were a transition period.  So, the decision to change from "Educational" to "Entertaining Comics" was made about 10 months before Max Gaines died.  So, it is clear that even IF the changeover WAS Bill Gaines' original idea, his father had to have been fully on board with it.

(2) Clearly, O. W. Publishing's President, Chief Editor, and, possibly, Max Gaines' partner in that company, was totally incompetent to run even a one series comic magazine publishing company.  It is obvious that he had no staff to get things done, and have a second set of eyes, to catch any errors, and bring another point of view towards making decisions.  I suspect it was a One Man Operation, with, perhaps one flunky hired hand, below Oxton.  It appears that IF Gaines was directly involved, he quickly saw the writing on the wall, and junked the whole experiment.  In hindsight, it appears that issuing flawed magazines with incorrect front covers, and tossing in totally opposite genre stories just to meet deadlines killed the series before it could have any chance to succeed.  And it would have been better to delay both issues, which might not have killed the series.  But, then, after paying rent for office space, and incurring other operating costs for a couple of months, and not being able to take salary pay, the company would have also had to inject more capital into the business just to stay afloat until the sales revenue would start coming in.  So, perhaps Oxton's inability to be competent at the front work and preparation for printing, and idiotic decisions on how to deal with not being able to print on time, made it inevitable that the series was doomed.

[paw broon]

I penned a reply last night, tried to post it but it disappeared. 
I'll try again this afternoon

[paw broon]

The EC logos, both of them, appear IN Animal Fables, not ON. As I haven't looked at this line of comics for yonks, I have to go by what is put in front of me
As for the Gaines, too much for my tiny brain.  I'll let you and others work it all out but I'll take your "totally incompetent" comment. I don't have enough time for it and I need all the time I have for other stuff
But, I loved the illos in The Dog and The Bone.  Lovely.
The more I think about it, the dafter the whole Mad Hatter idea seems. You're all correct, there is no thought behind the character.  Still quite liked that adventure. 

[EHowie60]

Unfortunately I don't know as much about the publishing of these things as some of you folks, so I'll have to mostly comment on the issue itself.

I wonder if the author of the "Freddy Firefly" story had read about real life "slaver" ants that take pupae from colonies of other species that hatch and work in the "slaver" colony.

The art on the Aesop fables is charming! Poor sad Jonas.

Danny Demon has a sort of "Casper" thing going on. Spooky monster doesn't want to be spooky. Though "you should have let that possum drown" is a bit more intense than going "Boo!"

Fat and Slat continue a long comic book tradition of stealing very old jokes from Vaudville. Using the cops as a pet boarding service is a new one though.

When I glanced at the cover for Mad Hatter, the first thing I noticed is he...doesn't...have a hat? His gimmick is he rhymes while he fights. Imagine trying to keep that up in a long running comic! I'd tear my hair out.

I didn't guess the mystery story. It's true that women don't have Adam's Apples though... if a woman happened to, it'd be an Eve's Apple instead!

Firefly looks very different in Mad Hatter. I suppose consistency wasn't super important; he's not even on the cover here.

Speaking of the cover...where is my gorilla story? I was promised a gorilla and the book didn't deliver. All too often a problem with these old comics. Ah well. Still a couple of fun reads!

[paw broon]

It's either a con or complete incompetance.  Although, I suppose the publisher simply didn't care.

[Robb_K]

Unfortunately I don't know as much about the publishing of these things as some of you folks, so I'll have to mostly comment on the issue itself.

I wonder if the author of the "Freddy Firefly" story had read about real life "slaver" ants that take pupae from colonies of other species that hatch and work in the "slaver" colony.

The art on the Aesop fables is charming! Poor sad Jonas.

Danny Demon has a sort of "Casper" thing going on. Spooky monster doesn't want to be spooky. Though "you should have let that possum drown" is a bit more intense than going "Boo!"

(1) Fat and Slat continue a long comic book tradition of stealing very old jokes from Vaudville. Using the cops as a pet boarding service is a new one though.

When I glanced at the cover for Mad Hatter, the first thing I noticed is he...doesn't...have a hat?
(2) His gimmick is he rhymes while he fights.
(3)Imagine trying to keep that up in a long running comic! I'd tear my hair out.

I didn't guess the mystery story. It's true that women don't have Adam's Apples though... if a woman happened to, it'd be an Eve's Apple instead!

(4)Firefly looks very different in Mad Hatter. I suppose consistency wasn't super important; he's not even on the cover here.

(5) Speaking of the cover...where is my gorilla story? I was promised a gorilla and the book didn't deliver. All too often a problem with these old comics. Ah well. Still a couple of fun reads! 

Thanks for joining our group.  The more points of view, the more interesting and educational!

(1) Fat & Slat were a carbon copy of Mutt & Jeff.

(2) It could well be that The Mad Hatter's rhyming fetish was patterned after the Mickey Mouse Newspaper Strip's "Rhyming Man" villain, which started its run in the newspapers in April, 1946, and ran for over 3 months, while Mad Hatter 1 was being produced during late May and June of that year.  The fledgling comic book industry suffered from quite a lot of copycatism during its earliest years.

(3) Wow! You couldn't have paid me enough to continue writing a superhero series' first and second issues with him always rhyming when he fights, let alone an entire series of 50 to 100 issues, or more.  THAT would be more than 4-5 times the work and maybe 10 times the hours for what was already measly pay (a few cents per hour, if one did research to make one's stories ring true). 

(4) Clearly, the "Freddy Firefly" artists employed in the Animal Fables #1 and Mad Hatter #1 issues were different people, with different drawing styles.  I doubt that the style used in Mad Hatter 1 was deliberately changed due to editorial decision from that of the earlier-drawn Animal Fables story.  On the other hand, the story used in "Mad Hatter" was likely "lying about", available to be tossed into that first issue in an emergency caused by the artist/s for two planned stories being late on finishing them.  So the story used in Mad Hatter COULD possibly have been drawn first, and rejected because its drawing style was not what the editor wanted.  And, subsequently, Animal Fables' editor did not commission a re-drawing in the desired style because the story was used in "Mad Hatter".  But that possibility is a bit far-fetched, considering that Max Gaines' EC Comics were just starting their Funny Animal comics experiment, and didn't seem to have such a concrete plan that would include such precision in their desired drawing styles, which would lead to paying an artist twice to draw a story, when the series was just starting out, and incurring lots of start-up cost outlays, but not yet bringing in revenue cash flow.

(5) The incompetence of Mad Hatter's editor (and probably its publishing partner as well) is the big story of this fortnight's book choices, as opposed to any story in "The Mad Hatter" book.

[Robb_K]

(1) It's either a con or complete incompetence.  (2) Although, I suppose the publisher simply didn't care.

(1) Mad Hatter's editor, J.G. Oxten, was clearly incompetent.  Either he decided to make his new series a mix of Superhero style and Funny Animal young children's fare (which makes no sense, at all); or he made a fatefully bad decision not to delay the release of his first issue, when his artists missed a printing deadline on 2 out of the 4 stories planned for the book.  And, on top of that, he made the fateful error of not making a last check of the printing plates, to see if they were the correct pages; OR, if he INTENDED the front cover to be incorrect for his series' first issue, then he was not only incompetent, but also totally irrational to the point where one might be surprised that he was able to function as an adult, and able to have been hired for any type of position above that of a flunky. (2) This is all not even considering that all the evidence points to the likelihood that he was also a publishing partner with Gaines, or someone else.  Because of all that, I think it is highly doubtful that Oxten would have deliberately jeopardised the potential success of his new comic book series by starting it off with a "joke" that would be a lot more likely to eliminate any possibility of success, rather than impress an unknown (likely minority) with a weird sense of humour.

[Morgus]

Out of both comics, I like the ad for the cigarette case and lighter the best. Even back then they didn't like to have tobacco ads DIRECTLY at kids, but..nobody says you can't sell them lighters, do they??

Okay, so Hot Stuff the Little Harvey Devil started in the 50's, right? And Casper The Friendly Harvey Ghost started in the 40's. So I'm reading Freddy Firefly thinking they came pretty close to being first with the fire angle and the Danny Demon story being the missing link with Casper like Ehowie60 figures. Probably only an accident of history somebody didn't think of just putting the two characters together.

We have a regional brand of potato chips here that prints "life lessons" on the back of their bags like the illustrated fables. They draw their stories and morals from the owners life but are just as heavy handed. Yeah. The dog is greedy AND stupid. We know, we know.

Love the pics of Freddy driving around with a horse and buggy. So either the horse is very very tiny, or the bugs are very very big. Remember when MAD had humans being used as the animals in some of their satires on animal comics? It's funny how there were those rules the readers just accepted. Like today (August 29) on facebook, when Berke Breathed reprinted a strip of humans and animals in a movie line and noting that it was pretty rare for humans and animals to talk to each other in strips.

I didn't solve the Mad Hatter's puzzle about the Adams apple either, but the art was nice. And what do you want to bet that if the comic had caught on somehow, that rhyming shtick would have been the first thing to go?

Maybe the gorilla story was for the next issue (that never came) and they just used the cover because it LOOKED better. ("The kids won't know or care...just forget it..")

[Robb_K]

Out of both comics, I like the ad for the cigarette case and lighter the best. (1) Even back then they didn't like to have tobacco ads DIRECTLY at kids, but..nobody says you can't sell them lighters, do they??

Okay, so Hot Stuff the Little Harvey Devil started in the 50's, right? And Casper The Friendly Harvey Ghost started in the 40's. (2) So I'm reading Freddy Firefly thinking they came pretty close to being first with the fire angle and the Danny Demon story being the missing link with Casper like Ehowie60 figures. Probably only an accident of history somebody didn't think of just putting the two characters together.

We have a regional brand of potato chips here that prints "life lessons" on the back of their bags like the illustrated fables. They draw their stories and morals from the owners life but are just as heavy handed. Yeah. The dog is greedy AND stupid. We know, we know.

Love the pics of Freddy driving around with a horse and buggy. (3) So either the horse is very very tiny, or the bugs are very very big. Remember when MAD had humans being used as the animals in some of their satires on animal comics? It's funny how there were those rules the readers just accepted. Like today (August 29) on facebook, when Berke Breathed reprinted a strip of humans and animals in a movie line and noting that it was pretty rare for humans and animals to talk to each other in strips.

I didn't solve the Mad Hatter's puzzle about the Adams apple either, but the art was nice. And what do you want to bet that if the comic had caught on somehow, that rhyming shtick would have been the first thing to go?

(4) Maybe the gorilla story was for the next issue (that never came) and they just used the cover because it LOOKED better. ("The kids won't know or care...just forget it..")

(1) Quite a mistake, considering how man kids are fascinated by fire.  And how many kids ruled and repressed by superstrict parents, who are thrilled to get any chance to use some tool that can be dangerous if used improperly.

(2) Freddy Firefly started in 1946.  It is abundantly clear that the idea for him was a ripoff of "The Human Torch" first appeared in Marvel Comics #1 in 1939.  That is 7 years later.  I'd hardly call that being "CLOSE to first with the fire angle".  And if you mean close by being #2, I seem to remember there were at least a few more between 1940 and 1946 (although I can't rattle them off from the top of my head).

(3) Freddy Fly was supposed to be an insect-person, who, apparently, lived in a world in a different universe, which apparently had either insect-horse-like beings that were small, OR the insect-people were Human-sized.  The series author never really defined that for us.  If he were creative, he would have used horseflies to pull the animal pulled vehicles.  He'd have gotten a couple brownie points for cleverness, and a little chuckle from the reader.  After reading funny animal comics forever 70 years, I fully expect horseflies as horses in an insect/human hybrid story, as I must have seen that in at least 50 comic book stories (if not more).

(4) That is a reasonable theory, IF you didn't know that there WAS a Mad Hatter #2 issued, which DID print the very story planned for Issue #1!!!  All the irrational editor of O.W. Comics had to do, when the artwork for Issue #1's planned story (matching the front cover they printed) was too late to make that issue, was to save the gorilla front cover for the 2nd issue.  But, that seems to mean that there was also no cover for the story that WAS printed in Issue #1.  So, the totally incompetent staff of O.W. was drawing the 2nd issue's story, when even the front cover for the first issue was not finished (or, perhaps, not even started!).  The story of O. W. Comics is extremely sad and ridiculous.  Kids DO care, as the sales bore out, and the series run of only 2 issues made clear.  A great example of how NOT to operate a comic book publishing company (or really, any company in any area of business).

[Quirky Quokka]

Hi everyone - This is my first time on this forum as I've just recently discovered this site. My comments here are just to do with the two Mad Hatter stories in the Mad Hatter comic book. I'd never heard of this version of the Mad Hatter, so I googled him and discovered that he appeared and disappeared pretty quickly.

The first story was interesting enough, though as others have said, I have no idea why he is the Mad Hatter when he isn't mad and doesn't wear a hat. I assumed his true identity was the fellow who brought Barbara Blake the flowers at the start of the story, though that wasn't really clear. Some of the comments towards Barbara are quite sexist by today's standards, but she would have been a go-getter in those times, trying to forge ahead with her career in a man's world. Though Babs, if the boss you're in love with asks you to date someone else to get a story, run now!! I actually liked her story arc better than that of the Mad Hatter. She reminded me of a 1947 Brenda Starr comic I'd also seen on this site (in the Ajax-Farrell group). The art at the top of the splash page at the beginning of the story looked much more sinister than the actual story, and in fact didn't seem to represent anything in the actual story.

The second 2-page story gave a bit more information about the Mad Hatter and it was good that there was a pause for readers to guess what had tipped him off. But I flipped back to look at the artwork, and there was no clue there, so I had to read on.

As others have mentioned, it was strange that the cover of the comic promised something that wasn't actually included.

I didn't read the two animal stories or the short story, as they didn't look like something that would appeal to me. I agree that it's hard to know what market the publisher was aiming at, as the stories seem to be pitched at different age groups.

I enjoyed it enough that I will have a look at the other Mad Hatter comic on the site. I liked the retro art and it's always interesting to see how these kinds of comics would have been viewed by the original readers.

[The Australian Panther]

Welcome Quirky Quokka and thanks for your welcome comments. I co-ordinate the Reading Group and have been hoping for some new critics. I take it you are also an Aussie? And possibly from WA?
Robb has picked a couple of interesting books this time around but I will probably only post a comment at the end of the fortnight before the new post. You are quite OK to limit your comments to only some of the contents.
The Hatter is indeed an oddity.
Cheers!