[SuperScrounge]

Am I dreaming it up, or did someone here in the group figure out who drew the thing?

I think Russ Heath usually gets credit for that ad. Don't know if it was someone here or elsewhere who figured it out, but you can see an RH in the corner, next to the cannon.

[The Australian Panther]

Morgus posted,

Food wasn't glamorous, but pretty vital.

Crucial might be a better word.

Russia had good reason to want to build up its grain and food stocks.
Much of it then and now came from the Ukraine and it is now, as it was then, a major supply issue for those who have been fed by Ukraine's grain.

I am currently reading,

Anthony Bevor's book, STALINGRAD. which deals (among much much more) with the problems both the Russians and the Deutsch had with food supply during the disastrous German invasion. And that's putting it very mildly.
Co-incidentally I'm also reading
Jamie Calllister's book, VEGEMITE about his grandfather who was the chemist who invented the stuff - Rich in Vitamin B actually.
Also that story's background deals with the difficulties of supplying troops with food both during WW ii and WW 1 and also feeding civilians during the depression, largely without electricity and adequate refrigerators.
You realize that we are so well-off and comfortable in the West that we take much for granted that we have had for less than a hundred years. And some parts of the world still don't have. 
I think it was Napoleon who said, 'An army marches on its stomach' He learned the truth of that the hard way.   
And in case you are wondering, I do often have 2 or more books on the go at the one time.
cheers!     

[Morgus]

‘Panther, I took it for GRANTED that you and just about everybody else in this group has two or more books on the go at any one time. I know I do. Passed a cartoon around on social media the other day showing a lady talking on the phone beside a pile of books on the other side of the bed. She’s saying how the pile of books her husband TRIED to get to had collapsed and crushed him. I keep mine on the floor. My WIFE uses Kobo.

Yeah, we have a pretty sweet deal here. Good food and lots of it. And most folks DO forget the role that the army and war has played in feeding us more efficiently. That old copyright protected icon, Chef Boy-ar-Dee was real. He got his national start by feeding the troops with canned food. At one time he was the biggest importer of Parmesan cheese in the U.S.

‘Super, I can see the Russ Heath now. Very much so. The ad still impresses me. You have the pieces that MUST be the same but he’s done a fine job with perspective and positioning to make it seem more natural and not just identical plastic shapes facing each other. Great work from the master.

[Quirky Quokka]

I loved Rocky and Bullwinkle as a kid. I watched it every chance I could. The show was re-run constantly over the years, giving me the opportunity to appreciate jokes that had gone over my head earlier. I have always enjoyed groanworthy puns; I think Rocky was partly responsible for that. As others have said, the show was loaded with American cultural references that would baffle a viewer outside the USA. Take for example the quest for a hat called the Kirward Derby, which spoofed the name of TV host Durward Kirby. What's more, many jokes were specific to Southern California. I wonder whether New Yorkers understood the announcement: "Next episode: Rimsky and Korsakov Go to Palm Springs; or, Song of Indio!" Palm Springs is a desert resort city long popular with Hollywood types and Indio is a nearby town.

But I digress. The Rocky and His Friends comic looks great. Al Kilgore does a fine job on our heroes and villains. The stories have their ups and downs. The situations are amusing, especially "Million-Dollar Moose," but the dialogue lacks the TV show's constant wordplay and snappy pace. The author tries, though, and scores some laughs. I was disappointed that the Sherman and Peabody story ended without a bad pun. The ending pun was a hallmark of the feature. The double-ending of the "Fractured Fairy Tale" raised a smile. "The Million Dollar Moose" moves fast and has plenty of funny situations.

The comic book Rocky and His Friends stands up well on its own but in my head I can't separate it from the TV show. Reading the dialogue I heard the cast voices in my head. What a great cast the show had! My favorite of course was Paul "Boris Badenov" Frees. I loved the way he pronounced "squirrel" as "skwee-rill."

Great choices, QQ!

Thanks for the extra insights, Crashryan. I'll have to check out some of the clips on YouTube. I was too young to get the hidden meanings to do with the Cold War etc. Maybe it hasn't been rerun here for a while because those references are dated, though I do know of Palm Springs. Australians would 'get' a lot of the American references because we've always had so many US TV shows here, though not specific ones like Durward Kirby. In fact, I think I know of Palm Springs from watching 'I Love Lucy'.

I guess the writer of the comic book story isn't the same writer as the TV show (though haven't researched it), so that could be a reason why the dialogue is not so snappy.

Cheers

QQ

[Quirky Quokka]

Rocky & His Friends

Well, this answers a lot of questions. And creates a few more.  I'd often heard Rocky and Bullwinkle mentioned, though heck knows where. 

Anyway, the upshot of all this is, I read a Funny Animal comic and I liked it. Now fancy that! Good choice, QQ, thoroughly enjoyable and amusing, wish I'd see the TV cartoons, but maybe they never made it to the UK. Thanks anyway

All the best
K1ngcat

K1ngcat, I'm shocked on two counts. First, that you hadn't come across Rocky and Bullwinkle before. Second, that you liked a funny animal comic - LOL I think one reason this one is different from many others, is that there are often little jokes and asides that are meant more for the adults than the kids. And as others have said, those who've watched the cartoons have fond memories of the characters and voices. So K1ngcat, you know what your homework is. Go to YouTube and watch film clips of the show. Do not pass 'Go'. Do not collect 200 pounds.

Cheers

QQ

[Quirky Quokka]

'Geez Panther and Q.Q., I had forgotten all about Roger Ramjet and Super Chicken. Rhino put out Roger Ramjet on VHS back in the dark ages and they were a gas to watch. And Q.Q., I would pay money for a vintage film of you happily singing the Super Chicken theme. So many things you want to see on you tube that you know you never will!

Morgus, I think one of my friends videoed me singing Super Chicken in the car once. As soon as my YouTube channel is operational, you'll be the first to know. I can sing it fast with all the 'ba-hack' sound effects. Certainly a fiesta for your eyes and ears.

By the way, Q.Q., since we're talking old times like the Cold War and you shared singing the Super Chicken theme song; here's our family's favorite Cold War story. Dad would work at Agricultural delegations showing Russians around in the 60's, and our cousin Larry who was a bit older than I was, got lost at one. (I'm about your age, so I don't have the memory of what happened...just what they told me...)
Anyway, he started to cry and this guy who looked EXACTLY like Guy "Zorro" Williams comes up and gives him a dollar and asks what was wrong. Larry says he was lost and was scared he'd never see the family again especially since THE WHOLE WORLD could blow up at any moment thanks to that 'Cuban Thing".
The guy laughs and laughs. "Little boy. Don't you know how this will END?"
Larry confessed he did not.
"The Americans will take back some of their missiles in Turkey. We will remove the Cuban ones. There. All better. It is just like your professional wrestling. Now. Let us find your mother. If she is as beautiful as other Canadian women, I will give you TWO dollars."
And Larry laughed and laughed and they found his mom and the nice man who looked like Guy Williams gave him THREE DOLLARS. (Larry's mom was a looker.)
And of course, things DID end just like the nice man said.
"I mean, who wants to miss the James Bond movie they are going to put out?" He said in parting.
I learned later that the chances were good the Zorro look alike was probably a spy. Half the USSR delegations to those things were. They were after improved methods to feed more people. Remember Gorbachev? Got his start here in Canada working out agriculture deals.  One of his first political come of age events was addressing our parliament.
Food wasn't glamourous, but pretty vital.
Come to think of it, Larry could have bought himself a soldier set and have money left over for a couple of comics if you count in that increased Canadian shipping rate...

That's a great story, Morgus. I've been to Canada a few times and didn't realise it was such a hotbed of political intrigue. I taught social psychology at a Uni for 25 years, and we still used to bring out the Bay of Pigs as an example of groupthink that had the world teetering on the brink of war. If only Kennedy, Castro and Khrushchev had all sat down to watch the next James Bond movie together. Though maybe not if it was 'To Russia With Love' 

Cheers

QQ

P.S. I just read your spy story out to hubby and he thought it was hilarious. Turns out he had just been reading about the McCarthy era yesterday.

[SuperScrounge]

I guess the writer of the comic book story isn't the same writer as the TV show (though haven't researched it), so that could be a reason why the dialogue is not so snappy.

I would think the TV writers would want to write for the TV show, not a low-paying comic.

That being said Western (who was the company that usually licensed the properties that ran in Dell until 1962 & their own Gold Key afterwards) licensed a property they usually asked if the licensor knew of someone who would be good for the book. This is how they got Carl Barks for Donald Duck, he had recently left Disney, but was familiar with Donald. So it's possible the writer could have been someone who had worked on Rocky or was known to the studio.

[Quirky Quokka]

I guess the writer of the comic book story isn't the same writer as the TV show (though haven't researched it), so that could be a reason why the dialogue is not so snappy.

I would think the TV writers would want to write for the TV show, not a low-paying comic.

That being said Western (who was the company that usually licensed the properties that ran in Dell until 1962 & their own Gold Key afterwards) licensed a property they usually asked if the licensor knew of someone who would be good for the book. This is how they got Carl Barks for Donald Duck, he had recently left Disney, but was familiar with Donald. So it's possible the writer could have been someone who had worked on Rocky or was known to the studio.

Thanks for that, SuperScrounge. That makes sense. Even if the comic book didn't have the same writer, presumably they would want someone who was going to keep it as close to the TV show as possible. I've just been doing some googling, and they had some stellar writers on the show, including Chris Hayward, who also worked on Alice, Barney Miller, Get Smart and 77 Sunset Strip; and Allan Burns, who also worked on Get Smart, the Munsters, Room 222 and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The writers for the comic book don't seem to be listed.

Cheers

QQ

[The Australian Panther]

  Even if the comic book didn't have the same writer, presumably they would want someone who was going to keep it as close to the TV show as possible. 

Difficult to find info on Gold Key/Dell writers of funny amimal comics.
GCD lists Al Kilgore as the writer as well as the penciller.
But maybe these guys:- [from Wikipedia] 

  According to former Western Publishing writer Mark Evanier, during the mid-1960s, comedy writer Jerry Belson, whose writing partner at the time was Garry Marshall, also did scripts for Gold Key while writing for leading TV sitcoms like The Dick Van Dyke Show. Among the comics for which he wrote were The Flintstones, Uncle Scrooge, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, The Three Stooges, and Woody Woodpecker.[26] 

Since this one is early 60's - Probaly GCD is right.  Kilgore.
Writers just want to write, there is quite a list of comic writers who started that way and then went on to best-sellisng books, TV shows, Radio and movies.       

[K1ngcat]

Rocky & His Friends

Well, this answers a lot of questions. And creates a few more.  I'd often heard Rocky and Bullwinkle mentioned, though heck knows where. 

Anyway, the upshot of all this is, I read a Funny Animal comic and I liked it. Now fancy that! Good choice, QQ, thoroughly enjoyable and amusing, wish I'd see the TV cartoons, but maybe they never made it to the UK. Thanks anyway

All the best
K1ngcat

K1ngcat, I'm shocked on two counts. First, that you hadn't come across Rocky and Bullwinkle before. Second, that you liked a funny animal comic - LOL I think one reason this one is different from many others, is that there are often little jokes and asides that are meant more for the adults than the kids. And as others have said, those who've watched the cartoons have fond memories of the characters and voices. So K1ngcat, you know what your homework is. Go to YouTube and watch film clips of the show. Do not pass 'Go'. Do not collect 200 pounds.

Cheers

QQ

Well, I tried, but all the clips I could find had this really infuriating voice-over like they were reminding viewers where the story had got up to last episode, and I kept waiting for the voice-over to introduce the start of the next episode, and shut the £@#? up, but it never did. Did they all have this running commentary or have I just picked a weird set of clips? 

If they were all like that, I have to say I prefer the comic!

All the best
K1ngcat

[crashryan]

all the clips I could find had this really infuriating voice-over

William Conrad's narrations were a big part of the series' structure. The narrator had more than his share of jokes and smart-aleck asides. Sometimes Rocky and Bullwinkle would speak directly to him. I enjoyed the narrator shtick but I can see it mightn't be to everyone's taste.

Edited to add (completely off-topic): The phrase "really infuriating voice-over" reminded me of something stupid that happened. I'd been looking for a certain movie online without success, so I resorted to a torrent site. I found a copy and downloaded it...and discovered that the original soundtrack had been muted and overdubbed by some guy (non-professional) describing in Russian, scene by scene, what was going on. Always buy brand names.

[The Australian Panther]

and discovered that the original soundtrack had been muted and overdubbed by some guy (non-professional) describing in Russian, scene by scene, what was going on.   

No, that would have been the official Russian version.
I visited Russia back in '77 and there were TV's in the Intourist hotel rooms. I saw the English language Movie 'Napoleon' scheduled, (Rod Steiger) and that's was what they did, and what I had to endure. At that time the Russians were cheap and had little respect for their audience. 


cheers!

[The Australian Panther]

Buck Ryan 78a – Find the Lady

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=73536

I thought I had read all the Buck Ryan material on this site, but putting 'Buck Ryan' in the search bar top right, brings up 7 pages of books including this post,
Buck Ryan comics covers
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=72726
Courtesy, of course, of Paw. The good thing is that I have a lot of reading ahead of me.
I've also posted a lot about Buck Ryan in the 'comments on our books'
So, this one.
Obviously towards the end of the publishing run judging by the Typeface in the opening panel, the cars. the fashions and the hairdo's.
Looks very 'Modesty Blaise' actually!
"Are you a copper?' " No Ruby, my feet just grew that way."
Twilight, on being told that Buck wants to talk to 'Ma-the-Cache' says 'count me out, if she see's me she'll freeze up solid'  - So there are a lot of gaps in the narrative that i haven't read yet and need to fill in for myself.
Fairly standard plot but it's a quality job, the villain is portrayed visually and verbally as a thorough scumbag, Nardine elicits no sympathy whatever and unlike an American [Comics code] job doesn't have an epiphany and repent at the end of the story.
Unfortunately, Twilight is only peripheral to this story.
Some of the best art I've seen from Jack Monk.
Thank you, QQ.   
     

   

[Morgus]

Q.Q.: Canada was more a hotbed of industrial piracy and trade espionage. People sometimes complain about our ‘worry wart laws’ but they got installed for reasons, usually in reaction to out and out copyright theft. For instance, it’s estimated that half the copies of THE SOUND OF MUSIC soundtrack sold here were totally counterfeit. Our grey market items sold back to American markets are still legendary.
It helped if you were Canadian, you didn’t need a passport to cross the US/Canada border until after 9/11. After reading about the McCarthy era, your husband will love this one; its’ one of Hollywood’s best kept secrets.
Charlie Chaplin would visit Vegas very regularly after he was booted out during the Red Scare. He never changed citizenship. He’d come to Canada with his British passport, change planes at Toronto or Montreal, and head down to relax and talk over old times with his pals.
Canada was still ‘one of the colonies’. As far as the Americans were concerned, he was just another British guy with white hair out to lose his money at the dice tables.

You know, the idea of having all three of those guys watching a James Bond movie is not that far fetched. JFK was a huge Bond fan. North Korea’s Little Kim is the same. Or maybe golf. There’s a honey of a picture of Che Guevara trying to play the game back in Cuba on a freshly liberated golf course.

‘Panther and ‘Crash; After down loading a virus or two, I always shopped brand names. I was after a Russian documentary called EVERYDAY FASCISM/TRIUMPH OVER VIOLENCE (1965). The Russian troops found a LOT of documentary footage after the war when they took Berlin, along with private pics from German soldiers. Some times darkly amusing. But most of the time very jarring. But totally worth while.
Finally found it, but doggone if my PayPal account was not frozen until I told them I didn’t know some people they asked me about. (I had never heard of them. And told them so. They restored my account. After a pause.) I was careful not to look up the names or enquire as to why they wanted to know.
Leave well enough alone.
Sometimes even brand names have their peril

[Quirky Quokka]

Buck Ryan 78a – Find the Lady

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=73536

I thought I had read all the Buck Ryan material on this site, but putting 'Buck Ryan' in the search bar top right, brings up 7 pages of books including this post,
Buck Ryan comics covers
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=72726
Courtesy, of course, of Paw. The good thing is that I have a lot of reading ahead of me.
I've also posted a lot about Buck Ryan in the 'comments on our books'
So, this one.
Obviously towards the end of the publishing run judging by the Typeface in the opening panel, the cars. the fashions and the hairdo's.
Looks very 'Modesty Blaise' actually!
   

It was all new to me, Panther, so we've both got a lot of reading to do. Seventy-nine of these compiled stories to get through. I'm not sure I'll get to all of them, but after everyone's comments, I'll definitely go and check out some of the ones with Twilight in them. I see her name features in a few of the titles, so it looks like she has some main storylines. I agree it has a very Modesty Blaise feel. I have a couple of compilation volumes of those I picked up at a library sale. But according to our friends at Wikipedia, Modesty Blaise wasn't launched until 1963. I wonder if some of the Buck Ryan style influenced them?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modesty_Blaise

Cheers

QQ

[Quirky Quokka]

Q.Q.: Canada was more a hotbed of industrial piracy and trade espionage. People sometimes complain about our ‘worry wart laws’ but they got installed for reasons, usually in reaction to out and out copyright theft. For instance, it’s estimated that half the copies of THE SOUND OF MUSIC soundtrack sold here were totally counterfeit. Our grey market items sold back to American markets are still legendary.
It helped if you were Canadian, you didn’t need a passport to cross the US/Canada border until after 9/11. After reading about the McCarthy era, your husband will love this one; its’ one of Hollywood’s best kept secrets.
Charlie Chaplin would visit Vegas very regularly after he was booted out during the Red Scare. He never changed citizenship. He’d come to Canada with his British passport, change planes at Toronto or Montreal, and head down to relax and talk over old times with his pals.
Canada was still ‘one of the colonies’. As far as the Americans were concerned, he was just another British guy with white hair out to lose his money at the dice tables.

You know, the idea of having all three of those guys watching a James Bond movie is not that far fetched. JFK was a huge Bond fan. North Korea’s Little Kim is the same. Or maybe golf. There’s a honey of a picture of Che Guevara trying to play the game back in Cuba on a freshly liberated golf course.

‘Panther and ‘Crash; After down loading a virus or two, I always shopped brand names. I was after a Russian documentary called EVERYDAY FASCISM/TRIUMPH OVER VIOLENCE (1965). The Russian troops found a LOT of documentary footage after the war when they took Berlin, along with private pics from German soldiers. Some times darkly amusing. But most of the time very jarring. But totally worth while.
Finally found it, but doggone if my PayPal account was not frozen until I told them I didn’t know some people they asked me about. (I had never heard of them. And told them so. They restored my account. After a pause.) I was careful not to look up the names or enquire as to why they wanted to know.
Leave well enough alone.
Sometimes even brand names have their peril

Hey Morgus, thanks for that extra info. If we ever return to Canada, maybe you can give us the little known subversive tour

And speaking of copyright infringement, we inadvertently got caught with that once. We're big fans of the British Avengers from 1960s onwards, with Steed and his assortment of female sidekicks, most famously Diana Rigg as Emma Peel. I was looking up DVDs once, and came across what looked like a legitimate site that was selling every single episode of The Avengers for a fabulous too-good-to-be-true price. So we ordered them. When they arrived, they did indeed have 30 or so DVDs, but they were each in a little plastic sleeve with the disc numbers handwritten on them, and packed in what looked like two VHS video cases with dodgy covers. We looked aghast at each other, because they definitely looked pirated and that's not what we thought we'd ordered. But we thought, 'Oh well, we have them now. We may as well watch them'. But they kept stopping and starting and sometimes would just stop altogether. I think they must have been speed-copied on not great equipment. We only ever managed to get through a few episodes and then abandoned them. The company disappeared from the web not long after, or changed its name. We've since bought the legitimate box set of all the Emma Peel episodes. Buyer beware indeed.

Cheers

QQ

[The Australian Panther]

speaking of copyright infringement 

From 'DownUnder' it used to be quite common [may still be for all I know] to travel in Asia and come back with cheap but quality counterfeited DVD movies and CD music albums
Its' still common to find these in second hand shops here.     

[Robb_K]

‘Howie, even as a little kid, I knew that the last page toy soldier ad was the best thing about the whole offer. It was one of my favorites, and  I could look at it forever. (1) Just knew there was no way it would ever be as good as that pic.

(2) Am I dreaming it up, or did someone here in the group figure out who drew the thing? Could have sworn...
Now let’s see...2 bucks in ’61 is worth 20 bucks today, give or take. I’ll bet todays versions would still be better...I’m betting these were just like those one colour plastic pieces you can buy in the dollar store. Didn’t the ad LATER say something like ‘pieces can be painted as shown?

By the way, Q.Q., since we're talking old times like the Cold War and you shared singing the Super Chicken theme song; here's our family's favorite Cold War story. Dad would work at Agricultural delegations showing Russians around in the 60's, and our cousin Larry who was a bit older than I was, got lost at one. (I'm about your age, so I don't have the memory of what happened...just what they told me...)
Anyway, he started to cry and this guy who looked EXACTLY like Guy "Zorro" Williams comes up and gives him a dollar and asks what was wrong. Larry says he was lost and was scared he'd never see the family again especially since THE WHOLE WORLD could blow up at any moment thanks to that 'Cuban Thing".
The guy laughs and laughs. "Little boy. Don't you know how this will END?"
Larry confessed he did not.
"The Americans will take back some of their missiles in Turkey. We will remove the Cuban ones. There. All better. It is just like your professional wrestling. Now. Let us find your mother. If she is as beautiful as other Canadian women, I will give you TWO dollars."
And Larry laughed and laughed and they found his mom and the nice man who looked like Guy Williams gave him THREE DOLLARS. (Larry's mom was a looker.)
And of course, things DID end just like the nice man said.
"I mean, who wants to miss the James Bond movie they are going to put out?" He said in parting.
I learned later that the chances were good the Zorro look alike was probably a spy. Half the USSR delegations to those things were. They were after improved methods to feed more people. Remember Gorbachev? Got his start here in Canada working out agriculture deals.  One of his first political come of age events was addressing our parliament.
Food wasn't glamourous, but pretty vital.
Come to think of it, Larry could have bought himself a soldier set and have money left over for a couple of comics if you count in that increased Canadian shipping rate...

(1) I remember that that advert started showing up first in Dell Comics in early 1958.  The price was $1 Canadian (same in US), but, of course the Canadian shipping cost was higher.  I didn't buy the soldiers set, but, saw the set owned by a neighbour's kid, who was quite a bit younger.  As an early teenager, I knew that at 100 soldiers for 100 cents, they couldn't possibly be anything worthwhile.  The earliest ads didn't contain a person near the figures, to giveaway their tiny size.  And most of the individual soldiers stood on a flat, rectangular base. Without the base, they couldn't have stood upright, as they were extremely thin (almost flat).  So they really weren't very 3-dimensional.   Most of the individual soldiers (other than officers on horses) were slightly less than one in inch tall.  The advert stated that they were "up to 4 inches tall".  But most of the soldiers were slightly less than 1 inch, and it was only the cannons and other "accessories" that were larger than 1 inch.  The trunk/chest that held all the soldiers and equipment pieces, in the ad's photo, looked enough like a heavily detailed real trunk, that the young readers might have been fooled into thinking it was a "real" miniature toy chest, and much bigger than it really was.  It was actually very small, because the figures and other pieces were so thin, almost flat.  Maybe it was 6 inches long?  In the photo below from 1960, we can see the relative size of the soldiers and auxiliary pieces to a young boy. 

In other words, the whole set-up looked too good to be true; but it wasn't true,  It was a gyp (as were most of those comic book ads for little kids).  This set seems better than most, with a few halfway-decent sized airplanes, battleships, and trucks.  But, although they are fairly long, they are very short, and too flat to seem more than a representative token to represent battle formations (like ex-military officers might show what their units did in battles of their youth, by using eating utensils on a dinner table.  Most of the adverts I remember listed mostly infantry soldiers with only a few equipment pieces, such as cannons.  And the pieces looked thinner, and were only a couple mm wide in real life.  And most of the soldiers were roughly an inch tall, other than the officers sitting on a horse.  The 100 or 200 toy soldiers "packed in this footlocker toy storage box leads one to believe that might be a wood box.  But it, like all the inside pieces were the same gray single coloured one-piece plastic object.  So, it didn't have the lock pictured in the photo, but rather just a snap over protrusion that fit into a slight depression, to hold it in place.

(2) Al Kilgore was the artist for the Rocky & Bullwinkle newspaper strip.  He also drew several front covers for their various comic book series.  The artwork on the inside pages was DEFINITELY NOT his.  I don't think I've ever seen a correct identification for that inside artwork (only Al Kilgore listed with or without a question mark, OR with no artist identified.  Not only is the art of the inside comic book pages in a very different hand (and art style), but also the writing style of the stories is noticeably quite different between those two forms of print media.

[SuperScrounge]

selling every single episode of The Avengers

Nice trick, as I believe there are 22 and a half episodes of the first season missing.

[crashryan]

I wish to add a lone dissenting voice in the discussion of 100 Toy Soldiers. I had a set of them when I was quite young, and I was just fine with them. Sure, they were basically 2D figures on a rectangular base, but I never felt cheated. I think I must not have had expectations of what I'd get, unlike I would have had my folks ordered, let's say, Sea Monkeys. Imagination went a long way in those days, and the Toy Soldiers would do whatever I wanted them to.

This isn't to say I was ignorant of the fact that there were better quality toys out there. My late cousin had an awesome set of spacemen. I tracked them down online some years back but I've forgotten the details. They were fully three-dimensional figures about four inches (I think?) tall, nicely-sculpted, with removable ray guns and transparent helmets. They were made of some odd inflexible plastic that made me think of Bakelite. As I recall there were both humans and humanoid aliens. It was a treat to visit my aunt so my brother and I could play with these spacemen. It's funny; my aunt was one of those super-demanding neat freaks who was so determined to keep things in their original condition that said "things" were hardly ever used. I'm sure my cousin only got to play with the spacemen when we visited, and kept them carefully on the shelf at all other times. They'd have been in super-mint condition had my cousin owned them into the Collectible Age. Unfortunately my aunt was also one of those age-conscious cleaners-out who chucked all his toys in the trash when she felt he was too old for them. The sort of mother that makes comic book collectors, if you know what I mean.

[Quirky Quokka]

Hi all - Just an interesting piece of trivia about Boris and Natasha, our dastardly secret agents from Pottsylvania.

I have the Marvel Masterworks volume that collects the Iron Man comics from Tales of Suspense, 1963-1964. There's a story called 'The Crimson Dynamo Strikes Again' from April 1964 that introduces the Black Widow, a beautiful Russian spy known as Madame Natasha. She and her sidekick Boris are sent to America to destroy Tony Stark/Iron Man and the traitor Vanko/Crimson Dynamo. Boris meets a sticky end, but Madame Natasha lives to fight another day--in the very next issue in fact. And of course The Black Widow is still going today, though I'm not sure how many re-imaginings she's had.

So Rocky's Boris and Natasha predate Marvel's Boris and Natasha. But maybe they were just common names to describe those pesky Russians.

Cheers

QQ

[Robb_K]

Hi all - Just an interesting piece of trivia about Boris and Natasha, our dastardly secret agents from Pottsylvania.

I have the Marvel Masterworks volume that collects the Iron Man comics from Tales of Suspense, 1963-1964. There's a story called 'The Crimson Dynamo Strikes Again' from April 1964 that introduces the Black Widow, a beautiful Russian spy known as Madame Natasha. She and her sidekick Boris are sent to America to destroy Tony Stark/Iron Man and the traitor Vanko/Crimson Dynamo. Boris meets a sticky end, but Madame Natasha lives to fight another day--in the very next issue in fact. And of course The Black Widow is still going today, though I'm not sure how many re-imaginings she's had.

So Rocky's Boris and Natasha predate Marvel's Boris and Natasha. But maybe they were just common names to describe those pesky Russians.

Cheers

QQ

Not a chance that it was just a coincidence.  There are hundreds of female and male Russian given (first) names,  And, no, there was no precedent or habit among the Western Democracies to use the name "Boris" as a cliché for a spy or nasty person, and same for Natasha - which was more likely to become a name used by fiction writers for a beautiful, young woman than for a mean and nasty, ugly-looking spy.  Clearly they were used as a tribute to Rocky & Bulwinkle's writers, or as an "in joke".

[Robb_K]

Buck Ryan 78a – Find the Lady
I had, up to this point, only read a couple Buck Ryan stories in comic book format.  I had never read it in newspaper strip form.  I really enjoyed Jack Monk's artwork in this one.  It had a lot of nice background detail, solid figures, good staging, and use of light and shadow for mood.  The story was good, too.  The characters were believable (eccentric, but not over-the-top.  I liked Ma The Cache, and Karyll (a believable twisted murderer, who cared nothing about rubbing out the lives of innocent people who got in his way.  But I wonder about the spoiled rich man's daughter, who could become infatuated with such a slimeball.  I'm surprised I hadn't come across the British slang use of the Scots word "geezer" as just a bloke, rather than the Canadian and US main usage as for an old man, or eccentric old man.  Most of the several years of accumulated time Ive spent there (mainly in Lancashire), I've only heard "bloke" used for just any adult male.  The story's pacing was good.  It held my interest the way through, and sped up in the right places, gaining momentum and suspense.  I agree with the other reviewers who mentioned the  myriad of typos.  Although, rather than typos, it seemed to me as if someone not-so-well versed in English (e.g. a foreigner) wrote it.

The daughter is really spoiled, and living in a dream world, thinking that she can just return to her father, and live on happily ever after, after stealing half a million pounds Sterling from him, and trying to get half a million more, just to give it to her "boyfriend", for whom she became an accessory to two murders.

[Robb_K]

Rocky and His Friends (Four Color 1208)
i have to admit that I was a big fan of the Rocky and His Friends and Bullwinkle TV shows, and I collected all their Dell comic books, and the first couple years of their Gold Key comic books, as well.  I liked "Fractured Fairy Tales", and Mr. Peabody's Improbable History best.  Then, Rocky & Bullwinkle.  I didn't like Dudley DooRight of The Mounties, or Aesop & Son as much, but got a slight chuckle from them here and there.  I was a big fan of June Foray and her many voices, and the dead-pan attitude of the main male actor, narrator, William Conrad, and the gravelly voice of Paul Frees' Boris. 

All in all, the flat reading of dialogue on a comic book page one can dwell on can't compete with the quick, snappy rattling off of one-liners that make up the TV show. 

(1) Moose Goes West
This story is a lot like Marx Brothers' farces - just a chain of gags.  The story has a thread, of sorts, but really doesn't make any logical sense.  Bullwinkle is obsessed with watching Western-themed TV shows, and so, wants to be a cowboy in a Western film and answers a studio's ad for needed actors, while Boris takes a job as the film's script writer.  So far, a good premise and set-up for an interesting story.  Bullwinkle enters a Western clothing store and mentions that the salesman "doesn't look
'Western' ",  The salesman, a bit peeved, returns wearing a Western outfit, and gets irritated well beyond where he should be when Bullwinkle says he wants to rent the outfit, NOT buy it.  All this has no bearing at all on the story's plotline, and to boot (pun intended), is not funny in the slightest.  So, one and a half pages of precious story room is totally wasted.  After Boris and Natasha and their plan to infiltrate US TV with Pottsylvanian propaganda, Bullwinkle is told at the casting office that their Christmas shows are already filmed, so they don't need any reindeer.  A half page to set up a joke that is NOT funny.  Then, the director's assistent tells him that they'll hire him to play a stagecoach horse.  Bullwinkle, insulted, whips out his two sixguns.  The director tells him he's hired as the new cowboy star of the film, and introduces him to Boris (the film's writer). Of course, Bullwinkle doesn't recognise him.  Boris then fills the guns' cartridge with live bullets, to kill Bullwinkle (which he writes into the script).  NONE of this is funny to me.  And Boris enters the scene as a villain, to shoot Bullwinkle.  But the director wants Bullwinkle to shoot Boris.  So Boris and Natasha run out of the studio.  Meanwhile, Bullwinkle fires live bullets at the director, to show him that they are just blanks.  Again, not funny. As he seems insane, and has ruined all the cameras, the director fires him from the film.  The non-story ends back home, with Rocky seeing Bullwinkle watching TV again (apparently Westerns.  But NO!  We get a gag, attempt at a surprise ending, when Bullwinkle denies that he's still hooked on Westerns.  Now he's switched to "Easterns", watching "Charlie Chang" mysteries.   - Wasted paper not even remotely capturing the spirit of the TV show.

(2) Peabody's Improbable History - Sword and The Rock
Unlike the "Rocky & His Friends" episode, I think THIS Mr. Peabody comic book adaptation captured the spirit of the TV show more than adequately.  I think that the writers were able to do that better because the scope of that feature is much narrower than the Rocky & Friends main feature.  So, the writers were able to cover and mimic most, if not all its aspects fairly well (despite not having the benefit of sound).  I think the idea of making Arthur wanting to be a minstrel, and uninterested in becoming King, is quite clever, when that is tied together with Mr. Peabody helping Merlin with introducing the sword in the stone as the means of choosing the next king, and also tricking Arthur into being forced to become King by accident.  And Peabody's use of a magnetic stone to do that also brings his scientific knowledge into the story, neatly tying that together in an action that allows him and Sherman to again intervene in the past to ensure that World History, the way we perceive and believe it, today, actually happened that way.  If this was NOT an adaption of an actual aired TV episode, or a script that the series didn't get to because it was cancelled, we must give lots of credit to this story's writers for hitting it on the mark.  Yes, I did notice that their was no clever ending Pun by Mr. Peabody in the story's final panel.  I missed it greatly, but the writers still did a very good job on this story.

(3) Frivolous Facts - Text Information Page
BOOOOO!  HISSSSS!  This text page, only placed in this book to qualify it for receiving the super-discounted 2nd Class Postal Rate, totally wastes a precious page of space that could have added more witty and irreverent humour if it were couched in the spirit of the other features in this book. The qualification rules only state that it must be mostly text (with only a minor amount of page space occupying illustration (10% or less if I remember correctly), to qualify as "containing redeeming educational or social value".  The editor should have had the artist who drew "Fractured Fairy Tales" draw the one illustration in a similar style to his or her regular feature, and have the text instilled with a similar ironic and irreverent comical tone (spirit).  This page's tidbits of "facts" are true, but as put in Monty Python's Flying Circus, are.... "dreadfully dull and boring".

(4) Boris And Natasha - The Soda Baron
This is a pure comic book idea, to feature Boris & Natasha in their own story, WITHOUT Rocky and Bullwinkle as the prime focus, and allowing the villains to shine.  Unfortunately, the use of Boris' and Natasha's natural characteristics' possibilities was weak and poor choices, and the gags in this 2-Page extended gag are commonly-used tropes that are too familiar, expected, and actually neither clever, nor funny.  And when those characteristics are combined with simple, stylistic artwork, you have little to entertain the reader.  Both the writer and the artist (in his staging) missed the boat on matching the cleverness, ironic, and irreverent tone of the TV show in this one.

(5) Fractured Fairy Tale - Prince of Frogs
Now I remember why I was so disappointed that the comic book version of Rocky and Bullwinkle couldn't match the comedic punch of their TV show, partly because there is no sound (intonation of voice, volume, etc.) to enhance the emotional effect of the dialogue and narrative, nor movement in the gestures to enhance their quality, sound and movement of the figures to indicate the timing of speech and action.  When the reader has to invent his or her own timing of words in speech and action occurring on the page, the stories may not be as amusing or entertaining as they were in the TV series, because the writers and comedic actors who created the TV series do that for a living, so we'd hope and expect them to be better at those tasks than the average child, teen, or even adult reader. 

I find the artwork of this story boring, and the staging unimaginative, and not reminiscent of the spirit of "Fractured Fairy Tales" on the TV show.  In fact, I feel that it is weaker than that of most of the stories from this feature in the other "Rocky and His Friends" and "Bullwinkle" comic books.  Almost everything that happens in this story is expected once the premise of The Witch being incompetent, and The Princess being frivolous and not knowing what she wants.  I have to admit that there IS, at least a moderately clever double surprise ending in which a Prince pops out of his frog suit disguise, and then the frustrated Witch returns to turn both The Princess and Prince into Frogs (and being in love, they don't mind at all).  Bullwinkle kissing the frog in the epilogue (wraparound story) is very expected, which actually takes away the memory(and punch) of the slightly imaginative and moderately clever fairy tale ending.

(6) Peabody's Improbable History - Knock, Knock
Unlike the first Mr. Peabody story in this book, he and Sherman DIDN'T change the course of history by their actions during their time travel.  So, that is a minus.  But they made up for it, by having the traditional TV series element of Mr. Peabody sneaking in his ending pun as an answer to Sherman's usual story-ending question.  And the artwork perfectly displays Peabody's haughty and slightly condescending deadpan expression, as he answers his question, revealing the coincidence that his landlady's name matched the root of the boy's question.  That clever ending and strong visual characterisation of Mr. Peabody made this story memorable, and perfectly matches the style and spirit of his segments in the TV show.

Rocky and His Friends - Million Dollar Moose
This story's start, with Bullwinkle having taken on a new hobby - stamp collecting, is quite promising in terms of comedic possibilities.  But it DOES include a detail that could become a crucial error made either by the story writer OR the artist IF it wasn't deliberate included by the writer.  That is that the artist didn't show the rare stamp dealer CLEARLY pointing to the specific letter he wanted Bullwinkle to place in the postbox on his way out of the building, and/or the artist didn't show some indication of why Bullwinkle picked up the wrong envelope.  There were two envelopes sitting atop a table, one partially atop the other.  The dealer pointed up in the air, instead of to the table.  THAT is a really poor job done by the storyboarder.  I assume that the final penciler just followed the storyboard art, and didn't really make sure by following the storyline, himself.  So, when the livid rare stamp dealer ran out of his shop waving the correct letter he wanted mailed, calling Bullwinkle an idiot, he comes off as being insane, blaming an innocent soul for his own error of not making sure that Bullwinkle would get the proper envelope in his hand, as opposed to the envelope with the million Dollar stamp on it, left atop a table far from the service counter, where any unscrupulous collector could pick it up and sneak it into his pocket if the shop is crowded, or no one else is looking.  I understand that this is light-hearted comedy, but even so, some truths about human nature need to exist even in a fictional Universe in which humans and anthropomorphic animals can talk to each other.  I really can't feel fear for Bullwinkle that his home and all his belongs will be taken from him in court proceedings because that maniacal imbecile of a stamp dealer expects Bullwinkle to provide him full payment when it was the latter's own fault it is lost.

I DO like that Boris, disguised as a postman, coincidentally enters the story to steal the million Dollar stamp.  He can't possibly know that Bullwinkle tossed it into the Ground Floor postbox.  But he just happens to arrive in the building foyer as Bullwinkle tells the guard about the million Dollar stamp.  THAT is all in the spirit and style of the TV series.  As Rocky pops out with the envelope when Boris opens the box, the fiend grabs it out of The Squirrel's hand.  Of course, neither Rocky, nor Bullwinkle recognise him, but chase him anyway.  It's funny that Bullwinkle fell down the mail chute into the building's postbox, and is trapped there until the postman returns at midnight.  But THAT fact is the story's ending. 

So, it is not at all a tight story.  Why wouldn't Boris try to rob the owner of the rare stamp shop, just as he had planned to do when he entered the building.  He and Natasha could return deep in the night.  How did he plan to get his hands on the stamp in the first place?  Was he going to rob the store in broad daylight during business hours?  This seems to be a story that waffles all over the place, needing a LOT of work to tighten it up.  It is so far from working that had I turned it in, my editor might suggest that I don't even try to fix it, but rather abandon it, and just start on a different story.

(7) Peabody's Improbable History - Mistaken Identity - 1 page Gag
Funny gag, despite being an old Vaudeville joke, used by thousands of stand-up comedians.  I like the making fun of the film producers who ignore science to fill the seats of the theatres. 

As I recall, most of the Rocky and his Friends and Bullwinkle comic books (at least during the Dell period, were better than this one. 

[The Australian Panther]

I'm surprised I hadn't come across the British slang use of the Scots word "geezer" as just a bloke, rather than the Canadian and US main usage as for an old man, or eccentric old man. 

I think that most of Australians were familiar with that usage from British Televisioin shows like 'Z-cars' 'the Bill' and particularly 'Minder' where it was a standard word in the vocab.
I also think it is cockney, meaning London working class, slang. That's where the above shows were basically set.

  So Rocky's Boris and Natasha predate Marvel's Boris and Natasha. But maybe they were just common names to describe those pesky Russians.

I think that's exactly what those names were. And I'm surprised that I never saw that connection.
I pretty much read those comics off the stands.
Boris is actually Boris Badenov.
note:-

From a Bulgar Turkic name, also recorded as Bogoris, perhaps meaning "short" or "wolf" or "snow leopard". It was borne by the 9th-century Boris I of Bulgaria who converted his realm to Christianity and is thus regarded as a saint in the Orthodox Church. To the north in Kievan Rus it was the name of another saint, a son of Vladimir the Great who was murdered with his brother Gleb in the 11th century. His mother may have been Bulgarian.

Other notable bearers of the name include the 16th-century Russian emperor Boris Godunov, later the subject of a play of that name by Aleksandr Pushkin, as well as the Russian author Boris Pasternak (1890-1960), the Bulgarian king Boris III (1894-1943), and the Russian president Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007). 

So clearly, Boris Badenov is a deliberate pun. And 'Short' fits him to a tee.
Natasha?

1. Natasha

The Russian name Наташа is a pet/familiar form of the name Natalia (Наталья), meaning “born at Christmas.” It is commonly used to address a girl or woman informally but is never used as someone’s full name on their documents. It gained popularity in the English-speaking world thanks to the success of War and Peace in the 20th century. 

 
So clearly the writers of Rocky and Bullwinkle were well-read and literate and picked two names that they were aware of and weren't too obscure.

Thanks Robb and thanks QQ.