[MarkWarner]

I thought last week's book,  Hyper Mystery Comics #1, was rather good in an over the top comics book type of way. But, by enlarge it go a collective thumbs down.

I am expecting to give this week's book a big "Not for me". It has been sitting on my list of recommendations for some time. I am staunchly in the "Laurel and Hardy are funny; Abott and Costello are not"  camp and am afraid I that due to my bias I keep overlooking it! Anyway, Abbott and Costello Comics #12 can be found at https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=19180, and the story we are concentrating on is the first one part of "The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap". All four parts are in the book so it really makes sense to read his cover to cover! And it is NOT my choice!

[narfstar]

I loved A&C as a kid. Their antics do not translate to a comic. Not much funny in the story. I did like a couple panels. When Costello indicates he would bit the widow she looks forward to it. When Costello announces that whoever kills him would have to take care of the Widow's kids, and when Juanita asks if she can call Lou DADDY.

[crashryan]

I thought this title sounded familiar...apparently this is an adaptation of a 1947 Universal-International feature.

[SuperScrounge]

School Daze - Ummm... okay...? Some amusing stuff, but at the same time it rambled like the writer was told to just fill two pages with something.

The Wistful Widow of Wagon Gap - Well, the story felt like it could have been an Abbott & Costello movie and it had some amusing bits, and like a movie it focused on Costello with Abbott fading into the background as the writer couldn't figure out what to do with him. (In their comedy bits Abbott worked best as a straight man, or a con man, and Hollywood seemed to have problems making a con man a main character.)

The art wasn't that great, a couple of times I got confused because some of the characters just looked too much alike.

Not horrible, but not that good either.

[crashryan]

I'm not a great Abbott and Costello fan and I didn't expect much from this book. It was a disappointment all the same. I am perplexed by its lack of technical sophistication. I could buy this as a 1941 comic, but as a 1951 comic both story and art are antiquated and inept.

The author didn't put much effort into creating a smoothly-flowing, comprehensible story. I hate the way he sticks important action into captions instead of showing them with a sequence of panels. The most egregious example appears on page 27. The explanation of the "mystery" should have been a big scene. Instead the writer crams it into a throwaway caption. I'm also annoyed by his use of captions like, "the scene is..." and "our scene shifts to..." This is sloppy 1920s style writing.

The art is old-fashioned too. Even the balloons have those long stringy pointers that went out of fashion with The Gumps. Charles Payne's clumsy figures are generic bigfoot characters from 1920s and early-1930's humor strips. They constantly strike weird poses that don't match the action. A good example is page 29 panel 3, when the cowboys react to the widow's picture. The first man in line with his hands out makes sense, but what about the others? Especially the last fellow, who appears to be scratching poison ivy. Payne seems aware that his drawing is lacking, because he sells his poses by filling the panel with jiggle lines, flying hats, and exclamation marks. The absolute worst is the next-last panel of the story, with a caption pointing at the Indians that reads, "When the gun crashed into the brush!" Arrrggh!

The comic offers a few funny gags (courtesy of the original screenplay) but otherwise it's an anachronistic, bewildering mess.

Oh, about the text story. This is a single-paragraph gag stretched to two pages. A single sentence could have set up distracted Benny and the teacher's question, and an edited version of the last sentence would have delivered the goods. This reminds me of a dime novel author I read about. He'd write the first and last sentences of a page, then turn out line after line of padding until the typesetters said they had enough to fill the page.

[Drahken]

Heh, this is just a reprint of the story from issue #1 of the same series: https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=19172
The art in all(?) the other issues is quite different and decidedly better (still rather odd, but infinitely better than the ugliness of this one). Hell, even the one which this is a reprint of is better quality (or at least the scans we have are). Honestly, you managed to choose the single worst issue of the entire series for this. :p

[Morgus]

thanks for the cleaner scan, Drahken, it helped a lot. There was a comic book series in the 70's when I was growing up based on the cartoon show on T.V. at the time, and I liked the art better in THIS one then it...actually the artist of this one looked like he wanted to be a ghost for Al Capp.
I think WISTFUL WIDOW seems to have been edited with a meat cleaver because so much of the humour of the original movie was based on action and reaction of the characters. Marjorie Main against Lou for instance, and the delivery of everyone. Steve Allen used to say that even their BEST bit, WHO'S ON FIRST...wasn't THAT well written, it was their delivery that made it work. Same here.  Plus, its HARD to get a comic book down to less then 40 pages...look at all those cool movies that came out lame comic books when Dell made movie tie-ins of them in the 60's. Made it 2/3 through before just scanning the art of the rest.

[bowers]

 This one is pretty much for A and C fans, such as myself. Probably not of much interest to others. I enjoyed the movie, but it just didn't transfer well to a comic book format. A and C's comedy depended on timing and presentation, both very hard to replicate on a printed page. The old "frog in the soup" routine can be quite hilarious on film, but not so much in print.
I agree with Morgus that the artist seemed to be influenced by Al Capp.
Not much to commend this one. Cheers, Bowers

[MarkWarner]

Due to me being hugely on the Laurel and Hardy side of the fence I have low very expectations for this book. I think Abbott and Costello may have made me laugh once, or even twice when I was a kid, but I don't find them funny.  However, the sublime Stan and Ollie are a completely different story and kettle of fish. Anyway I know my bias is rather silly, as the book is just a just a franchise and St. John generally made pretty good comic books. Let's get cracking!

Not a good start as the text story = "meh!". But open mind(ish) I start the main feature. Oh, what a surprise that was not too bad at all! In fact I rather enjoyed it. The story was good, as was the art. But that is just the first part, so things may change. Which they haven't,  I have now read the WHOLE lot. A minor complaint is things seem to occasionally jump (I guess from one "scene" to another). An observation is that Bud Abbott hardly makes an appearance. It's pretty much all Lou Costello. 

Verdict: Ok, I admit it, I was wrong this is a minor hit from me! But as I mentioned at the beginning, the comicbook, and the films are not related. So the films still remain VERY unfunny!

[Drahken]

This story was "ok". It had it's funny moments, but a number of parts felt more drawn out than they needed to be.
In other media, I have no real preference between abbott and costello vs laurel & hardy, I find both pairs somewhat entertaining but have never been a huge fan of either. Of the classic comedy teams, I would have to place the 3 stooges as my favorite. I absolutely loved their antics as a kid, though my interest waned somewhat in later years.