Hi, Gang!
The WolfieToon at "DISCIPLINE & DESIRE" this week is a comic cover!
I did this mainly to show off the spiffy seal of approval that Larken made after SuperToonMan, but it's also an homage to one of my cartoonist heroes, the late Dan DeCarlo, who. at the start of his career, did books for Timely/Atlas (later called Marvel) like "Sherry the Showgirl," "Millie the Model," "Nellie the Nurse," "Bettie the Botanist," and "Harriet the Homewrecker."
OK, I just made up "Bettie the Botanist."
Dan and writer/editor Stan Lee went on to have a short-run newspaper strip about mailman Willie Lumpkin! (Hope it's legible with a click!)
(Just to tie up loose ends, Stan moved Willie to the big city, where he became the Fantastic Four's mailman and lived happily ever after.)
After that, Dan DeCarlo began a very long association with Archie Comics-- which, you may have heard, did not end well. He did spectacular work there, though!
So, while working on all these other comics in the late fifties and early sixties, Dan earned some extra cash doing pin-up cartoons for publisher Martin Goodman's line of Men's Humor Mags.
In the book Innocence and Seduction The Art of Dan DeCarlo, Bill Morrison reports that Dan did five to ten of these a month, but to compensate for the low pay rate, editor Arthur Goodman (Martin's brother) told Dan he could just turn in the drawings and Arthur would write the gags himself.
Which explains to me why such brilliant cartoons so often had remarkably weak or just plain awful captions. Well, this first one's not so bad...
Wow, those are great cartoon buns!! The joke's pretty fair, too.
But this one-- this one's gotta be the worst caption. Ever.
What?? That doesn't even make sense with the 'toon. Dan deserves better. Here, lemme prime the pump with a couple of throw-away lines:
"Well, that's show biz!"
"It's 'Life Drawing!' Take a crack at it!"
"And now, in other Nudes..."
Yeah, lame, but a lot better than "scaredy-cat!!" Chee. I invite better submissions!!
Anyway, every now and then, probably when Dan actually suggested the caption himself, they'd hit a homer. This is my favorite of the spanking cartoons, and sure, you've seen it before, but you just can't beat the Classics..
Let us hope her disappointment was short-lived. Perhaps she hooked up with Popeye.
Say, Judy the Jewel Thief also reminds me of another Funnies Femme Fatale with a penchant for purloining pretties...
Ah, but she, and artwork by animator / producer Bruce Timm are subjects for another entry, or two!
