Predating the Riddler’s first appearance in Batman comics by about eight years.

§ June 30th, 2014 § Filed under racial sensitivity, retailing § 4 Comments

So we’ve been receiving giant box after giant box from this one gentleman at the shop, each one filled to the brim with comic books, children’s books, toys, what-have-you, dating mostly from the late ’60s through the very early ’90s, with a few from earlier still. One unique element of this collection, very seemingly out of place amongst the ’70s Archie comics and miscellaneous Disney merchandise (including a – gulp! – $300 Donald Duck statue and an Uncle Scrooge “Gold Train” set that is probably even more expensive), was a pile of bagged ‘n’ boarded Silver Surfer #50s, approximately 100 in number, and you can see Employee Aaron with a small selection of them in a photo I posted on the store’s site.

Now, some of the items we didn’t really have any interest in or need for, mostly the children’s books, but this fellow who was selling them to us is in the process of moving and didn’t really want any of this stuff back. Thus, anything we didn’t end up buying, we ended up getting anyway. Alas, one of the reasons we didn’t want many of the children’s books was because, due to poor storage, the majority of them were water-damaged and / or moldy or otherwise just too damaged to be salvaged, and had to be discarded. As a former librarian, and as a lifelong lover of books, I hated disposing of them, but there was no helping it.

Some of the books were able to be saved, and I ended up taking home a bunch of them for myself…and in that pile was this little hardcover book (with dustjacket) from 1940:


About 40 pages or thereabouts, with little black and white illustrations and about three to four jokes per page, most of them about as good as this:


Yup, just full on making fun of overweight people, and making sure to explain the pun with a parenthetical aside just in case you didn’t get it.

Okay, it’s not all terrible. I really like this dumb joke, although you would probably get punched for telling it and rightfully so:


The book also gets all religious-y on you out of nowhere, while simultaneously denying the ineffable essence of our cetacean brethren:


And just to emphasize that inherent superiority of soulful humans, here’s a joke that utilizes stereotyping of Chinese people:


That’s one of two jokes in this book based around our Chinese friends, who are the only ethnicity singled out, surprisingly enough.

And, um, well:


Here’s a joke that probably got a whole lot funnier not much later:


The judges would also have accepted “Timothy Leary.”

The inner flap of the dustjacket features a short introduction to this volume, ending with

“This is a good size book to slip into your pocket and produce at a moment’s notice in order to confound your friends or superior adults who we guarantee will never be able to guess the answers.”

Well, yes, they’ll certainly be confounded:


There’s an extra helping of mental trauma in that joke, Little Billy! Enjoy your next meal!

4 Responses to “Predating the Riddler’s first appearance in Batman comics by about eight years.”

  • AmonGoethe says:

    Have I been mispronouncing laundry all these years?

  • GE says:

    It rhymes with “symmetry,” AmonGoethe – just like William Blake taught us.

  • Snark Shark says:

    “Silver Surfer #50s… low price of $1.99”

    That’s a good deal!

    “The judges would also have accepted “Timothy Leary.””

    Or Hunter S. Thompson!

    ” each one filled to the brim with comic books, children’s books, toys, what-have-you, dating mostly from the late ’60s through the very early ’90s, with a few from earlier still”

    that sounds fun to look through! Can you sell kids books at all in your store?

  • J.W.Rollins says:

    On the dust jacket there is a picture of a girl holding an ax over some fish. I would like to know what riddle this illustrates.