One of them looks almost like “UPS,” a vastly untapped subject for comics.
So online pal dwinn74 brought this panel to my attention on Bluesky:
…which of course reminded me of this old post of mine from 2007, featuring the “beatiful gory layout” panel from the Peanuts strip.
Now, dwinn74 doesn’t recall from what online source he borrowed this particular scan, but I’m also borrowing it to discuss here. Unlike the “gory layout” panel, Charles Schulz showed a little more restraint in titling the various comics on displayed there on the rack to presumably reduce some visual clutter and focus the image.
Like that 2007 post, I’m going to go through and note which of these titles were actually used or not by actual publishers.
SLAM: “Slam” got used the lot as part of titles, but the 1978 mag (not familiar with it, I presume it’s a knock-off of MAD or National Lampoon) and the 2016 Boom! Studios comic used just that word for the title. That there wasn’t an ongoing Slam Bradley with that title is a real shame.
BANG: A 2020 series from Dark Horse (with an additional exclamation point) ran five issues, and there were a couple titles from previous years and other countries with that name. And as with “Slam,” “Bang” gets used a lot as a part of other titles. In fact, please enjoy some covers for Slam Bang Comics.
POW: In the U.S. there’s another one of those MAD knock-offs with the name from 1966. It gets used overseas a couple of times as well, and as part of longer titles (my favorite being Pow! and Wham! from England).
CRA: this title was cut off by the edge of the panel, and I presume it’s “Crazy” or “Crazed” or something. “Crazy” has been used as a title multiple times, most famously by Marvel.
Now, looking at the rack in my 2007 post, you can kind of gather Schulz’s opinion on what was available on comic racks at the time (Kill and Stab on a shelf emblazoned with “For the Kiddies”). With that in mind, there’s a non-zero chance ol’ Sparky meant “Crap.”
Hey, you never know.
YIPE: nope, not used for a comic far as I can see. “Yikes” was used a couple of times, which is close but no E.C. Segar.
OH!: It surprised me, but “Oh” (without an exclamation post) was used a few times. This Canadian comic seemed to use it the longest. “Oh” was used several times as parts of titles, probably most notably in the manga series Oh My Goddess (AKA “Ah My Goddess,” I suppose).
Now to the last two:
…which obviously were titles used on comic books, and around the time this was published, Tip Top and Nancy were featuring Peanuts stories. So Mr. Schulz was doing a little cross-promotion then.
A note to my regular readers: Superman talk will resume shortly here, I just haven’t had the proper time to generate a proper post in my continuing discussion of the reboot/pre-Crisis stuff. Thanks for your patience.
It looks to me more like CPS, which is also untapped, I think, though would presumably have quite a bit darker subject matter.
@ Mike Sterling
The “CRA…” might behave been for “CRACK Comics,” published by the Quality Comics company, which eventually became “CRACK WESTERN” (if the Peanuts panel is from the 1950s, it is plausible), or how about “CRABBE” for “Buster Crabbe Comics?”
I got to see the original “Beautiful gory layout!” art on display at a Peanuts exhibition in London a few years ago.
“OH!” makes me think of “OH, COMICS!”, the anthology my buddy Bob Corby puts out every year for the Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo in Columbus, OH. The shape on the cover even kinda looks like a map of Ohio, if you squint…
Pow! and Fantastic were my entry point into US super heroics, read alongside the Beano.
Oliver: “I got to see the original “Beautiful gory layout!” art on display at a Peanuts exhibition in London a few years ago.”
AWESOME!
Given that the other titles in that row are all onomatopoeia, I would assume the implication is that it’s CRASH, which is consistent with Schulz’s joke about the goriness of children’s comics.