I dream of Jeannie with the light photo reference.

§ July 29th, 2024 § Filed under television § 6 Comments

So a few weeks back, I had a small collection come into the shop (that shop being Sterling Silver Comics, located in beautiful midtown Camarillo, CA, near the post office, the fire station, the Chinese restaurant, and the poolhall), which contained a variety of books from various time periods and equally various contiitions. Amongst this motley crew was a copy of I Dream of Jeannie #1, published by Dell Comics in 1965:


Now, I haven’t had one of these in my possession for quite some time, so it was nice to see it again. That’s one of the more fun photo covers for Dell/Gold Key’s many TV and movie adaptations.

Well, one week later I was surprised to find, in another collection from an entirely different person, the second issue of this series:


Clearly it’s in…slightly lesser condition than the first issue, but just by pure chance, from two different collections, I have somehow acquired the full run of the original I Dream of Jeannie series!

Yes, “full run,” as there were only ever two issues produced, the first cover-dated April 1965, and he second December 1965.

Given that the TV series ran for five seasons, and lived on in reruns for decades, I was surprised there were only ever the two issues. (Another company would release a few new comics based on the property in the early 2000s.) I figure the reason was likely money…wasn’t selling enough copies to make either the licensee or the licensor happy. The length of time between issues gave them enough time to gauge sales, I’d imagine, and the second issue’s performance may have killed interest in trying a third.

Another possibility was that the final product didn’t make the rights owners happy and they pulled out. It’s happened before…the comic book based on the Sequest DSV TV show got canned after one issue when star Roy Scheider objected to its content. I have no real reason to suspect that was the case, but the oddly detailed likeness for Barbara Eden throughout the book (compared to other characters) hints to me that someone was paying very close attention to what has happening here:


So maybe there was some extra interference from the studio making sure Jeannie was up to snuff. I mean, I have no idea, I’m just recklessly speculating here…maybe just the comic’s editor was insisting on it, knowing what was going to sell the book. Or the cartoonist working harder on Eden’s likeness vs. everyone else’s. Regardless, her face doesn’t always seem to match the rest of the art.


At any rate, here it is, a full run of I Dream of Jeannie. Had it in my shop for about a week…and yes, it’s already sold. To the same person, so the series remains intact!

6 Responses to “I dream of Jeannie with the light photo reference.”

  • RAR says:

    Mark Evanier has addressed this topic a few times. Basically, the publisher would send the comic to the relevant studio for approval, and sometimes the studio would send the comic to the individual actors (or their representatives) for their approval, and sometimes those actors (or, more likely, their representatives) would get very particular about how they were depicted.

    In this context, someone brought up an issue of F TROOP in which Sgt. O’Rourke had exactly the same face in every panel–obviously a case of a single image being photostatted and reused. Evanier theorized that Forrest Tucker had been dissatisfied with the way he was drawn, and so the illustrator had taken the one version that was approved and simply repeated it.

    Sometimes, too, the reference materials supplied to the illustrator make the difference. The original illustrator of Gold Key’s STAR TREK comic lived in Italy, and had never seen the show. He relied on a packet of publicity photos–but no one thought to send him one of Scotty or the phasers, and so he just made up his own versions. Also, no one explained to him how the Enterprise operated, and so he depicted it flying in planets’s atmospheres, with flames shooting out from its engines. The fact that none of this was caught by the editors at Gold Key suggests that they had never seen the show, either.

  • Sean Mageean says:

    I wonder if Tony Tallarico did the art on those Dell “I Dream of Jeannie” comics?

  • Adam says:

    It’s kind of a shame they’re not done in the style of the opening credits.

  • Snark Shark says:

    Those are neat!

    *Doot-Doot-doot-doot-da-do-do*

    Trivia: Eeden was married to Michael Ansara, (from `58 to `74) who later played a Blue Djinn in “Jeannie”, as well as Kang in Star Trek.

  • Cassandra Miller says:

    Am I the only one who thinks Jeannie looks more like Penny Marshall than Barbara Eden in this?

  • Sean Mageean says:

    @ Snark Shark –that’s interesting trivia! Thanks for the share!

    @ Adam

    It looks like the “I Dream of Jeannie” series that was done in the early 2000s by a different publisher went more for an art style similar to the opening credits animation. The art was by a guy named George Broderick…I don’t know if he’s any relation to Pat or not.

    @ RAR

    Those Gold Key Star Trek comics drawn by the Italian artists Nevio Zeccara and Alberto Gioletti, have a certain charm to them.