WARNING: May be too groovy for some viewers.

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That outfit almost makes the calendar redundant, doesn’t it? “Well, there’s no Laff-A-Lympics around, so, going by that young lady’s mode of dress, it must be the Sixties!”*

Anyway, sorry for the illness-caused outage, and thank you for your kind wishes yesteday. Hopefully things will be back to normal here shortly. Or whatever passes for normal.

* Or the 2000s in the hipster part of town.

Today’s post called due to illness.

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Sorry, gang. The End of Civilization, previously planned for today, has been postponed.

I hope everyone has a nice Thanksgiving, where applicable. Otherwise, have a good Thursday.

"SHIVER with FEAR…SHAKE with LAUGHTER."

filed under Categories harvey, richie rich

In the comments for yesterday’s post, both Tim and John comment on the “intense” adventure-oriented nature of the Richie Rich comic I presented. I’ve always thought this kind of Richie Rich comic, as common as it was, seemed a bit…peculiar, myself, contrasting the exceedingly cartoony nature of Richie with drama, action, and intrigue. Archie did it, too on occasion. I suppose ultimately it’s no more ridiculous than, say, Uncle Scrooge McDuck going on world-spanning and sometimes life-threatening adventures (though there are, I imagine, several reasons why Scrooge’s adventures feel less out of character than they do for Richie or Archie…perhaps a topic for another day).

I’ve presented these panels before, about five years ago, but this remains my favorite cognitively dissonant bit from one of the “adventure” Richie Rich comics…in this case Richie Rich Diamonds #56, where Richie is stranded in a foreign country and faces off against…um, the Vietcong, maybe?


Here’s another Harvey book I came across with a similarly out-of-character presentation:


Okay, not so much in the cover image but in the promises made in the blurbs: “shiver with fear..shake with laughter.” C’mon, it’s Casper…how much shivering in fear are we seriously expecting, here? (And the “shake with laughter” part…well, your mileage will vary, I guess.)


That’s about as scary as it gets. But it’s not as if we were realistically expecting “OH MY GOD! It’s Baby Huey…but where’s his head!? AAAAIIIIEEEE!!!” I’d totally read that, of course, but alas, our actual Harvey scares are more gentle and friendly in nature.

Sluggo Saturday #29.

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SLUGGO’S FOOT-MODELING CAREER

ENDS BEFORE IT BEGINS

from Peanuts #6 (Aug/Oct 1960)

That I’m the first person people think of when they see "Swamp Thing" still astounds me.

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Just to reiterate: I didn’t dood it. Can’t say why you all would think this was one of mine. (HINT: If you find yourself offended by a specific entry, chances are I wrote it.)

And now…some random things here and there:

  • Chris Sims and Eugene Ahn present a new episode of the War Rocket Ajax podcast where they interview writer Chris Roberson. BONUS CONTENT: Special guest Dr. K sits in!
  • A few quick reactions to some comics I read this week:

    Irredeemable #8 – I really like this comic, I can’t wait ’til each new issue comes out, but man oh man I swear it feels like it takes no time at all to read it.

    Brave and the Bold #28 – Three issues of this series written by JMS, three smacks square in the head by the Moral-of-the-Story Sledgehammer. And yet I have no intention of dropping the book, because 1) I like the mixes of characters so far, and coming in the announced future issues, and 2) there is an odd fascination in seeing the characters used in these just-this-side of out-of-character ways.

    Adventure Comics #4 – The more Superboy-Prime becomes explicitly a criticism of certain types of fan behavior, the more hilarious he becomes. Honestly, the panel where he exclaims “The Internet! Of course!” literally did make me laugh out loud. And that he gets his own marked-down-to-half-price action figure essentially rubbed in his face is fantastic. Yeah, I know this is very much a “comics eats itself” kind of thing, but I don’t care, I’ll take amusement where I can find it.

  • Don’t know that I ever showed this to you…a drawing I received from a certain Mr. Hembeck about a year or so ago:


    Fred gave us some sketches to give away with copies we sold of the Hembeck Omnibus, and included that one for me. Pretty awesome.

  • Wow, Andrew came up with a Nobody’s Favorite that even I had some trouble remembering.
  • Ragnell writes about recent Green Lantern events, and how she’s totally okay with what happened to one of her favorite characters, instead of starting an online petition or something.
  • I asked on the Twitter for someone to step in and write today’s post for me, and Twitter-pal Toddster replied like so:

    “Bleep blorp Sluggo blip bleep Swamp Thing blahdity blahdity teen magazines!”

    I suspect this really is how I sound all the time. BLOOP BEEP.

WAIT, WHAT.

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I was poking through Dark Horse’s new Casper the Friendly Ghost 60th Anniversary hardcover when I happened upon the above scene. I had no idea Casper even had a ghostly mother. In discussing this with pals Sean and Dorian on Wednesday, the idea was briefly floated whether this meant that perhaps a ghost woman was able to be impregnated and carry to term a ghost baby. However, we quickly realized that there were too many questions and/or potential problems involved in this hypothesis unanswered and unsupported by ghostly studies. Science tells us that we must turn to Occam’s Razor and assume the simplest explanation, the one that requires the fewest assumptions and conclusion-jumping, that Casper and his mom were two living people who died and became ghosts.

More troubling, however, is this portion of the opening panel from the very first Casper comic book, also reprinted in the anniversary book:


And Casper is, like, tooling around with guys on horseback and such, so it’s possible that the Friendly Dead Kid has been wandering the Earth for centuries. Particularly since other stories, such as the one with Casper’s mom, take place in modern…well, mid-20th century…times. Anyway, the talk of “olden times” and “castles” had pal Dorian theorize that perhaps Casper and his mom were deposed royalty, killed by their enemies, but who can say?

It was also thought perhaps that Casper’s origins in the distant past preclude the possibility of his being the spirit of the departed Richie Rich. I’ve theorized on Casper’s origins before, and the possible relation to Richie Rich, and you know, all it would really take is for the spirit of a dead Richie Rich getting trapped in Professor Keenbean’s time machine, and getting sent back to the Middle Ages, to clear up all those potential continuity problems. Well, okay, there’s the whole thing with Casper’s ghost mom, but maybe he was ghost-adopted.

This all makes perfect sense to me.