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| Tip Top Comics, featuring "Nancy and Sluggo", "The Katzenjammer Kids", and some strip about a boy and his dog. |
Redartz: Hi all! For today's look at four color humor, we join up with the kid stars of the comic world. Kid comics have been a mainstay of the comics industry since the very beginning ("Katzenjammer Kids", anyone?). Perhaps some of us started out reading comics featuring some of these mischievous moppets. I did; the first comic I ever read was an issue of "Casper" (okay, so technically it was a deceased kid, but still). I soon added Richie Rich to the pile, and Little Dot. Then there were these two early favorites: Little Lulu, especially when scribed by John Stanley...
and Little Archie ( definitely a 'little' pattern going on there). Little Archie, beneficiary of the talents of writer/artist Bob Bolling...
Incidentally, Archie Comics often carried strips of another kid heroine: Lil' Jinx:
My ultimate fave kid book escaped my notice until years later, in college: "Sugar and Spike". I discovered those tots in college, and fell in love with them. DC Comics pioneer Sheldon Mayer created these two torrid tots, with the kick that they could understand each other perfectly, but not 'grown-up talk' ( oh, as often depicted in the stories, animals can speak fluent 'baby talk', as can the elderly- second childhood).
Even today, while my comics purchases are limited, I still look out for back issues of that title (which are notoriously hard to find complete- they featured a page of cut-outs, which of course frequently got 'cut out').
There were many others, some I read occasionally and others that remain obscure today. Some of these are shown below (by the way- the "Cave Kids" were pretty fun, they often appeared in those great old Golden Comics Digests). Sooo, let's invite the whole gang over and look at a few covers!
13 comments:
For us British kids there were D.C. Thompson characters like Dennis the Menace, Minnie The Minx, Beryl The Peril, Roger The Dodger, Babyface Finlayson, Little Plum (he was an Indian/Native American) and The Bash Street Kids...Charlie Horse 47 will know them all too :)
I will simply double-down on Colin J! Funny, funny stuff were the D.C. THompson characters! I loved 'em, my siblings loved 'em, all our kids loved 'em, great cousins/aunts/uncles loved 'em. My poor nephew John was recently banned from reading them b/c his grades were slipping, lol. Once you open the cover... you never come out!
On this side of the pond, I will say Sad Sack, Richie Rich, and Archie ruled the roost. (Nephew John is also banned from Sad Sack, LOL,)
Archie for my kids was the only comic they'd read, really, and they read a lot of them! We have boxes of the digests and comics as well. Found a ton of Archies (from the early 1970s) sitting on a spinner rack at 4 - 5 for a dollar about 12 years ago. SCORE! (No I did not buy them all! Maybe 20 of them. Left the majority... thought I should share.)
Out of these, the only one I recall reading semi-regularly was Little Archie. Usually the Archie digests (which I used to devour) included at least one Little Archie feature.
Interesting that you mention Sugar and Spike; I recall that DC published a few digests featuring them, which I never bothered to buy because it was "kid stuff" and I was at that point (aged 12-13) a sophisticated reader of superheroes, etc. More recently, though, I've heard many good things about Sugar & Spike as being a cut above in the kiddie comics genre. Now I kind of regret that I never picked up any of those digests...
Colin- hoped to hear about those 'cross the pond' kids! "Beryl the Peril"- excellent name. I love it...
Charlie- you're right, once you open the cover you're hooked. And funny thing about all those Archies- although frequently found dirt cheap, they seem to be gaining in value and appeal.
Edo- those digests were great (the Archie and the DC). Sugar and Spike appeared in several, sometimes reprinting the old stories alongside other DC 'funny' characters. But they also had a couple featuring all- new stories.
Yep, Sugar & Spike would qualify as the best of the genre for me as well. Didn't read a ton of them, but the ones a remember rather smartly took a toe-dip into a bit of social satire along with the expected dose of Little Rascals-esque antics. Although not nearly as angsty or "dark" as PEANUTS (still one of my personal favorites), I feel like S&S may have taken its cue from that strip more than, say, Ketchum's Dennis the Menace.
Then the couple of Little Lulu's I had would be a solid second-place. Honestly, just funny, well-paced comics with cleverer-than-expected characterization and dialog. (I long-remember a lengthy story where she and her class visit the Statue of Liberty-- with Tubby packing an "Ample Lunch" in a large briefcase for the trip. The phrase "Ample Lunch" remains in my own vocabulary today. I just finished one, in fact. . . )
I did have an explosive Dennis the Menace phase-- bought a ton of comics and paperback collections-- and about two years later could not fathom what the attraction had been.
Ritchie Rich and most of the other Harvey offerings left me plumb-flat-- although Hot Stuff could be entertaining, sure.
And Li'l Archie. . . nope. Nope, nope, nope. I was reading "big" Archie when I was, like, 6. . . so going backwards to a little kid version of the characters held no interest for me at all. . . .
HB
I mostly read Archie/Lil Archie (and loved Lil Jinx in those pages), but wondered why she never crossed over with the Archie gang. And I had several Richie Rich and Casper comics, too.
I've never heard of Sugar and Spike!
What about comic strips? Family Circus, of course (not great, but I loved those map ones with the dotted line to follow them around), and Gasoline Alley sometimes focused on the kids (and you got to see them grow up!). There have to be others I am not thinking of.
Dr O-- one that I'll mention, even though it isn't exactly in the same "Little Kids" genre is a strip by the Washington Post editorial cartoonist, Tom Toles: CURIOUS AVENUE. It run from '92 to '94, and I remember being rather fond of it. It was, of course, very much an editorial-type strip as opposed to a gag-strip. But it was populated entirely by little kids-- again, like PEANUTS.
And the late Richard Thompson had an utterly delightful strip called "Cul de Sac" which revolved around the comically complex, driven lives of the kids in some suburb in America. Again, nothing like what we've discussed, really, but I would highly recommend it. Easily found archived online.
HB
I notice some alliteration not in yesterday blog, lol!
Osvaldo, I used to read Gasoline Alley regularly from about grade 7 until sometime in high school - yes, it often focused on the kids, and in general it was a pretty fascinating comic.
As for Family Circus, I only found the dotted-line map features occasionally amusing. I actually found the parodies of Family Circus that can be found all over the internet much funnier (although I'll admit some of them can be a bit mean-spirited). There was also this one that spoofed the Blair Witch Project by doing it in the style of a Family Circus map comic, complete with the culprits, Not Me and Ida Know.
^ I wish we could "like" comments. :)
Yes ..to so much already stated above.
I have to say I really like Little Archie and often find it better than the grown up mag. The kids are not entirely the same as their teenage counterparts. Archie himself is much more rascally and often trouble-making. They are usually getting into fights or scuffles or involved in a clever scheme. And Bolling really handled it well.
Osvaldo- good observation; why didn't Li'l Jinx cross over with her Archie Comics hosts? Perhaps it had something to do with their creators. Jinx always had a different look from the usual Archie house style; similar but still...
And if you get the chance, give Sugar and Spike a look. I think you'd like them.
Marti- yes, Little Archie and the gang were somewhat at variance with their teen selves. Of course, the basics were there: Little Betty and Veronica fought over Little Archie, and Little Juggy was always in search of sustenance. Very fun reading, and yes, Bolling took the gang through an incredible variety of adventures and locales.
Li'l Jinx isn't quite as indelibly burned into my memory-- but I wonder if she (or at least her feature) was more inspired by Fanny Bryce's Baby Snooks character/show?
HB
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