Oh - one minor correction from yesterday: I remembered incorrectly when i stated that they included three Jimminy stories per issue for the last couple issues of More Fun. They actually ran four in the final issue, not three in each of the last two. A small thing, but i noticed i had been wrong when reading through last night.
First up, Jimminy meets King Arthur in "Sir Jimminy!" -
Next, Jimminy and "the headless horseman" give us a demonstration on how humour changes and evolves over the decades...
Remember - that ending was kid's humour, not adult dark humour or anything of that nature, though not entirely atypical for the time. However, we saw it more often with cartoon cats.
Here are the covers from today's tales. Despite any impression my phrasing may have conveyed yesterday, that first cover was not his only cover. Jimminy owned the cover of every issue in which he appeared.
stories by Jack Mendelsohn and Howie Post for More Fun Comics #s 122 & 124 (1947)
I dearly love Jimminy! Been pushing for DC to do a collection for years but they have no interest whatsoever. There was, by the way, a stray Jimminy (without the book) that was burned off in an issue of WORLD'S FINEST some time after the series ended. I posted it on my blog a couple years ago. I was actually hired to do some editing work for Mendelsohn a few years before he died. An amazing career and a nice, NICE man!
ReplyDeleteSadly, DC seems to mostly buy up old properties to warehouse them rather than to make them available. These days, they don't even seem to want to acknowledge their own legacy, much less those that they have acquired. It's a tragic shame.
DeleteOops. You let the Cat out of the bag.*
I had pondered including that story in the count, but technically it's just Jimminy, not a Jimminy And His Magic Book tale. (though they do cuddle on page one) So i was going to throw in the 4 page short as a bonus after we were done talking about him. I do plan to run most of the stories here over time, if not all. (Though today was supposed to be a return to George Marcoux had outside forces not intervened, leading to a Supersnipe/Jimminy fest next weekend. Instead i got dragged to Idaho. Urg.)
Very cool getting to meet and work with Mendelsohn. I know they say you shouldn't meet your heroes, but i've been pretty lucky in that most of the creators i admire whom i've met were as you describe Jack - exceedingly nice. Most of them.
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*(for those of you following along at home, the story in reference is The Tale Of A Cat, and thus the bad pun comment.)