Not the type of cover one might be expecting for the comic from which The Bear strips at which we've been looking originated?
That's kind of the point of today's post - to offer an expanded idea of what appeared in Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact. Or rather, what appeared on it.
Here's one of my old favorites. I think even those who don't know of Frank Borth will appreciate it...
I went to gather up a variety of cover types from over the years to give an idea of what the title contained. I may have gotten carried away...
Yeah. Definitely got carried away. And there are still two types of covers which were not included in the sampling above.
The first, of course, is Bear covers. They do like 'em...
The other cover type might surprise you - simply because they don't operate with the typical in-your-face sledgehammer attitude of most religious comics, but rather focus on being entertaining and enlightening while adhering to their beliefs -
Treasure Chest of Fun & Fact was published bi-weekly during the school year and distributed to parochial schools, so non-Catholic comic fans likely never saw an issue. Some names familiar to comics fans appeared in the book, like Murphy Anderson, Joe Orlando, Reed Crandall, Jim Mooney, Joe Sinnott, and more.
They also issued Teaching Guides for classroom use of the comics. We'll take a look later.
And we'll certainly be looking more at the comics.
covers from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact (1947-1970)
I can't say I'm surprised to see something that I grew up enjoying so much pop up on your radar. I'm looking forward to your exploration of this unique series. I keep hoping that someone will issue collections of the various features, like all the biographies drawn by Joe Sinnott, and all the adventures of Chuck White or Sock Jones--good stuff!
ReplyDelete-Mindbender
I can't say i'm surprised to find out you had a secret source of comic goodness hidden from the rest of us. It's definitely a collection worthy title. I've got a Reed Crandall biography set as first to go (Jules Verne), but Joe shouldn't be far behind. Perhaps not surprisingly, i tend to lean into Sock Jones a bit more. I loved Fran Matera's work on Chuck White - though i was confused in younger years, thinking Fran was a woman. I guess they wanted to avoid that 3rd K?
DeleteI'm curious as to why these books were submitted (for a while, anyway) to the Comics Code Authority when they did not have newsstand distribution.
ReplyDeleteMy guess would be that it was for the parents, to reassure them. The political BS that led to the creation of the Comics Code was very fresh, with mainstream magazines and papers writing about the evil of comic books. That would also explain why the CCA logo is emblazoned larger than on most books.
DeleteBTW - sorry for referring to you as TC in recent post. I had a friend who went by Top Cat, but most of us called him TC. Now i've got both around here and i get confused.