The Abner And The Ringer

One of the more not-Not-Abner looking Hillbilly characters that came along in the comics was Looie Lazybones. He first appeared in The Fighting Yank (in a tale i've never seen). While cashing in on the hillbilly craze, Art Gates did try to make someone who looked liked his own character instead of a re-dressed Abner. Take a gander at his second story, from Exciting Comics, to see what i mean...

Looie lost a little bit of weight, but was essentially unchanged in his third story in America's Biggest Comics, and continued for a few years in Thrilling Comics. But then something happened. Art Gates moved on to other things and a new kid took over the strip. (Or maybe Art was pushed?)

Now the old look was gone. You see, they managed to snag Al Capp's assistant to draw the title, and Fritz went Full-Abner -

Ayup!
For those of you who may have any doubts, Fritz was indeed the legendary Frank Frazetta, as you can see by his next signature. Frazetta started out working on Li'l Abner, and here he got his chance to strut on his own... 

Frazetta only drew seven Looie Lazybones stories. We'll be back next time with the other four.

page art by Art Gates and Frank Frazetta from Exciting Comics #27 and Thrilling Comics #s 67-69 (1943, 1948)

Yes, We Have No Abners

Yesterday we took a gander at Gumbo Galahad, the star of Hillbilly Comics, from Art Gates. Today, we're doing the same damn thing again. (This might not come as a surprise, since i think i said we would.)

As noted above, despite any similarities to the contrary, we have no Abners here -

There were only two more issues after what we saw last time, but  Abner  Gumbo had three more tales in the two books. Let's be complete and view them all..
 

There was, of course, no next issue. I guess Gumbo ran off with thet strange gal...

page art by Art Gates from Hillbilly Comics #s 3 & 4 (1956)

Hillbilly Gumbo

So... I finally noticed that time was still passing outside the cave while i was in fugue work mode. 
Let's continue with our li'l look at Not Abners. I mentioned previously that there was a book dedicated just to such strips - Hillbilly Comics. It lasted only four issues. Today we'll take a look at the 'Star' of the book. No, not Davy Crackhead, nor even Crockhead - though he is featured in the first tale...

...we're talking about Art Gates' hillbilly hero, Gumbo Galahad - the Screwball Of The Hills -
 

 As we can see, there was little to no effort made to hide Gumbo's 'relation' to Abner. They could easily be brothers.

As noted, there were only four issues, so let's continue with the second tale, eh?

I expect we'll be back to wrap Gumbo before moving on to to Starving Abner and Blond Abner and the rest. But for now, i'm off to dive into The Third Colony's dreamspace.

I'll see y'all when i resurface on the weekend.

page art by Art Gates from Hillbilly Comics #s 1 & 2 (1955)