McFad, Meet McCormick

Regular readers of this blog know that Supersnipe is a favorite around these parts. If you're not familiar, Koppy McFad was "The Boy With The Most Comic Books In America" and was prone to strange adventures based on his perceptions of the world.

As oddly unique as Supersnipe might have seemed as a character, he wasn't quite alone.
Koppy McFad,  meet "Comics" McCormick - "The World's No. 1 Comic Book Fan"

"Comics" premiered a few years earlier in Terrific Comics #2, but we're starting our look here in Fat and Slat simply because this is where they first ran his introduction. It's interesting that back in the 1940s Ed Wheelan was trying to offer a bit of a mixed cast. Our hero's best friends are a fat kid and a black kid. Yeah, he's depicted in the rather off-putting style of the times, and they had to justify his existence by making him the son of the maid (considerably more cringe-worthy than Ajax himself as we'll see later), but he seemed to have been pushing things forward as far as he could get away with at the time.

So - How do his adventures stack up to Supersnipe?
Well, they've got a decidedly different flavour, happily enough. (Cheap imitation wouldn't be that much fun) While Koppy took his adventures out into the "real" world, "Comic"'s adventures were purely in his imagination.
Let's take a look at a couple tales -

McCormick didn't last as long as McFad. He only had about a dozen adventures, and never got his own title. I think he's worth coming back for another look, though - and so we shall...

page art written & drawn by Ed Wheelan from Fat and Slat #s 1-3 (1947)

Kicking The Doors Open

It's Here!

You may have noticed a new graphic in the column to the right, similar to the one above.
The number of entries in the 1940sFunny Animalphabet has reached 500, and i'm calling it Good-To-Go.
The big difference between the new site and the previous blog posts, aside from nearly twice as many entries, is information to accompany the characters. Where known, Writers and Artists are listed, as well as where the character's First Appearance occurred and listing of Other Appearances in the 40s, so you know where to go looking for them.
Some entries still need data, but a strong majority of them are now as complete as current information allows, and work proceeds apace on filling in the rest while also gathering and sorting new entries.

Since this is an ongoing database, i had originally created a set of permanent pages that were linked to blog. However, Blogger's search function only includes blog posts, not the pages. So, those were scrapped and replaced by a set of 28 blog posts - one for each letter, plus and Introduction and Index. Each post contains a Navigation Menu to link the others, and there is a similar menu embedded in the side column of the blog. They function like separate pages while being a part of the blog. I kept it a very basic, text-based menu to keep things simple. Hopefully it works well for everyone. While other posts will be treated as normal, the 28 database posts will be continually updated and re-edited.

Anyway - if you're into 'em, stop by and check it out. I found a nice little Cosmo Cat poster signed by Ellis Chambers and L.B. Cole to kick things off.

logo by -3-, but none of the art (2018)

Blue Monday Calendar 2018 Week 33

Gil Elvgren starts us off on another week with Daisies Are Telling (Love Me, Love Me Not) from 1955-

art by Gil Elvgren, of course (1955)

3-Day Weekend Matinee - Robot Revolution

Since we're running the same features all weekend, it's obviously no surprise that we've got another tale from Look-In magazine's Buck Rogers comic, based on the Gil Gerard/Erin Gray tv show. But first, of course, we have our ongoing serial - the classic newspaper strip Twin Earths by Oskar Lebeck and Alden McWilliams -


Previously on Twin Earths: Vana, a defector from Terra - Earth's twin planet opposite Sol - has allied herself with the FBI and has helped them to design a detection system for the space based operations of her observers from her homeworld. Meanwhile, her FBI liaison, Garry Verth, has led a team investigating a piece of Terran technology - the telvisphone - a portable teleconferencing unit. With it, they contacted the Terran agents and learned that they were based in Washington DC. In the process, they have revealed their knowledge to the operatives from another world and a bomb exploded in their headquarters soon after...

Twin Earths - Chapter 14:

To Be Continued...

As with the previous two Buck Rogers entries, this tale - Robot Revolution - is written by Angus P. Allan and illustrated by Martin Asbury, his last in this sequence, though he returned to the strip by year's end...

art from Twin Earths newspaper strips (1952) and Look-In v11 #s 5-11 (1981)

3-Day Weekend Matinee - Full Colour Buck

Our weekend matinee continues, as one might surmise from the title. We're continuing with the same features all weekend, so let's keep the introduction to a minimum and head right into our stories. Our ongoing serial, Twin Earths, was created by Oskar Lebeck and Alden McWilliams, and today's Buck Rogers tale comes from Angus P. Allan and Martin Asbury. (I have no clue if he was doing his own colours, or if another artist was involved)

Previously on Twin Earths: FBI agent Garry Verth is liaison to Vana, the defector from Terra - another world orbiting the sun opposite the Earth. He and his team have just tested a telecommunications device captured from agents of Terra, and in the process they have discovered that the operatives from the Twin Earth are based in Washington DC!

Twin Earths - Chapter 13:

To Be Continued...

On to the first full colour episode of Look-In magazine's Buck Rogers comic -

art from Twin Earths newspaper strips (1952) and Look-In v10 #s 50-52, v11 #s 1-4 (1980-1981)