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)

Mo' Flannel Panels

We started to peek at Dan'l Flannel yesterday; let's take a further gander into the hillbilly life in Homespun Center.

I'll give high marks for subject matter. I spent a fair bit of time living in the Deep South, especially middle Georgia, and Catfishing 'n' Hog Calling were indeed a part of life. (I still get big catfish & hush puppies cravings) But i never once saw anybody wearing a coonskin cap - though it was mostly the '60s, so the fad had generally passed.

Now let's join in the stories, shall we...?

It seems ol' Dan'l had a habit of using the splash panel as a reveal for later in the story. I edited yesterday's to hide the dinosaurs, but we'll leave this one as is...

On a completely unrelated note -

Happy Birthday to George (accent on the first E) Perez! 
Thanks for all the art and accompanying entertainment.

page art by Bart Tumey (as Edward Ryan) from 4Most Comics v2#1 & v3#1 (1942, 1943)

Hillybilly Stylin' With Flannel

Well, damn. I seem to have missed a day, and was on the verge of doing so again. As mentioned, i've been in deep work states recently, which tend to shut off the outside world while the mind is locked into the work. Add to that a new external drive grabbed while out on the monthly supply run. I used that to free up a smaller 3TB drive and am currently trying to gather all my comic files onto that one device.

I started scanning comics about 3 decades ago. There is a fairly insane amount of pages scattered over a couple dozen drives and scores, or maybe hundreds, of CDs and DVDs. Trying to find pages when i want them can be a bit of an excursion - looking to rectify that situation.

But, damn. I passed a half million pages a while back on the transfers. I may have made a grievous error...

So, Anyway...  while that's all going on, let's do a real quick single-story look at another Not Abner in our ongoing Hillbilly Hijinx series. Since we're only getting one quick tale this time, let us dive into the Odd end of Dan'l Flannel from Edward Ryan.

I'm going to edit the first page to preserve the story. I'll put the full version at the bottom so you don't lose anything. Here's Morbid Marsh...

Here's the original first page with the big give-away reveal in the splash - 
 

page art by Edward Ryan from 4Most Comics v2#2 (1943)