...Or Was It The Man From U.N.C.L.E.?

Despite the impression we were given in the first issue, O.O. Heaven did return in the second issue of Bunny, and once again in issue #4 before someone finally said "Knock it off!" and he disappeared, presumably undercover or perhaps rotting in a 3rd world prison, awaiting the seemingly inevitable dark & gritty reboot.

Or maybe he just got fired.

art by Hy Eisman for Bunny #s 2 & 4, (1967)

Bunny Meets Bond

We mentioned last time that Bunny had superheroes and cavorted with super-spies. It should be noted, however, that she was fully capable of handling things on her own...

 ...but, when Sean Connery comes strolling into your comic perhaps it's best to let him handle things? Such was the case when both were just starting out, back in Bunny #1.

As it turned out, things just weren't meant to be...

Ah, well...

art by Hy Eisman from Bunny #1 (1966)

Hoppin' On The Bunny Train

She's Hip! 
                  She's Mod! 
                                      She's Boss!

What makes Bunny "The Queen Of The In-Crowd!"?

Would you believe we're going to spend the rest of the weekend on this topic?

Of course, as with everything in the in-crowd, it really all comes down to a matter of style. Bunny actually had it. While there were a ton of similar teen books on the market, the creators of Bunny (Hy Eisman on the art side, writer - ?  Hy?) seemed to be having groovy fun. One style touch was inaugurated quite early on.You may recall having seen this cover here last week:

Groovy cover, but Bunny didn't stop there. The covers owned the first page of the comic, too:

Similarly, you may recall this splash page from another post last week:

Here's the cover that owned that page:

Issue one was typical of most comics, but as of the second issue, this was the Bunny Style:

Frequently with pun filled lyrics (and, yes - Bunny met The Beagles in that issue), every issue essentially opened with a party.

Yeah, those cover lyrics get pretty cringe-worthy from today's perspective, but it was a matter of awareness, not intent. Early steps. (no dance pun intended.)

As i mentioned, they started this trend on the second issue.
But other Bunny Style hallmarks began in the first. One might even be tempted to trace the originating trend of not one, but two!, superheroes in Bunny's book to the appearance of a certain British super-spy (whose name rhymes with Double-Oh 'leven) in the first issue.

Oh, yeah - we'll be going there.

pages and covers by Hy Eisman from the issues indicated on the covers of Bunny (1966-1969)

Saturday Solutions - Mostly

Here's the solutions to yesterdays' puzzles, sketchy though they may be. As we can see, it was considerably harder to lay these things out using a type writer. I remember great frustration from those days.

On to the "Tricky Quiz"...

Why is this quiz tricky? Well, see...  this quiz ran in Howard Siegel's zine, Comic Collector's Comments, in issue #85 of Rocket's Blast Comic Collector, with the answers scheduled for #86. But things happen, and Siegel missed the deadline for #86, and in the  frenzy that followed, he seemed to have forgotten the quiz answers when his zine appeared in #87. He probably followed up with the answers in #88, but i don't have that issue.  And so, we have a quiz without answers available.

But, surely, that can't stop us, right?

Well, not for the most part...

My Answers:

1. Bullet Girl

2. Walt Wallet

3. Spark Plug

4. The colours of his uniform

5. Steamboat

6. ???  I think maybe this is a trick question?
I have fewer than a dozen issues of Planet Comics, but none of them has a letters column.

EDIT: Ah-Ha! Finally found the letters column in #50. It was called The Visigraph.
It appears to be significant for possibly being the first letters column in comics? This is the impression gathered from comments in the letters appearing therein.

7. the Monster Society Of Evil

8. neither's face was ever shown

9. Pretzelburg

10. ???   This one seems a bit too vague to me without some sort of limiting context. It's not hard to list at least a dozen commonalities.

11. Jigsaw, Man Of A Thousand Parts

12. ??? No Damn Clue.  Fortunately, TC came through for us on this one in the comments:
"J. Edgar Hoover, FBI director.
In his book The Great Comic Book Heroes, Feiffer said that a lot of WWII comic book stories ended with the hero being thanked or congratulated by FDR or Hoover, "the president and vice president of the US, as far as comics were concerned.""  Thanks, TC!

Anybody got a copy of Jerry Bail's Collector's Guide to see what he's got to say about questions 6 & 10?  That was the authoritative source guide for these quizzes.

puzzles from Rocket's Blast Comic Collector #s 84, 85 & 91 (1971, 1972)

The Business Of Star Wars

One of the enjoyable things about mining through old cultural strata is the little oddities encountered during the dig. Things lost, forgotten, or simply missed and unknown until being discovered while burrowing for other treasures.

Case in point - one of the early Star Wars merchandising efforts, long forgotten for their bare-bones simplicity:

Star Wars Business Cards

It's easy to see why i forgot them after four decades, but i still like them, silly as they are.

Star Wars Business Cards from 1977

Fan Fun & Games

As you likely have already gathered from the post title, it's time for

In keeping with our recent posts, today's puzzles & quiz come from old fanzines from the dawn of the 1970s. Factor that time frame in when contemplating your answers.

Tricky Bonus Quiz:

I'll explain why this quiz is tricky in tomorrow's Saturday Solutions.