Retro-Modern Sunday Morning Funnies (on Sunday!)

Modern times require modern heroes. No matter how deranged the times. In a world where characters like Rambo have twisted the definition of "Hero" into "the psychopath who kills people we don't like" pretty much anything goes. But, that's not entirely new.

Let's jump back about 80 years to find someone to embody our times - Alibi Alice.
Ruth Leslie brings us a potential president with the motto "She Fibs" -

Alice had only 3 adventures, but i've never seen the first issue of Superworld, so the first one remains a mystery.

Meanwhile, also back in 1940, long before society exploded into dot com and dot net and dot this, that & the other...  Looy already staked out dot dope. (That one's out there now, isn't it?)

...and so it went. Looy was actually around for a fair bit, first appearing in comics back in 1936, usually in Comics On Parade or Tip Top Comics, but he also got his own single issue title in '38. 

Just because i have that obsession for 3s, let's toss in another strip from a few years later (1946), but moving the other way in time - Prehistoric Pete, another short-lived, migrating strip. Pete had at least a half dozen adventures, but was also reprinted several times in multiple countries, so it can be hard to track the exact number. And it's Sunday morning, so let's just get to the comic, eh?

page art by Ruth Leslie, Bernard Dibble, Joe Beck & Otto Eppers for Superworld #s 2 & 3, Comics On Parade #s 25 & 26, and Red Seal Comics # 18 (1940, 1946)

The Last Of Lilly?

As i mentioned last time, very few of Carolyn Wells & G. F. Kaber's macabrely odd (and lovely) Adventures of Lovely Lilly strips are known to survive 113 years later.

In addition to the 3 strips run previously, these are all that i have ever seen, or even heard of. Hopefully, i'm wrong. Anybody got a stash of old New York Herald papers from 1906 & 1907?

The last two of these are directly from old papers, so they're actually still in colour, too -

I'd love to find more.

Also, so far as i know, this was Kaber's only excursion into comics. As noted last time, his art fame comes from his paintings.

colour strips from New York Herald (1907, June 2 & 9)

Before Brightburn, Before Superman...

What happens with super powers in the hands of a child? The terrible potential of super powered toddlers is not a new topic for fiction. In fact, the notion pre-dates comic book heroes like Superman by decades. (But a few years after Hugo Hercules)

Let us meet Lovely Lilly, who had her brief run in the newspaper comics back at the end of 1906 and beginning of 1907. Lilly comes to us from the mind and quill of Carolyn Wells, back before she turned her prolific pen to mystery tales. The lovely renderings of Lilly are by George Frederick Kaber, who is better known for his paintings. The strip only lasted a couple of months, and not a lot of them survive today.

The comics typically let us see what happens when a child of power encounters the dangerous creatures dwelling in this world. Here we have the Hippo, the Crocodile, and the Tiger...

Wasn't she sweet?

strips by Carolyn Wells & G.F. Kaber (ca. 1906)

Day After Funnies

So, yeah - I missed Sunday again. Pretty much missed the entire weekend, and i wasn't even off doing my Naruto imitation or anything. Just missed it. (When everyday is the weekend, it's hard to notice the real one sometimes. Of course, that doesn't explain why i've been missing days, so let's move along...)

Anyway, here we are once again with Monday Sunday Morning Funnies featuring our old fave, Ellis Chambers. Our first two comics are from Two-Bit The Wacky Woodpecker. These were some of the last strips published from Chambers that weren't reprints from early books. As are all of today's tales.

The first story was drawn at an odd aspect ratio which required a spot illo to fill the space on a typical comicbook page. This is the drawing used:

It appeared at the bottom of each page of the tale. I've omitted it here, since we're presenting the stories and not the comics, to allow a slightly larger display size in the page code:

The second tale in the book was more typically formatted -

Two-Bit ran for only 3 issues, but these are the only two stories signed by E.C. that appeared in the book.

Meanwhile, other Frisky Animals were running around. This one is unsigned, but believed to be Chambers' work, and he has done other Senor Tamale stories, lending further credibility to the assumption.

Since we're not completely certain that the above tale is indeed from Ellis Chambers, here's one more to make sure we have 3 today. Marmaduke Mouse and King Louie from Marmaduke's own title -

Hmm...
I think i see and Marmaduke & King Louie and Egbert & The Count post coming up the street...

page art by Ellis Chambers from Two-Bit The Wacky Woodpecker #1, Frisky Animals #50, and Marmaduke Mouse #24 (1951, 1952)

No, It Was NOT Comics Code Approved

While gathering some bits on one Odd hero about whom i wanted to talk, i noticed a rather egregious error in the Grand Comics Database.

According to their entries, Captain Klep (originally from Dave Angus, Nick Landau, and personal favorite Kevin O'Neill) only appeared in 4 issues of Tornado before it merged with 2000 AD.

I beg to differ -

It would be more accurate to say that the Captain appeared in all but 4 issues of Tornado. You'd still be wrong - but not by much. He was in, or rather - on the back cover of - all but 5 issues.

back page art from Tornado #s 1-7, 9, 12-18, 20, & 22 (1979)

RPG Maker MV Again

While technically featuring nudity and inherent adult situations, it feels rather ridiculous to put this in the Adult Content back room of the blog. 

What we have here is a sprite template sheet for RPG Maker MV aka RMMV. You see, This City that i've been playing with now has a Hellfire Club, and some extra props were needed for background characters. So here we have Male & Female Walk Templates for both Yoked and Cuffed, along with a Ball Gag sprite that can be overlaid to fit either gender. (Contrary to popular opinion, i view gender as biological and completely separate from sexuality and personal identity. So the game world has only 4 genders - Male, Female, Both, Neither. (yeah, there are aliens and cybernetic lifeforms, so it gets broad while being narrow))

Appropriate leather outfits and such haven't been taken past the single frame design stage at this point. If i remember, i'll post outfits at a later point, after completion. For now, you'll just have to drop in what you've got. There are also Hadaka versions, but who uses those, right? (Well, after the Lactacid incident...)

Obviously, the Character Generator will not be able to adapt to the restrained walk frames, so outfits and character heads will need to be overlaid manually.

Meanwhile, for those who are thinking "Hmmm....   Hellfire Club! We need X-Men!"- Fret not.
You can grab them, along with a whole host of other Marvel heroes for your game, from Galactic God's collection. That includes pretty much all of the MCU and the Marvel Netflix shows, as well. And GG makes battlers, too, for those who use the in-game fight systems for RMMV.

crap by -3- for RMMV Users & This City (2019)