Do You Prefer Gay, Lone, Or Bold? Satan, Ghost, or Phantom?

We haven't done a mystery/puzzle post in a while, and the brain seems to be cooperating this week, so let's try something a little different.

We've got two stories today - very different from each other, and yet - they're identical in a way. Reading through these two short tales (six pages each), can you spot the strange similarity they share?

I'll give you a day to ponder the problem. (And, no worries. I know what i've been like lately, so tomorrow's post is already in the queue)

credits tomorrow, but, Hey! George Tuska!

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)