For National Comic Book Day: On the Strange Phenomenon of Comedians in Comic Books

Happy National Comic Book Day! At present you’ll find all of Travalanche’s comic book related posts in a common section with comic strips and animated cartoons — at some point in the near future, I’ll create a finding aid to make navigating the section much faster.

Meantime, I had a little brainstorm, however. It concerns a weird little niche phenomenon I became aware of over the years, and that’s comic books that starred movie and television comedians. Every so often people will share covers of these weird things for campy amusement. It seems somewhat inexplicable on the face of it, a medium designed for children starring these square middle aged men. But when you drill down into it, and look at some of the actual comics it begins to make a little more sense. My gut is that the market for these wasn’t kids per se but servicemen. The peak years for these kinds of comics were the Cold War. Younger servicemen were teenagers anyway, and a lot of these comics are infused throughout with sexist humor. Men becoming foolish over beautiful women is a perennial movie comedian thing and of course servicemen loved pin-ups as well as the kind of naughty comics I wrote about here. It makes perfect sense. Also: the ’50s and ’60s were tough years for the comics industry. Sales were low and entire genres (e.g., horror) had been banned. This was an attempt to open up new markets. And there were some relevant precedents. For example, there had been a syndicated Charlie Chaplin comic strip decades earlier.

Anyway, here are some examples of this brief trend:

The Abbott and Costello comic book debuted in 1948, about a decade after comic books first became a thing, and eight years into the team’s movie career. The original one ran through 1956 (the break-up of the team). In 1968 Charlton Comics launched a new one to take advantage of the Abbott and Costello animated cartoon show. That one was pretty kid oriented.

St. John Comics, who published Abbott and Costello, also came out with a Laurel and Hardy title around the same time. There were later, more kid friendly revivals by Dell, Gold Key and DC in the ’60s and ’70s.

It surely won’t shock you to learn that there were several series of Three Stooges comic books released, in 1949, 1953, 1956, and a long running series from 1962 through 1972.

This the one I’ve encountered that has provoked the most scornful laughter across the internet. Move over, Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, this middle-aged comedian from Cleveland is coming to a barber chair near you! But the fact that The Adventures of Bob Hope launched in 1950 was one of my clues as to who these comic books were for. That was the Korean War, and Hope was coming into the war zone with his U.S.O. shows, always with lots of pretty girls in tow. The comic ran until 1968. Ironically the Vietnam War was just heating up then. On the other hand, that was also the year The Private Navy of Sgt. O’Farrell came out.

Uncle Milty, the Milton Berle comic book debuted in 1950 and only lasted a few months. Could it be that it was not sexy enough? His reputation was rather otherwise!

In 1952, The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis arrived, courtesy DC Comics. When the team broke up in 1956, it was changed to The Adventures of Jerry Lewis. Dean Martin, apparently, ceased to have adventures. The Jerry Lewis comic ran until 1972, around the time his Saturday morning animated cartoon show launched.

The Jackie Gleason comic book (sometimes rendered as Jackie Gleason and The Honeymooners) ran from 1956 to 1958.

And let us not forget the long awaited Phil Silvers comic book! St. Bilko was based on his hit sit com and premiered in 1957.

Now, there’s more, much more to say on the subject because there were many other comedians who made guest appearances in other comic book titles! For example, Don Rickles was in the Jimmy Olsen comic book, and Soupy Sales was in Archie comics. (And thanks Robert George and Kevin Maher, respectively, for the intel). That one’s a can of worms though. You’d probably need a years worth of research to track them all down. Today we’ll stand pat at these ones.

For more on show business history please see No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous,and for more on classic comedy see Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.