HELLO FOLKS! SO WHAT?

HELLO FOLKS! SO WHAT?

THE MAD PECK

The history of comic rip-offs is nearly as old as the history of comics tnemselves. Around the turn of the century the newspapers of Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst were waging a fierce circulation war on the kiosks of New York. Each man would stop at nothing to out do the other. They frequently raided each other’s staff, enticing key writers to change teams with amazing regularity. Both papers ran cartoons and comic strips as circulation builders. Under the pressure of competition, the relatively new art form advanced rapidly. Soon, both sides started running color with their comics, but it was a while until a way was found to print an acceptable shade of yellow. One of the Pulitzer’s men solved the problem first and a new comic character was developed to show off this new breakthrough. Richard Outcault designed an ugly, almost mongoloid looking, young urchin whose sole article of clothing was a brilliant yellow night-shirt. Named appropriately enough The Yellow Kid, he did not speak in the normal manner for comic characters. Instead of having speech baloons, the Yellow Kid would communicate with the reader with messages written on his night-shirt.

The Yellow Kid was an immediate sensation and Hearst true to form hired Outcault away from Pulitzer. Pulitzer stole him back and Hearst lured him away again. Finally, Pulitzer decided it would be cheaper to hire another cartoonist, Gearge Luks, to draw The Kid and let Hearst keep Outcault. This was the golden age of comic rip-offs. Each team would rush out on Sunday mornings, check out the competition, and then produce .an instant rip-off for their next Sunday edition. The frequency with which the Yellow Kid was ripped-off insured his survival to this very day. Once it became clear that nobody was in a position to sue over right infringement, The Kid’s countenance fairly leapt into the realm of common domain. For the next fifty years he was found everywhere, usually in the role of a bad example. His face aged a bit over the years and the night-shirt gave way to other garments, but the beady eyes, the gap-tooth smile, and the protruding ears remained. He was ’eventually institutionalized by Harvey Kurtzman as the “What, Me Worry?” kid in the first few issues of MAD magazine. Finally he became known as Alfred E. Neuman.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Eventually Hearst and Pulitzer got over cutting each other’s throats. Coincidently a revision in the Federal copyright statutes allowed publisher's to stop virtually any infringement on their strips and characters. Competitive strips still mimicked each other in terms of content, but except for high priced advertising endorsements a specific character almost never appeared outside his own strip. The one exception to this rule was the Tiajuana. Bibles or Eight-Pager comic books as they were alternately known. These crude but flashy, wallet sized comic booklets were the predecessors of the ten-cent. comic book which first appeared shortly before World Warr II. Unlike most newspaper strips which had a continuing story, these eight-pagers presented a complete story in eight panels, the content of the Tiajuana Bibles was primarily pornographic portraying as many

explicit sexual endeavors as the author could work in. Never available on the open market, they were obtainable from traveling salesmen and truck drivers. Their name implies that they were printed in Mexico for the dual purpose of making money and promoting the liberal sexual attitudes that awaited the visitor to Tiajuana. You with me? Good. OK, so anyway we got these guys down in Mexico cranking out dirty comic books. At first, the characters in these eight-pagers were based on real people. Sometimes they were famous American outlaws like John Dillinger or Pretty Boy Floyd. Other times they were movie stars like Clara Bow. Often the characters were merely familiar generic types like the giggilo, the farmer’s daughter, or the flapper. In general the artistic style was as realistic as the competence of the artist allowed.

Eventually it occurred to these guys that since what they were doing was illegal, they might as well get into ripping-off comic strips. Soon all the famous cartoon characters of the time (Winnie Winkle, Tillie The Toiler, Major Hoople, Dick Tracy, Little Orphan Annie, Moon Mullins, Popeye, etc.) were being featured. In the best examples of the general traits of the character were strictly retained which gave the reader a sense of watching the character “off stage.” Besides pandering to the reader’s voyeristic tendencies, the comic strip based eight-pagers were shocking to him as well. A comic character is a subilmation of the repressed desires of his readership. When placed in a sexual situation the identification with the Character becomes stronger as the

reader is lead to the fantasy world oi pornographic voyeurism. Then, often as not, the artist would strip away all pretense and the hero would be thwarted (or the heroine ravaged) by that particular hang up that he had been trading on for years.

To pick a recent example, one popular eight-pager ended with the revelation that Superman had a tiny penis. The heavy riff in the Superman myth is the reversal in image from meek Clark Kentto all powerful Superman. Sexually speaking, Clark is a failure because Lois Lane ignores him in favor of Superman. The joke is clearly on her since we know that they are the same person. Unfortunately, the joke is repeated over and over until it becomes clear that the issue of female fickleness is being pandered to boys who have feelings of sexual inadequacy. Thus, in the eight-pager, when Superman removes his final costume (the Clark Kent drag is a costume too ya know) and he is revealed as truly impotent, then the reader is back facing his own hang up. Viva la revelation.

So anyway, from the thirties through the early fifties you got these eight-pagers which were highly satirical besides being pornographic. The first person to adapt the satirical element of the eight-pagers to wholesome family entertainment type comics was lovable A1 Capp. At first Capp would drag real-life types into his absurd Dogpatch world to as he put it,“...create suspicion of, and disrespect for, the perfection of all established institutions.” Yipee! Later Mr. Capp realized, just as the anonymous eight-pager artists had, that tremendous impact could be gained by ripping-off famous comic characters. Fearless Fosdick looks even more like Dick Tracy than he does. While the visual take off is quite good natured, the plot line of the Fearless Fosdick ridicules policemen far more than a hundred Jerry Rubins could ever hope to. Once, to impress upon his readers the foolishness of trying to protect people from themselves, Capp had Fosdick kill scores of innocent Bostonians rather than let them run the risk of eating a poisoned can of beans that was loose in Beantown. At his height, Fearless Fosdick ‘was immensely popular. He even got to do advertising strips in real magazines for Wildroot Cream Oil.

There we have the two extremes in comic rip-offs, the ridiculous eight-pagers and the sublime Fearless Fosdick. Graphically, the eightpagers were straight rip-offs. The pictures were copied (maybe even traced) from the real strips. A1 Capp, on the other hand, rendered Dick Tracy in his own style. Every subtle nuance of the strip was turned around and made to look foolish in Fearless Fosdick. All that assimilation must have been a lot of work, which could explain why he doesn’t do more parodies of other comics.