“Professor Jogg’s Travelogs” was a one-shot strip (I can’t find any other listings under that title). It appeared in the late forties, and is typical funny Basil Wolverton, full of alliteration (“Plunk your peepers on that peculiar puss, Professor!”) and internal rhyming (“It’s okay to gawk, but sock a lock on the loud talk!”)
It was published in Marvel’s
Gay Comics #27 (1947). I believe the editor was Stan Lee, who was smart. He gave Wolverton his lead, letting him write, draw and even letter his own comics, much like Harvey Kurtzman did with his one-page “Hey Look!” strips for Lee around the same time.
This is the sort of weird little gem I love to find in Golden Age comics. It's just Wolverton riffing on all of his own schticks, and having fun with himself as Jack Cole was also wont to do. Should we venture the possibility that he was saying that the artist works better when prodded by stress, as opposed to just sitting around exploring one's navel for ideas? Quien sabe?
ReplyDeleteThat old song "Wolverton Mountain" came to my mind.
ReplyDeleteBrian, there is one common denominator for Marvel Comics during their most successful early years, and that was Stan Lee.
ReplyDeleteHe has always ruffled some feathers by his claims to creations that some fans saw as being by others. I don't care to get into that debate because I wasn't there. How's that for a cop-out!
Gene, I'm not privy to Wolverton's thought processes, and this may be the first self-caricature of his I've seen...or at least that I remember. I think for anyone who faces a deadline there is stress about getting it done. I don't know how many deadlines Wolverton faced, being a guy who worked out of his home in Washington State, and conducted business by old-fashioned snail mail. I think it would have made a lot of direction by an editor hard to get across (couldn't stand over the drawing board and make critiques, for one), and so I also think that Lee, at least, just let him follow his muse.
ReplyDeleteI think Wolverton was bursting with ideas, and put them into his stories, which tend to run together as themes. Forgive me, Wolverfans, for saying that, but you could substitute most of his other characters and it wouldn't make any difference.
rnigma, takes me back to my high school days! That song was played on Top 40 radio, and was a big crossover hit.
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