Number 1041


Al Fago's Atomic Rodent


Alfred "Al" Fago was a comic book editor, writer and cartoonist. The earliest strip I have attributed to him is from EC Comics Animated Comics from 1946, when EC was about kiddie comics and not walking corpses. I showed it in Pappy's #824. A little over a decade later, after spending much of his time at Charlton, Fago founded his own comic book line, which was comprised of ten issues of five different comics. Easy come, easy go...I showed you stories by Dick Ayers from one of Fago's comic books, Tense Suspense, in Pappy's #972.

Fago's most famous creation (for me, anyway) was Atomic Mouse.* Fago created the character in 1953 for Charlton. Atomic Mouse joined the ranks of other superhero cartoon mice: Supermouse and Mighty Mouse. Supermouse ate super cheese, and Atomic Mouse popped Uranium-235 pills. (The inset panel of A.M., with crazed expression, on the final page of this posting exclaiming "Gosh! I'll have to take a couple more pills!" should have disturbed Dr. Wertham.)

I wonder why mice became the good guys in animated cartoons and comics and cats were the bad guys? I depend on my cats to keep mice away, since I don't want them in my house. It saves me the humiliation of standing on a chair shrieking like a girl while a mouse does figure eights on my kitchen floor. I guess maybe it's the David and Goliath thing, the little guy prevailing over the big guy? I'm all for that, but mice? Vermin. Ugh.

Atomic Mouse's nemesis was Count Gatto, a cat of course. These two stories are from Atomic Mouse #4, 1953:














*He also created Atomic Rabbit.

**********

In 2007 I showed the first issue of Dell's Yak-Yak, illustrated completely by Jack Davis. Yak-Yak is a very oddball comic which is numbered as part of the Four Color series, at #1186. You can find it in Pappy's #200.

There were at least two editions of this issue, one with an ad on the back cover, and one without. Jim Gray has found the non-ad edition and has kindly shared a scan of the back cover. For you completists out there, and for all of us Jack Davis lovers, it's really nice of him to go to the trouble. Thanks, Jim!

Number 824

Bouncy Bunny and Clippety Clop!

Both of these stories, produced for very young readers, are from 1946 issues of EC Comics. EC founder Maxwell C. "Charlie" Gaines believed in educational material, and also comics for very young readers.

When I saw Animated Comics and "Bouncy Bunny" I thought of the masterpiece of kitsch, the book Happy Kitty Bunny Pony, which is a couple of hundred pages of the schmaltziest stuff ever produced. No comics, though, but Bouncy Bunny should have been in the book. From these examples you can see why.

Animated Comics was a one-shot; the cover is signed by Al Fago, who later did Atomic Mouse and Atomic Rabbit, and also for a time edited Charlton Comics. I believe the Bouncy Bunny story may be by him, or if not, it appears at least to be lettered by him with his distinctive style. The cover has a character named Flitty Flicker. Some comic book companies, including DC, told their writers not to use the words FLICK or FLICKER.

Burton Geller did the Clippety Clop story in Tiny Tot Comics #1; the story owes a lot to Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio. As I've said several times before, swiping is no sin in the comics. Geller drew kiddie comics at least until the 1950s.