Number 1220: Not your average palooka

My American Heritage Dictionary defines “palooka” as an “incompetent or easily defeated person, esp. a prize fighter,” but they can't be describing Joe Palooka, who was heavyweight champ. In the funny papers, anyway. Joe Palooka was one of the most widely read and widely recognized comic strips in the world. By 1948, when the issue of Joe Palooka Comics I'm showing today was published, it was among the top five comic strips. The strip was created by Ham Fisher in 1921. Fisher was assisted by Al Capp for a time in the 1930s, which led to a feud when Capp left and created the successful comic strip, Li'l Abner, the idea for which Fisher claimed was stolen from his strip.

Joe Palooka's peregrinations were of public interest; his time in the French Foreign Legion was a pre-war continuity, followed in over 900 newspapers. Joe was finally free from his five-year enlistment with the help of FDR. Yep, President Franklin D. Roosevelt himself showed up in a couple of panels asking for Joe to be released from his commitment. That presidential sequence is missing from this reprint, which is the tail end of the Foreign Legion story. It's alluded to, but not shown, and probably because by 1948 FDR had been dead for three years.

Regrettably, some of the thoughtless racism of the era is right up front. Joe's pal, Smokey, while treated as an equal by Joe, is an ugly caricature. My apologies to all who may be offended.

I believe the art is by longtime Fisher assistant, Mo Leff, who ghosted for Fisher, and did not sign the strip until 1955, after Fisher's suicide.

From Harvey Comics’ Joe Palooka #22, 1948:

Number 464


Li'l Melvin


In the early 1950s the longtime feud between successful cartoonists Ham Fisher, creator of "Joe Palooka," and Al Capp of "Li'l Abner" fame, hit its peak. Fisher had once been Capp's employer. During the time Capp was Fisher's assistant (and some describe his job as more of a ghost while Fisher lived the high life afforded him by his successful strip), the hillbilly concept was born with a character called "Big Leviticus." At some point afterwards Capp quit, created his successful hillbilly strip, "Li'l Abner," and a feud was born. It ended when Fisher took sequences out of "Li'l Abner," doctored them to look like Capp had hidden pornographic images. Capp easily refuted them by showing the original material. The result was disgrace for Fisher, who committed suicide in December, 1955.

This satire, drawn by Will Elder for EC's Panic #3 in 1954, was done well ahead of Fisher's suicide, but devotes the last page to a lampoon of both Fisher's forgeries and Dr. Fredric Wertham, who said in Seduction of the Innocent that pornographic images were hidden in comic books.

Will Elder always did a great job lampooning other cartoonists' characters. There is a running gag throughout that issue of Panic about Walt Kelly, and the last panel features the only non-Elder art, a Basil Wolverton paste-up. Since I've seen most of the Mad imitators and featured a few here, no one ever imitated Mad as well as the creative people who helped create Mad. Harvey Kurtzman was missing from Panic, but his artists were there. Even with them Panic was never as great as Mad, but in its own right it could be very, very good, and "Li'l Melvin" is one of those examples.

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Speaking of hidden porn, my friend Clark sent me this sheet of images he's culled. I've scanned it from a photocopied sheet.