Number 2450: Beatin' on Beatniks

Going through my mental files and asking myself a question. What do I know about beatniks, who had an image problem in the late '50s, early '60s? I don’t know much. Just a Roger Corman movie, Bucket of Blood, cartoons about beatniks in mainstream magazines, Maynard G. Krebs (Bob Denver) in the TV comedy, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, “Howl,” a poem by Allen Ginsburg; also City Lights Bookstore and the Jack Kerouac books I read over 50 years ago. I admit I didn’t pay much attention during the beat era to stories about beatniks that were not bent toward ridicule by conservative America. The two stories I am showing today are examples of that.

Steve Ditko did this short story for Charlton’s Unusual Tales #29 (1961), a tale of square guy in love with a beatnik girl. I don’t think we saw enough of Ditko’s sense of humor over his long career, but this is an example.

Cool Cat was from Prize Comics, and lasted all of three issues. This story is from the first issue (1962). It is written and drawn by Jack O'Brien, who also created, wrote and drew G.I. Juniors for Harvey Comics, and perhaps thousands of gag cartoons that popped up in joke books of the era. O’Brien is also known as a cartoonist whose career supposedly ended in 1970 when he was arrested and went to prison on obscenity charges. Knowing that gave something of a new meaning to the Cool Cat cover: a guy with a smirk on his face, parked in a lonely spot with two girls...

Number 1742: G.I. Juniors, comic book addicts!

This issue of G. I. Juniors, published as Harvey Hits #110 (1967), is a take on the mid-'60s popularity of comic books. It is drawn by Jack O'Brien, who was a gag cartoonist of the era. I have shown another G.I. Juniors. Just check the link below the story.

The Harvey Comics that were for little kids were everywhere in the 1960s. I saw them every time I went to the comic book spinner for my favorite comics. I never picked them up, never looked at them. I dismissed them as being beneath my dignity and intelligence. About 1970 my brother’s girlfriend (about to graduate university with the first of what eventually became several degrees — so much for my intelligence) gave me a box of Harvey Comics. She had bought them off the stands and no longer had room for them. Although the art was unsigned, looking through them I could see cartooning from artists like Warren Kremer and Howie Post (and Jack O'Brien, among others). My thought was, “What have I been missing?” Looking at them wiped away my former prejudices. I call this a “My Back Pages” moment, from the Bob Dylan song with the line, “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

As promised, another G.I. Juniors. Just click the thumbnail.

Number 1384: G.I. Juniors on the moon

G.I. Juniors were kids in a military school presided over by Sarge. The feature ran for 13 issues, rotating with other characters under the anthology title Harvey Hits, beginning with issue #86 in 1964 and ending with #122 in 1967. That was also the last issue of Harvey Hits.

Jack O’Brien drew G.I. Juniors. He was a gag cartoonist whose work I am familiar with, popping up over the years in various magazines, identifiable by his signature, “O'Brien,” which he also used on the covers of G.I. Juniors. He modified his style for the comic books. For one thing, he wasn’t drawing sexy women for Harvey, and he kept his drawings simple for the comics. He was drawing for two different audiences, after all.

Here are a couple of fifties gag cartoons by O’Brien.

I’ve included the Harvey house ads from the issue. Harvey had a bunch of titles going at all times. They constantly recycled material because their readers would grow up and move on; younger readers would come along who had not seen the stories before. As far as I know the G.I. Juniors were a one-and-done. I don’t know if they were reprinted after their initial appearances.

From Harvey Hits #101 (1966):