Number 1126


Superduper-Gookum!


I've heard the first couple of issues of Mad didn't exactly set the comic book buying world on fire. It took a couple more issues for that to happen, and eventually the comic book was selling a million copies an issue. "Blob" from issue #1, and "Gookum" from #2, both by Wood, didn't get the attention of his later strips, like "Superduperman."

To show some of the difference in the respect "Gookum" got as opposed to "Superduperman," in issue #4 (where Mad sales were said to have taken off), Heritage Auctions sold the six pages of original art for "Gookum" in 2002 for $10,925, but in 2009 the splash page only of "Superduperman" went for $43,318.75.

Above is the scan of the original art for the "Superduperman" splash page, and below the whole six-page "Gookum" for you to look at and admire. There's nothing wrong with "Gookum." The earliest issues of Mad were supposedly take-offs on the EC line, so Wood did science fiction stories and Davis did horror spoofs. It was when Mad started spoofing other comic books and television that readers found them.

I was too young to buy those issues of Mad from the stands, but my brother-in-law, Jim, was a high school kid at the time and said Mad was IT, the coolest comic ever. Even in the early '50s comic books were considered kid stuff, beneath the hep kats in high school, except for Mad.

I'm also showing the color version of "Gookum," which I scanned from the Tales Calculated To Drive You Mad Special #1, published in 1997.

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While we're on the subject of EC Comics, I came across this interesting reference to the infamous "Are You A Red Dupe?" ad that ran in EC's titles in mid-1954.

This letter, by T. Bernard Mathews of Reading, PA, was published in the Reading Eagle of May 19, 1954. What Mathews has done is quote directly from the "Red Dupe" ad. (He even perpetuated the misspelling of Wertham's name: it's not "Frederick," but Fredric). "After little reading," he claims early on in his letter. Yes, very little! One page, one ad out of a comic book. That's Bernard's research! I'm not saying the information in the EC page is incorrect, although it does seem a bit odd that they blunted their message with a Mad, or more correctly Panic (i.e., the comic poor Melvin printed is Panisky), satire of Russian censorship.

The ad got publisher William M. Gaines in even more trouble with the Senate committee he testified before. People in that era didn't have a sense of humor about being called red dupes.

I found the letter on the blog, Yesterday's Papers, an amazing site by John Adcock. I recommend it highly.

Number 855

V-Vampires!

Heritage Auctions offered the original art for the classic EC 3-D reworking of the original version of "V-Vampires" in Mad #3. Here's some of what Heritage said about the story:

Wally Wood Three Dimensional EC Classics "V-Vampires" page 5 Original Art (EC, 1954). For EC's debut into the 3-D craze, four fan-favorite yarns, one from each of the titles, Mad, Weird Science, Frontline Combat, and Crime SuspenStories, were retold in this one-shot, published in the Spring of 1954 . . . The art is rendered on Craftint paper and four pieces of acetate, each piece having art and consecutively numbered pages. The five pieces were then stacked together, with eye-popping results. The 3-D effect is striking, and then there's added attraction of the voluptuous Godiva-- a Wood specialty.

This is the kind of thing that makes me glad to be a comics fan, an EC fan, a Kurtzman fan, a Wood fan...what else do I need to say?

Number 525


The Doomed G.I. Shmoe Patrol


In the intro to "G.I. Shmoe" in Mad #10, Harvey Kurtzman wrote, "The truce has been signed in Korea! For some time, we have been itching to sink our teeth into one type of literature born of the war!...We think the time has come! Any similarity between this story and real war is totally accidental!...It is with the sincerest respect that we dedicate this lampoon to you real soldiers who have had to put up with the glamorized war comics like...G. I. SHMOE!"


"G.I. Shmoe" is the classic 1954 Kurtzman/Wood story of two soldiers fighting over women and mowing down hordes of Chinese with fists and rifle butts. The Bob Powell story, "The Doomed Patrol," from American Air Forces #7, published by M.E. Comics in 1952, its panels of guys fighting over women and mowing down Chinese, may be the story that Kurtzman saw that led to "G.I. Shmoe". Can I prove it? Naw, but it's an interesting comparison. Inspiration comes from many and varied places. If you've got a copy of Mad #10, or one of the many Mad reprints check out the story after reading "The Doomed Patrol."

I scanned "The Doomed Patrol" from its appearance in the Super Comics reprint, Battle Stories #15, published in 1964.