Number 1889: Natch the sleepwalker

Natch Kilroy is a growing teenage boy. We have shown before, in Pappy's #1698 that Natch has an as-yet unformed teenage brain, with years left until he is fully mature. Along with an undeveloped brain, teenagers often don’t get enough sleep, which can lead to bad decisions, like jumping out of bed and going out in pajamas to rescue a pal.

I love The Kilroys, a comic drawn by Bob Wickersham for ACG. “Wick,” as he sometimes signed himself, was an animator moonlighting at ACG’s line of funny animal and teenage Archie-style, comics. The stories are situation comedies featuring the Kilroy family, Mom, Dad, Sis, Natch, and Natch’s pal, “Solid” Jackson. A theme that showed up occasionally in these comics had boys wearing women’s clothes. Guys in women’s clothes...ha ha ha. Very funny. Like Jack Benny in Charley's Aunt. No sexual or identity confusion here, folks!

From The Kilroys #3 (1947):

Number 1698: Natch Kilroy’s unformed teenage brain

During my teen years my dad, Big Pappy, aimed several variations on a well-worn cliché at me: “You’d forget your head if it wasn’t glued/bolted/nailed/screwed on!” The splash panel for this story from The Kilroys #3 (1947) brings back that memory. Big Pappy died years before science came out with news that a teenage brain is not yet done; it is still maturing about the time our bodies get large enough to fool people into thinking we should be wiser than we really are.

Bob Wickersham (art) and Hubie Karp (story) give us more funny teenage tales, close to situations I encountered during my own teenage unformed brain years. Yours too, I’ll bet.

“No Vacancies” is a story based on the postwar housing shortage. Returning veterans returned home where a place to live was hard to find.

The Kilroys get a television set in 1948! Just click on the thumbnail.

Number 1586: Solid, Jackson!

Solid Jackson is a friend of Natch Kilroy, and another funny character from The Kilroys, a popular teenage series from ACG in the late forties and early fifties. Animator Bob Wickersham (“Wick”) did the artwork and Hubie Karp wrote the story.

The phrase, “Solid, Jackson!” was in use during the war years based on this photo.

After the war it was used in hipster-talk. Man, if everything is aw reet, copacetic, then you is solid, Jackson! I’m glad to see that according to the Urban Dictionary the term is still being used, but in reading their definition, maybe more graphically defined than 65 years ago.

From The Kilroys #19 (1949):

Number 1207: Scooby-Doo's Grandpa Boris

Looking at this funny story from The Kilroys #28 (1950) I was struck by Solid Jackson's dog, Boris. He looks like Scooby-Doo to me, drawn almost twenty years before Scooby-Doo made his debut in 1969. Wickersham, who sometimes signed his name Wick, was a moonlighting animator who drew their teenage comic, The Kilroys, which had a nice run from 1947 to 1955. I've shown a couple of Kilroys stories at various times, including New Year's Day of this year, in Pappy's #1080 and a couple of music-themed stories in Pappy's #831.

Wickersham, born in 1911, worked for most of the major animation studios. I'm a comic book fan, so I don't know a lot about animation, but I do know comic books. To me it's enough that he did such a wonderful job for years on this funny comic. Wickersham died in 1962 at the age of fifty.

Number 1080


A Pappy New Year!


Head feeling a little fuzzy this morning? A couple of aspirins and Pappy's Golden Age will fix you right up!

We're starting out 2012 with a couple of funny stories from The Kilroys #5, including a story of Natch welcoming the New Year of 1948.

I have something in common with Natch Kilroy...I also greeted 1948. I was only six months old at the time and don't remember it, but I was there nonetheless, and have managed to make it to January 1 each year since.

These stories were written by Hubie Karp and drawn by Bob Wickersham, who sometimes signed his work Bob Wick. The Kilroys was aimed at that big teenage comics market led by Archie. Redhead Natch even reminds me a bit of Archie. Like Archie he drove a jalopy and had girl problems.

Here's an announcement that the comic was going to a monthly schedule, which means it was a seller. The Kilroys had a good eight year run from 1947 to 1955.

Rest up today! Tomorrow you'll be back at the regular old grind.