Number 2369: Tub’s mustache

This is one of my favorite stories of Tubby, Little Lulu’s pal. I think you can see the story’s ending coming, so I won’t belabor the point, but I have tacked on another element that caught my attention. The cop chasing the mustaschioed Tubby while yelling, “It’s against the law for a little boy to have a real mustache!” is a reminder that as kids my friends and I used to argue about what was legal. If I had seen this story at age seven I would probably have thought that a handlebar mustache on an underage boy was illegal. After all, a cop said it!

From Tubby #9 (1954). Written by John Stanley, and drawn by the Irving Tripp studio.

Number 1666: Gran'pa Feeb

Iggy’s grandfather, Feeble, is another funny character added to the Little Lulu/Tubby cast by John Stanley. Stanley’s characterization of him is of an oldster on the verge of senility, revisiting his childhood with his grandson’s friends.

I have shown this story before, but these are new scans. “Gran’pa Feeb” is Feeble’s introduction, from the Dell squareback giant comic, Tubby and His Clubhouse Pals (1956). In the early days of this blog I did a short article about Feeb, using panels from this story. I mentioned that in 1956 I was more like Tubby, a kid who was sometimes lost in his imagination (fed by a steady diet of comic books, no doubt). Nearly 60 years later I am more like Feeb, a grandfather with a whole lifetime of experiences behind me, yet still retaining some of those childhood tendencies...and still often lost in my imagination.

Number 1567: Tubby and the LIttle Men from Mars

Trust John Stanley to make a running joke out of the fifties fascination with flying saucers. Stanley made “little men” extra little so they could zip around and help Tubby without anyone spotting them. It led to an endless number of stories from Stanley’s inventive mind.

I have said before that Lulu, with the exception of her storytelling to Alvin, was usually grounded in the real world of little girls and boys. Or as real as any comic book characters can be, that is. Lulu and friends outwitted adults and each other, but unless I missed them there were no flying saucers in Lulu’s stories. Tubby had a life full of fantastic occurrences, ghosts, monsters, little men from Mars, which Tub took more-or-less for granted.

Several of the flying saucer stories are reprinted in Tubby and the Little Men from Mars, a Gold Key 64-page one-shot from 1964, from which I took my scans.

Number 1075


The Great Tubbo


In this John Stanley story from Tubby #9, 1954, Tubby invites Gloria to go with him to see a stage hypnotist. He gets to the ticket office before he realizes he has no money. A normally smart boy, his enthusiasm for a date with Gloria has temporarily rendered him stupid.

Well, girls have been known to do that to guys. I've mentioned before that Tubby lives in much the same fantasy-state my head was in when I was that age. Such was John Stanley's genius I found reading Tubby's exploits to be more like channeling my own life. Maybe other kids felt the same. A big difference between Tubby and me is I didn't have those little men from Mars to help me out of a jam.

Number 946


The Dispossessed Ghost


A bit of John Stanley genius is having Tubby, and Gloria and Wilbur, reacting to a ghost with their mouths open for several panels, until they can reach the point of being able to scream. It makes for sequences of funny drawings. But that was Stanley, finding those moments, giving his stories that little twist in them that bring out the comedic genius. This story is from Tubby #8, 1954.

The ghost in "The Dispossessed Ghost" isn't explained, nor does he need to be, any more than Tubby's apparition, "The Ghost," which I showed in Pappy's #404 in 2008. Stanley's ghost stories with Tubby have an element of creepiness to them, which was caused by putting them against the everyday events of Tubby's life. It's hard to tell exactly where Stanley's macabre sense of humor came from--there is darkness in much of his work--and that may have been a result of his reputed clinical depression, or exposure to a black-humored cartoonist like Chas Addams, with whom Stanley seems to share some common ground.

The first story that Frank Young showed on his excellent Stanley Stories Blog is a Tubby ghost story, "The Guest In The Ghost Hotel" from Tubby #7. Read Young's commentary for more insight into Stanley's mind.