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.
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.
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.
First of all, it was cold. It was wet, rained all the time. I had diarrhea, so I stayed close to the facilities. The sergeant made me clean rifles...
Wait a minute. That wasn't summer camp, that was Army basic training. Summer camp, when I was a kid, was actually a lot of fun! A lake, canoeing, swimming, leathercrafts in the afternoon...a big fire at night, marshmallows burned black, molten on the tongue. Or maybe I'm just thinking of an old episode of "Spin and Marty" from the Mickey Mouse Club.
Oh well, at least my memory isn't faulty when it comes to the Dell Giant Comics that arrived just before school let out for the summer. They were kind of a vicarious vacation, promising a lot of summer fun. I never had as much fun--or adventure--as the characters in the Dell Giants, but at least I had the comics, which I pored over. I bought this one, Little Lulu and Tubby at Summer Camp #2, in 1958. Not only did it contain one Little Lulu storytelling time with Alvin, a Witch Hazel story, but also a Tubby storytelling time with Alvin. I don't know if writer John Stanley ever did that again, but the story Tubby tells is every bit the whopper that is usually Lulu's imaginative stock in trade.
Not only did that break tradition, but having Lulu show up at the end of the story breaks the tradition from regular issues of Little Lulu, where the Tubby story at the end didn't have Lulu.
School's out...what are you doing that's fun this summer?
More summer camp from #1 of this series from Frank Young of Stanley Stories. You can access it here.
Gran'pa Feeb was a character introduced in Tubby's Clubhouse Pals #1, a Dell Giant Comic from 1956. I wrote an article about him in Pappy's #161.
Feeb is a pretty hilarious character, an oldster going through a second childhood. I laughed out loud when I reread this story, especially the sequence at the top of page two: Feeb says to Willy, "Lucky for you you're wearing glasses! I never fight boys who wear glasses!" Willy responds, "I'm not wearing glasses, Feeb." in the next panel Feeb says, "Lucky for you you've got big glassy eyes!"
Another gag is Tubby dressing in drag to make Feeb hate girls, to help him pass the admissions test for their boys' only club. Tubby is a kid who wants to fit in with his peers so he pretends to hate girls, but he doesn't hate girls. He loves them! Tubby is used to disguises, which he uses when he's his alter ego, The Spider, solving mysteries for Lulu. In this case he's able to fool Feeb, something he never did with Lulu's dad.
The entire Dell Giant is written by John Stanley and illustrated by Irving Tripp.
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.
Number 543
Summer Camp stories
"What I Did At Summer Camp," by Pappy.
First of all, it was cold. It was wet, rained all the time. I had diarrhea, so I stayed close to the facilities. The sergeant made me clean rifles...
Wait a minute. That wasn't summer camp, that was Army basic training. Summer camp, when I was a kid, was actually a lot of fun! A lake, canoeing, swimming, leathercrafts in the afternoon...a big fire at night, marshmallows burned black, molten on the tongue. Or maybe I'm just thinking of an old episode of "Spin and Marty" from the Mickey Mouse Club.
Oh well, at least my memory isn't faulty when it comes to the Dell Giant Comics that arrived just before school let out for the summer. They were kind of a vicarious vacation, promising a lot of summer fun. I never had as much fun--or adventure--as the characters in the Dell Giants, but at least I had the comics, which I pored over. I bought this one, Little Lulu and Tubby at Summer Camp #2, in 1958. Not only did it contain one Little Lulu storytelling time with Alvin, a Witch Hazel story, but also a Tubby storytelling time with Alvin. I don't know if writer John Stanley ever did that again, but the story Tubby tells is every bit the whopper that is usually Lulu's imaginative stock in trade.
Not only did that break tradition, but having Lulu show up at the end of the story breaks the tradition from regular issues of Little Lulu, where the Tubby story at the end didn't have Lulu.
School's out...what are you doing that's fun this summer?
More summer camp from #1 of this series from Frank Young of Stanley Stories. You can access it here.
Number 487
Tubby is a drag
Gran'pa Feeb was a character introduced in Tubby's Clubhouse Pals #1, a Dell Giant Comic from 1956. I wrote an article about him in Pappy's #161.
Feeb is a pretty hilarious character, an oldster going through a second childhood. I laughed out loud when I reread this story, especially the sequence at the top of page two: Feeb says to Willy, "Lucky for you you're wearing glasses! I never fight boys who wear glasses!" Willy responds, "I'm not wearing glasses, Feeb." in the next panel Feeb says, "Lucky for you you've got big glassy eyes!"
Another gag is Tubby dressing in drag to make Feeb hate girls, to help him pass the admissions test for their boys' only club. Tubby is a kid who wants to fit in with his peers so he pretends to hate girls, but he doesn't hate girls. He loves them! Tubby is used to disguises, which he uses when he's his alter ego, The Spider, solving mysteries for Lulu. In this case he's able to fool Feeb, something he never did with Lulu's dad.
The entire Dell Giant is written by John Stanley and illustrated by Irving Tripp.
