A 10-issue comedy series from Fawcett Publications overseen by Editor Virginia Provisiero and starring lackluster and mediocre characters like Captain Kid, Richard Richard, and Jetsam Joe. Most notably, however, issues #2 through 10 of the title feature Basil Wolverton's MYSTIC MOOT And His Magic Snoot.
Also of note in most of these issues is the presence of cartoonist Victor Pazmino, who signed his work VEP.
Fawcett apparently had been toying with the idea of a humor anthology title for some time, first considering the title NUTTY COMICS; the interior pages of issue 1 of COMIC COMICS read "Nutty Comics" across the top. NUTTY #1 -- the only issue with that title-- came out in the Winter of 1946, while COMIC COMICS first issue was dated April of that year.
With the 3rd issue, the title boasted one true standout, Wolverton's MYSTIC MOOT, from the IBIS comic book. Distinctive, beautifully crafted and often laugh-out-loud funny, MOOT remains the one big standout of the title. And sadly, the rest of the book just wasn't that funny. Of the various features in the anthology, Captain Kid and Richard Richard and Jetsam Joe seem tailored for young, young readers, with Jetsam Joe, drawn by Pazmino, having a wild if stiff slapstick frenzy to it, while The Tragedy of Joe Miller, about an inept actor, seem aimed higher without any of the requisite humor to retain older or more sophisticated readers. The Colonel Corn and Korny Kobb feature boasted some flamboyant brush-work, but little else. The Snortville Sneeze, a strip about a newspaper, occasionally had oddly distorted layouts, as if the cartoonist was weorking off a long drunk. Kanvasback Kenny, was an inept Palooka Joe knockoff. And the rest of the strips, Sam Sherriff, Freddy Freshman, and others, were one-page fillers often built around lame one-liners and little more. Fawcett's house rule that artists could not sign their work works against even being able to root out individual flashes of value in a sea of mediocrity. Nevertheless, the title is a unique curiosity for those intent on comics research, and of course, any Wolverton is good Wolverton.
A complete run of this title, now in the public domain, is available for the curious HERE.
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