Who's Out There?

I’m in the mood for a light-hearted Tentacle Tuesday, an octopus-as-gentle-companion kind of mood.

Without further ado, I invite you to take a peek at the lives of those who opted for a slightly unorthodox pet!

Here’s our first friendly fellow. Ocho the octopus may be a minor player on this cover, but I’d like to think that he can still be part of our Tentacular Tuesday line-up (I couldn’t resist his puppy eyes).

AF#1 not only features Ocho, but also a creature called Boola-Boola, basically a shaggy, colour-changing octopus – so you get double the tentacular pleasure in one issue!

You can read the whole story here. Interestingly enough, the website that has beautiful scans of all three Addams Family Gold Key issues seems to be dedicated to teaching young people’s English, or to quote from the horse’s mouth, “Improve your English through Reading Comic with Fun”.

Next up are Victoria and Otto, a nattily-dressed Victorian girl and her pet (confidant, friend, butler…) octopus.

Given the style of these comico-illustrations, I don’t think it will astonish anyone to learn that Brian Kesinger is a Walt Disney Studios alumnus. Apparently, Otto and Victoria’s popularity has taken him by surprise, though it seems rather obvious that a curvy steampunkette and a friendly octopus would be a hit with a lot of people. This may be overly cute, but how can you resist the chronicles of two dear friends (though they may be of different species), especially when they regularly drop everything for a tea or reading break?

Otto and Victoria (with some involvement from Kesinger, I imagine!) have three books to their name – Walking Your Octopus: A Guidebook to the Domesticated Cephalopod (2013), Coloring With Your Octopus: A Coloring Book For Domesticated Cephalopods (2014) and Traveling With Your Octopus (2015), all three published by Baby Tattoo Books.

Here’s a self-portrait of the artist as a tentacle man:

You can peruse more octopus adventures here.

 

For our last entry, a friendly game of cards.

Now you see this brand new razor
I had it sharpened just today
I’m comin’ in there with my own rules
That you must follow when you play
Hey kid, keep your hands up there
While you’re givin’ them out, please
Stop puttin’ them wildies
Down there ‘tween your knees***

The inside stories are also by Irv Spector.  His son, Paul Spector, hosts a wonderful blog about his father’s work, and you can find many Lucky Duck stories for your enjoyment on its online pages for a dose of the sort of ebullient zaniness one only finds in animal funnies of the 1950s.

As a little bonus, a peek at Gary Larson’s view of octopuses as pets.

~ ds