Warren Kremer

Tentacle Tuesday: Splashing With the Octopus

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It’s boiling hot in this part of the world, so I’d like to concentrate on soothingly cool covers for this Tentacle Tuesday. If we end up taking a dip in refreshing waters in our quest for relief from balmy temperatures, so much the better. Today’s roster brings us fashionable dames and their splashy encounters with octopuses!

Here’s the Queen of Fashions (and right now, queen of tentacles), and for once the cover doesn’t focus on her outfit – I understand it’s hard to wriggle out of a swimsuit while an octopus is holding your leg.

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Katy Keene was created by Bill Woggon, and introduced in Wilbur Comics no. 5 (1945). She was “America’s Queen of Pin-Ups and Fashions”, and readers were encouraged to submit drawings of outfits and other tralala such as designs for automobiles, boats, and whatever other method of transport Katy could glitter in. This is Katy Keene no. 60, July 1961, cover by Bill Woggon.

Mockery aside, I have nothing against Bill Woggon-era Katy – I like Woggon’s art, and the gentle humour of the stories is hard to dislike. After Katy Keene’s demise in 1961, she was eventually revived by Archie Comics in 1983. They should have let the dead rest in peace! Though several people were considered for the role of regular artist, that position went to John Lucas, whose style I abhor, recoil from and spit upon. I first saw his take on KK in those huge Archie digests you can get for pennies that reprint a bit of everything, giving readers a total pêle-mêle of different decades and different artists. I didn’t know who drew what at the time, but I quickly developed a preference for certain styles while finding others repellent… and John Lucas’ puerile art was top of my hated list, along with the half-arsed, anatomically asinine line-work of Al Hartley.

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Next, we have another beauty queen, although this time the stuff is quite a bit more risqué. It’s not for nothing that cataloguing websites classify Torchy as “adult” material. As for the octopus, it has impeccable taste, having determined that there’s no need to decide between blonde or brunette when you can have both.

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But Torchy, why are you wearing high-heel sandals in water? Modern Comics no. 97 (Quality Comics, May 1950). This is a page from « The Mermaid Gig », with scripted and art by Gill Fox. Fox took over from Bill Ward (Torchy Todd’s creator and writer) five years after her introduction, starting with Modern Comics #89 (1949). As far as replacement of Bill Ward, Fox did a truly excellent job, managing to preserve the mood and style of Ward’s stories. Read the mermaid tale (no more tentacles, sadly) here.

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Sometimes octopuses catch little girls, but occasionally a feisty little girl captures an octopus. Little Dot is going to be a handful when she grows up… but of course she never will.

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This polka-dotted octopus is a perfect catch for Little Dot in this soothingly green sea. Too bad the cephalopod fellow looks so disgruntled. He was probably in the middle of lunch or something. Little Dot no. 105 (June 1966); cover by Warren Kremer.

Those of you also inhabiting parts of the world where the weather has gone bananas (because it’s certainly hot enough for growing them in here), stay cool!

~ ds

Tentacle Tuesday Takes a Turn for the Domestic

redscraper1 Comment

You might think that tentacles are just something that happens to other people, to the intrepid swashbucklers and globetrotters of this world. But watch out! No matter how dull your job and how stodgy your lifestyle, no-one is safe on a Tentacle Tuesday.

Let’s say you’ve embarked on a normal working day in a bustling city. No ravenous tentacle will be able to reach you as long as you stick to main streets, you think. Right? Wrong.

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One would think New Yorkers would be immune to being fazed by *anything* found in NYC sewers. Cartoon by Charles Addams.

All right, let’s play it safe, call in sick and stay home.

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Mother Goose and Grimm is a syndicated comic strip written and drawn by Mike Peters, published both in newspapers and online. Syndicated in 1984, it’s still going strong. Spoofs of modern culture, screwball comedy and dogs on blind dates, it’s all in there. Jan. 23, 2015.

Dang! How about going to a conference, instead?

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Comic habitués will easily recognize the talented pen of Gary Larson, and identify this as a Far Side strip.

Sigh, I give up.

As today’s Tentacle Tuesday happens to coincide with Halloween (can this day get any better?), I’ll leave you with an image that gleefully combines both:

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 I don’t know how Little Lotta manages to control all these tentacles when she only has two hands – maybe she’s in symbiosis with an octopus? This is Little Lotta in Foodland no. 27, August 1971 (okay, so it’s a masquerade party, not a Halloween one – cut me a little slack!), cover (as usual) by Warren Kremer.

~ ds

 

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Hallowe’en Countdown, Day 14

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« That should teach you not to tangle with a tuff little ghost! »

Amongst Harvey Comics’ cast of monomaniacal characters, Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost’s propensity for trying to scare folks out of their skin with a hearty « Boo! » seemed sanest. After all, that’s what ghosts are s’posed to do, even if they’re from Brooklyn.

Here’s a tiny sample of some of Spooky’s spookiest covers, from the incredibly fertile mind and pen of unsung conceptual genius Warren Kremer.

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Spooky no. 77 (Dec. 1963, Harvey). Say, is that Mrs. Rich getting hit up for some treats?
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Spooky Haunted House no. 10 (Apr. 1974, Harvey)
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Spooky Haunted House no. 12 (Aug. 1974, Harvey)
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Spooky Haunted House no. 13 (Oct. 1974, Harvey)
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Tuff Ghosts Starring Spooky no. 27 (March 1967, Harvey)

As reading material, the Harvey books were mush for the mind, but they sure had purty covers. Note how Harvey was the only comics company that treated the Comics Code Authority stamp with such contempt: if it doesn’t get half cropped off, it’s coloured as to be barely visible. The damn thing, even at its smallest, *was* a visual blight. Bless that art director! Then came barcodes… and the battle wasn’t even worth waging anymore.

– RG