Number 1507: Halluci-Herbie-nation

In re-reading old Herbie stories, written by ACG editor Richard E. Hughes under his pen-name, Shane O'Shea, it’s not surprising to see the mind-altering qualities. They were published in the 1960s, and have a hallucinatory quality reminiscent of the decade.

The absurd goings-on of the story, “Professor Flipdome’s Screwy Machine,” from Herbie #4 (1964), drawn in artist Ogden Whitney’s precise and deadpan art style, adds to the feeling that there is something beyond the usual mind-blowing quality of some comic books.

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I scanned the stories from the 1964 first issue of Herbie to bring in the New Year of 2010. Just click on the cover thumbnail:

Number 1364: Funky Funnies: Herbie and Ticklepuss!

We have reached the last of our Funky Funnies theme week, with entries from Basil Wolverton, Bill Holman, Gill Fox and now from the team of Richard E. Hughes and Ogden Whitney, who created one of the greatest 1960s comic characters, Herbie Popnecker. Herbie has a perfect camouflage for his extraordinary powers: a corpulent body, a blank look through his goggle-eyed lenses, an obsessive-compulsive need for lollipops. No one should mistake his appearance for who he really is. Herbie is much more than what meets the eye. Among things like the power of levitation and ability to talk to animals, Herbie knows famous people. In this story he encounters Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck. He even demonstrates to Gregory how to properly kiss a woman. It's just all in a day's doings for our “fat little nothing,” (as his cruel and verbally abusive father, Pincus Popnecker, calls him). Herbie is very attractive to the opposite sex, as we see here and as we have seen in the past when he's had dalliances with none other than Elizabeth Taylor and Jackie Kennedy. In “A Caveman Named Herbie” he not only makes a starlet swoon, but he catches the eye of a prehistoric dreamgirl, Ticklepuss. Oh, that I should have Herbie’s charms! No woman would be safe!

It's all from Herbie #6 (1964):

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A couple more Herbie stories. Just click the pictures:

Number 1189: Herbie and the Purloined Pops

It seems fitting to follow up yesterday's Dynamo UFO posting with a Herbie story. They were both comics I instantly grabbed when I spotted them on the comic book spinner at my local pharmacy. Every comic fan has that moment, when they spot a new issue of their favorite. In 1964 I was routinely picking up the latest Marvel Comics and anything else that looked interesting (a new Carl Barks was always nice, too), but there had already been one issue of Herbie and I was overjoyed to find yet another. A new issue of Herbie was a welcome distraction from the personal turbulence in my life. If only my problems had been as simple as tracking down and finding my favorite lollipop!

From Herbie #2 (1964):

Jeff Overturf has posted a lot more stories from Herbie on his blog, Inside Jeff Overturf's Head. Use the search engine in the upper left corner of the blog and you will be led to more joy than you can handle.

Number 1139: Herbie and the spirits

I consider Herbie one of the great comic book creations of the 1960s. It was oddball and different, just crazy enough to have something of a cult grow around it. Or maybe it wasn't really a cult-cult, as in a group of people, maybe it was just me, but surely I wasn't the only one who grabbed every new issue of Herbie off the spinner when it came out. But it might have been only me who put the Marvel Comics I bought simultaneously to the side while I read Herbie, and very often, the Marvel Comics I then read seemed anticlimactic.

Herbie was revived in the early nineties in a handful of issues. It didn't work. The true Herbie canon resides in a short stack (23 issues) of the Herbie comic book, and a few issues of Forbidden Worlds. The nineties revivalists had talent, but no one had what ACG editor, Richard E. Hughes (writing as Shane O'Shea), and artist Ogden Whitney had. They'd done dozens of stories, many as screwy plotwise as any issue of Herbie. I showed one of them in February when I posted the "Delinquent in Space" two-parter from Adventures Into the Unknown in Pappy's #1112. But nothing else they did had quite the same hallucinogenic feel as a Herbie story. Maybe it was Herbie's unusual speech patterns, or his ability to levitate, talk to animals, or maybe though he was a little round kid with heavy-lidded eyes and thick glasses he was still a sex object to females. Or maybe it was those lollipops.

In this story, Herbie's second appearance from Forbidden Worlds #94 in 1961, he changes schools and meets new kids who are expecting someone quite different than Herbie Popnecker. As Herbie fans know, the word "different" when used to describe him seems inadequate.