Single Issue Review: Bob Hope #85

The Adventures of Bob Hope is in many ways the oddest comic in DC's lineup during the Silver Age. In the middle of this basically sexless universe, you have the most hormone-drenched guy who ever lived trying his darnedest to get next to a lot of lovely young women.

Now of course some will point out that at the time this comic was published (February-March 1964), Hope was 60 years old, and those gals he's bartering for don't seem north of 25. But this ignores the character that Hope had built up during the 1940s in the "Road" pictures, which was a funny, entertaining ne'er-do-well charmer.

The cover itself is tentatively credited to Mort Drucker at GCD; sure looks like his work to me. The concept is mildly disturbing; is Hope really buying his weight in young women as it appears? But we know it's harmless and the gag is that he's going to try to eat a bunch of bananas to get a third gal. Aside from that problem, it's a terrific cover.

The story starts, as many Bob Hope stories do, with Bob trying to dodge his landlady, Mrs Peabody, who's knocking at the door. However, he learns that she's not trying to collect the rent but to drag him along on a tour of Egypt that she won for a prize recipe. One of the things I particularly like about the Hope books is that they throw in a gag almost every panel; it's simple but effective:



Pop cultural aside: When Bob notes that Cleopatra is coming to his local theater; he is referring to the 1963 Liz Taylor epic.

So Bob and his landlady land in Egypt, where they travel by camel (this is a kid's comic, remember) to some tents in the desert (ditto). Of course, there is the love interest (definitely Drucker here):



But the male guest stars seem a trifle edgy:



It turns out that Sha's uncle is trying to use Mrs Peabody's cooking to unite the tribes to start a war for oil, but she's not interested in a polygamous household:



Drucker used that type of gag frequently in his brilliant Mad Magazine movie parodies around the same time.

Mrs Peabody does initially agree to prepare dinner for the heads of all the tribes, until Bob explains the situation to her. When they decline, the other heads are amused:



But Sha's uncle decides to go ahead with the invasion anyway, until Hope gets the idea of using Mrs Peabody's recipe as a weapon. It explodes and scares away the invaders.

Comments: Beautiful art by Drucker and an entertaining story, although the ending is a bit predictable.

Number 202


Supermouse gets hot under the collar!


"The Good Old Wintertime" is from Supermouse #2 (1948. Supermouse, created by Kin Platt in 1942, first appeared in Coo Coo Comics.

I've seen quite a few Supermouse stories, and it was my opinion this was drawn by Gene Fawcette. However, after initially posting this entry I got a note from cartoonist Jim Engel with the following information:

For some reason, I can't post this under "comments"...if you CAN, please DO... The 2 Supermouse stories you've posted are not by Gene Fawcette---they're actually drawn by Milton Stein. Fawcette DID draw SM stories and covers, but later in the series. Fawcette's SM has weird "chopped" or "squared off" feet, as an identifying tip...and he did a lot of SM cover where SM is drawn pretty huge, catching Terrible Tom in nets, etc... Many people DO seem to regard Stein as "THE" SM artist, but the strip was drawn by a veritable WHO'S WHO of funny animal greats, including Al Hubbard, Jack Bradbury, Dan Gordon, and Don Arr... best, Jim Engel

Thanks for your input, Jim! You're quite the great cartoonist, yourself.

Number 194

Al Hartley Throws The Bull

I haven't ever read much about cartoonist Al Hartley, except when he started drawing Christian comic books for the Fleming Revel Company in the 1970s. I read an article in a Guideposts magazine about the series.

All-in-all he drew about 60 Spire Christian Comics; some even starred the Archie characters, used with permission, of course.His main body (yuk-yuk) of work was in drawing pretty girls and his résumé is full of romance comics, teen comics, etc., mostly for Stan Lee at Atlas and Marvel. He later drew Archie comics.

This particular strip, "The Bull Thrower," is from Atlas Comics' Crazy #3, 1954. Crazy was yet another Mad imitator. Just about every panel shows how Hartley could draw females…and how. The torero in this story makes me bullish, that's for sure.

Hartley, according to what I've read about him, was very fervent about his faith, and it came through in his Christian comics, but he hadn't forgotten his bread-and-butter, pretty girls.

I say, religious or not, once a boob man, always a boob man.

Hartley died in 2003.