GERR!

GERR!

Monday, October 10, 2011

Funny Books and Halloween

Like many comic fans, I miss the old "funny books." Comic books at one time included a diverse selection of genre and many selections of titles within those individual categories. A trip to a corner store's spinner racks could yield multiple war, romance, superhero, horror, mystery, westerns and science fiction comics… plus a few more.

For a large portion of the history of comic books, it was taken for granted that they were read only by children and the uneducated. Comics today are not thought to be read by many young children. The target audience for comic books is much older now and those "funny books," such as Casper, Little Lulu, Fox and Crow, Sugar and Spike, Flintstones, Popeye, and on and on, are not produced much for the kids of today. There are many great title that were produced through the 1940's, 50's and 60's that are worth looking at, either as old friends or as undiscovered treasures.

The celebrations of a favorite holiday in these kid's books was always looked forward to. For me it was always Halloween that caused me to give up a dime or later twelve cents for a look at a story featuring my favorite holiday.

I ran across the line art for this 1950 comic book cover on the Internet. I color it in the style of the time and added the look of an old well worn , yellowing comic that someone had been caring in their back pocket for a month or two… waiting for Halloween.

2 comments:

Chad Thorson said...

I like the old funny books too! There are still a few being made, Dark Horse is keeping some the older titles in print like Little Lulu and Casper. And Disney still collects a lot of the Uncle Scrooge, Mickey and other comics, I've been reading them to my kids.

Unfortunately superhero comics have saturated the market. But a good comic to check out is "Owly" it's a cute one that my kids enjoy.

Uncle Ernie said...

I was very pleased when Dark Horse did their reprint book of Harvey Comics' Hot Stuff. Warren Kremer and Howie Post were absolute masters.