Thee olde favourite, snatched up at the July 4 1975 Mesopotamia Ohio outdoor flea market and ox roast, a day best remembered by me for nursing the remnants of a leg cramp I had the pleasure of enduring the previous night. Never thought I'd be nostalgia for beat up old paperbacks let alone leg cramps, but this 'un's got the memories flowin' like syphilitic pus!
After a slew of old Marge originals from THE SATURDAY EVENING POST (btw didja know that she was the replacement for HENRY after the famed bald mute made his way to the funny pages?) we get down to the bare-wired reason for buying this, mainly those John Stanley-era comics which really did hit a resonating nerve with soon-to-be hippoid fans nationwide. And hey, even a jaded old fanabla such as I gotta admit that the stories are still as potent as they were when I first read 'em that hot 'n humid day, even to the point where I do get kinda angry when the girls get the best of Tubby, Iggy and the rest of the guys who still resonate pure pride in being a boy who hates loud mouthed females this far down the line!
Stories range from the usual funtime fantasies that Stanley made his mark with (if you went for his take on NANCY around the same time these will strike a similar pre-pubescent scrunch) including some real strokes of gee-nee-yes like the one where Pop takes too many vitamins and becomes a kid who gives his allegiance to Tubby's gang, not to mention the one where Lulu and Annie play dead after li'l brat Alvin blasts 'em with his toy machine gun in order to make him think that he really did kill the pair, then he goes back to finish off the job off when he notices Lulu's pinky twitchin'! There's also a "Spider" story where Tubby goes undercover to find out why Pop shaved his mustache off not to mention two Little Itch sagas which always tickled my fancy perhaps due to the underlying strain of cruelty the evil brat dished upon Lulu, sadistic girl hater I was and shall truly remain.
Yeah you could dish out the big ones for the hard covered collection, but frankly I'll stick with my tattered paperback copy which brings back oh so many fun memories of teenbo treasure hunts through garages and abandoned drive ins tri-countywide. It's a good way to re-connect with my suburban pusbag past, as if I've ever left it in the first place and if you know what's best for you you'd do the same thing too only with a li'l less self abuse.
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