My Favorite Booby Bear (Not Bare)

Before The Bear came to stay at Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact, there was Booby Bear hanging out with Perky Penguin. For extra Fun - the strip was drawn (and written?) by Jim Mooney. Mooney is one of those guys who seemed "fresh" enough to my friends and i back in the '60s & '70s that we never realized just how long he'd been around in comics. These come to us from 1946 and he'd already been drawing comics for a half dozen years by then.

Perky Penguin And Booby Bear was a short feature, only two pages per. It started running in the second year (the first full year) of TCoF&F, and had 9 episodes that year. (#6 is my fave) Here are the first year's worth of the strip -

As noted above, my fave for this year is watching Jim Mooney getting meta and having fun with 'reality' almost 75 years ago...

Over the next few years, Perky & Booby returned for another 9 or 10 strips (plus one more a decade later, but that was a reprint). Booby Bear may have been there before The Bear, but he wasn't there nearly as long. Perhaps because Mooney was doing a lot of work for DC and proto-Marvel at the time. He was drawing Captain America and Batman & Robin, among others - so he did get pretty busy. Or maybe they just found out what else Jim liked to draw, and figured he wasn't a good fit. (Probably not that last one)

Or maybe somebody realized that Perky Booby wasn't a great combo for a Catholic comic? (And Jim walked off laughing at how long he got away with it?)

The World may never know...

page art by Jim Mooney from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v2 #s 1-4, 6, 8, 16, 17, & 19 (1946, 1947)

Fish Tales

Once upon a time a Fish Tale was a story with little to no basis in factual reality told as truth. These days that's the definition of a Presidential press statement (or a Twit tweet, if you prefer). While fake president goes ballistic telling us that truth is anti-Republican and facts have anti-conservative bias, i'm kind of missing the old Fish Tales.

So let's dive back into a trio of another sort of Fish Tales, starting with one from the great Jim Mooney starring Finny Fish -

Trees and picket fences in suburban neighborhoods underwater. I wonder if Sponge Bob's creators were fans...

Meanwhile, the classic trio of Winken, Blinken & Nod go on a fishy adventure with Bob Naylor -
 

Lastly today, Fish Family Frolics with Fin, 'n' Haddi and Mammy from Sidney Pillet -
 

Ah...  If only we could keep silly, self-destructive fish from biting in real life.

They just love worms too much and can't resist taking the bait...

page art by Jim Mooney, Bob Naylor, and Sidney Pillet from Coo Coo Comics #s 1, 3, & 4 (1942, 1943)

What phase is the moon?

NOTE: This post has been edited to conform to the blog's new status. Part has been moved to our Back Room with a link provided at the bottom.

At one point while growing up, we lived in a 'blue' county, so called because it was subject to old Blue Laws. Blue Laws was a term used to refer to attempts to legislate morality, usually by the highly unmoral seeking power or feeling guilty. On Sundays where we lived, the alcohol cabinets in the stores were chained shut, and bars closed. It was illegal to sell alcohol anywhere in the county on Sunday, so you tried to stock up friday or saturday, and hope your friends did, too, so they wouldn't drink you dry before Monday came around.
This was Blue Sunday.

In general, this worked out for most folks with only minor grousing about the situation. But for the hard drinkers, the young partiers who get cut off halfway through the weekend, it was ... well, agonizing - according to them. This led to savagely overdrinking and hard partying on Monday - the kind that leaves you waking up naked and not being able to identify the naked person(s) next to you.
This was Blue Monday.

And so we have a name for our latest feature:

Here we'll take a look at what we'll call 'Blue' comics & art for the sake of the feature.
Sometimes we'll look at various 'adult' comics from around the globe, other times we'll just look at the pretty pictures. Like today.
Here's a news flash - many artists often draw naked things. From learning experiences to expressions of passion to desperate need, the reasons vary widely. Some hide it, some flaunt it. Some do it for pleasure, some for attention, some only for money or to please others. Sometimes, it's the most obvious artists whose work is nearly erotica anyway, other times it's the last artist you might expect. (See our next Blue Monday for a potential example)

For our inaugural episode, let's not focus on any one artist - let's go with a theme. Superman Artists. I'm sure there's lots more out there. It's a new feature on a new blog, so no lengthy research is involved. Just 3x3 pics from 10 Superman Artists, ranging from Joe Shuster to Bruce Timm - the artists who brought us the first Superman, and the modern animated Superman. These are two of the most famous blue art creators among the comics pros - Joe Shuster due to publication of a book not long back calling attention to his fetish art, and Bruce Timm due to the publication of his own collection of paintings and drawings. I'm only using one example from each artist here, and zero context information for this quick review.

This post contains adult material and the remaining contents have been moved to The Other Voice Of ODD! - please follow this link to continue reading.