Drawn and Quarterly continues to do God’s Work be announcing even more John Stanley reprints:
We’ll be starting off with a three volume set of Stanley’s Melvin Monster. During the “monster” craze of the Sixties, Dell Comics launched this short-lived but hilarious and weird series about a good little monster boy and his disappointed family. While primarily know as a writer, Stanley actually wrote and drew all nine issues of this series. This series will be designed by longtime Stanley champion Seth.
Next up, a three-volume set of the Stanley “Teen” comics–Thirteen going on Eighteen, Around the Block with Dunc and Loo, and Kookie. These frantic comics about teenagers and beatniks remain compelling 40 years later largely because of the skill that Stanley brought to his pacing, joke-writing, and character development. Thirteen is again almost all Stanley written and drawn and is one of the great “lost” treasures of silver age comics. Dunc and Loo and Kookie feature other artists (notably Bill Williams) finishing Stanley’s layouts but still maintaining that manic quality that was a Stanley trademark. Again, Seth will lend his design talents to this set.
This is fantastic news. With Dark Horse’s Little Lulu project rounding up nearly 20 volumes of Stanley’s best known work, this should supplement it nicely and show future generations just what a genius Stanley was.
Good for Drawn and Quarterly, tomes like these are a treasure for all readers.
Too much John Stanley is never enough.
Please let the folks at D&Q — and Seth, of course — that there’s at least one more nugget of John Stanley goodness that’s never been officially noted. Dell’s NELLIE THE NURSE, a character created by cartoonist Larry Katzman, was at least written and laid-out by John Stanley, although I’ve never seen mention of it anywhere outside of my Oddball Comics column:
http://www.oddballcomics.com/article.php?story=archive2003-08-26&query=Nellie%2BThe%2BNurse
When I read this funnybook, I strongly suspected it was Stanley’s work, and confirmed this with Larry, who remembered John Stanley’s name because he was so impressed with the work he did on NELLIE.
Now, if someone would only reprint the Stanley-written GHOST STORIES No. 1 (featuring the mind-melting “Monster Of Dread End” and TALES FROM THE TOMB No. 1, both from Dell and some of the scariest funnybook stories ever published. In fact, you can read the entire “Monster Of Dread End” right here:
http://www.oddballcomics.com/article.php?story=archive2002-10-31&query=Ghost%2BStories
Aloha,
Scott! (A major John Stanley fan!)
I calculate tons of number crunching for these types of games because I feel that history will usually give us an idea of what will happen in the future. I’m sure you know that more often than not its really hard to figure out the winning team in the NFL. This is the main reason why I recommend using statistics for football.