Friday, May 22, 2020
Mike Monster Private Eye / Gunspook
Like the zany guy that he is, Brian Barnes requested some "comedy stuff", so here we go with a couple of kooky creature featured chucklers, one by Dick Briefer and the other by Don Orehek. From the daffy December 1958 issue of Zany #2, and the madcap March 1959 issue of Zany #3.
Why thank you kindly sir!
ReplyDeleteLots of fun, dense, heavy panels full of all sorts of word play or just sight gags.
The gags are better on Mike Monster but the art is a wonder to behold on Gunspook. Mike Monster has that fun dream logic where the story is just a collection of loosely connected running gags, basically Mike's many admirers. I love the female vampire, it's a great image.
OK, Gunspook. Orehek is fabulous here. It looks very much like 60s underground art. The heavy inking, the rubbery figures, Homer Simpson in the crowd on page 2, panel 3. The constant gag with the Lester's various injuries.
Mat Monster is a fun character, with a weirdly misshapen body (mostly because of the gun belt making his legs look super short).
Favorite gag in Gunspook is Lester's injuries, and in Monster just shooting everybody at the end!
The vampire gal from Mike Monster was one of the early goth girls, but then again, weren't all female vampires pre Twilight?
ReplyDeleteThe femme fatale vampire's face looked a bit like a wolf. I guess if a guy back then could be a wolf when it came to the opposite sex, why couldn't a gal be the same? Turnabout is fair play.
Thanks for the bit of humor Karswell and Brian, we need a little levity this year.
Mike should have seriously considered changing his name to Mike Moanster.
ReplyDeleteBoth tales are hilarious but the adverts are the icing on the cake. I would have wanted to buy some of those.
I thought the ads were really funny too, actually.
ReplyDeleteMan, I am always in the mood for Dick Briefer. I haven't seen so much of the man's work outside of the various Frankenstein runs, and this is a look I'm not altogether used to. Maybe it's all that DuoTone. But I certainly like it. I like the way the story's written, too. Very glib and speedy. The fourth panel of the last page made me laugh right out loud.
I'm totally smitten with the idea of a GUNSMOKE / MUNSTERS mash-up now. The story here was certainly fun, even if it maybe hewed a little closer to the norm--for the time, for this kind of satire--than the Briefer story did. I've never been much of a fan of distracting chicken fat, which always feels like some kind of a crutch in a genre that frequently fails to connect the dots, plotwise (even in MAD itself). But today's story did have a cute plot, and I also have to say that I thought the Dagwood sandwich gag was pretty damn funny. So.
I also really like the Everett covers over the whole series. Which leads me to wonder why I haven't seen more of this title. I'm scratching my head. Have I never read one of these before? Is there a collection somewhere? Surely with only four issues they can slap together a hardback omnibus for people like me who missed the boat till now.