This is Little Lulu by Marge

I've really grown to become a fan of Little Lulu in the past couple of years. I credit A Smithsonian Book of Comic-Book Comics for that. As a kid, I just couldn't appreciate it's brilliance. That's because cartoonist John Stanley knew how to write as kids think and talk. Little Lulu and her pals have brilliant ideas. They just lack years of experience and wisdom for those ideas to always work properly. But when one of those ideas succeeds, it's absolute genius!

This 1956 Dell First Edition book features work from Stanley as well as Little Lulu creator Marjorie 'Marge' Henderson Buell. You can tell which works are the works of whom. Buell's Little Lulu is taller, thinner and has pupils. Marge's strips are also generally one panel jokes and done in pantomimes or minimum dialogue. John Stanley's Little Lulu is shorter, more cartoonish and full of masterful dialogue. Plus her best friend bears the name Tubby instead of Joe.

This book and it's reprinted content was written during a time when cartoonists, especially comic book creators, didn't receive billing for their work. Buell managed to keep credit as Lulu's creator after she gave up illustrating the strip with the birth of her first child, by becoming the franchise's creative consultant. I know for sure that one story is the work of John Stanley thanks to the Smithsonian book. It's a favorite of mine, starring Tubby as his super sleuth alter ego, the Spider, suspecting that the reason Little Lulu's father shaved his mustache is because he's on the run from the police!

The rest of this book is material that I've never encountered before. There's a variety of seasonal stories involving Valentine's Day, Christmas and Halloween. The best story of this bunch involves Lulu hosting a ghost party where everyone dresses as ghosts. One kid mentions that he's not wearing anything under his sheet and that's a plot device that leads to hijinks that made me chuckle so much. I was laughing at such a frequency at this yarn that I peaked my wife's attention by wanting to know what was so darn funny.

Finding this book was an absolute fluke. I was looking through a pile of old Archie digests and this book just happened to be stuck in the middle of the pile. The selling price was a little bit higher than I would normally pay. But I happened to purchase it with trade credit. One thing is for sure, I want more Little Lulu and Tubby adventures. I think I might be searching for a treasury on Amazon in the very near future. Getting a complete run of these works might complete with my search for Carl Barks, Don Rosa and Will Eisner omnibuses.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 10 out of 10 stars.