Number 444


Rocky and Simpy pull big boners


According to the Grand Comics Database this is the second of the Rocky X of the Rocketeers stories featured in Lev Gleason's Boy Comics. This particular episode is from Boy #81. In this story the characters do, as Simpy admits on page 8, ". . .pull boners--big ones." Training did not seem to be a big part of Rocketeer school...more like flying by the seat of your pants. It's fun reading about space travel from the imaginations of a comic book writer and artist, as opposed to what it became in real life just a few years after this story was published in 1953. We all know with the real-life astronauts training was paramount. No letting a couple of guys take off in an untested rocket ship and hope for the best.

I have the second part of this continuing story, and I'll probably show it next week. Artist Norman Maurer, who married Stooge Moe Howard's daughter and later became the Three Stooges' producer, himself produces a story that with the ineptness of the characters might have fit right into a Stooges' short. A little eye-poking or hair-pulling might have added considerably to the fun.