Number 1495: Boody, Babe, Stanton and kinkiness

“The Mysterious Case of Mystery Mountain,” which was published in Babe, Darling of the Hills #8 (1949) has an aura of kinkiness. It has some startling panels, especially if you are unfamiliar with artist/creator Boody Rogers. Boody’s stuff often had a very oddball slant, so this isn’t all that out of line with his other work. It got its reputation from being published by Art Spiegelman in his Raw magazine years ago, and then again when it became known that Rogers’ assistant at the time was Eric Stanton, who had his own reputation for drawing kinky material. Google his name and you’ll see.

Stanton, unknown year. Stanton is caricatured in the story as Pinto Pete.

I scanned this story from my copy of the comic, which at one time was wet, so there was color bleeding throughout the book; I have done my best to clean up the scans.

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Number 1424: Boody Rogers’ Bigfoot sighting

A pair of tales from Sparky Watts #9 (1949) feature the oddball humor artist/writer Boody Rogers was known for. The scene of Sparky sharing a bed with the man he’s protecting, Buttermilk Sky, probably didn’t seem as odd in 1949 as it does now.*

The second story, a short and mostly pantomime strip features Sparky’s bigfoot pal, Slap Happy. I recently found this online, from a weird and vintage photography site

The unfortunate woman, Fanny Mills, photographed in the 1880s, was a victim of a hideously disfiguring disease, elephantiasis. I’m interested in her very large shoes. Since I’m always looking for comic artists’ inspirations, I wonder if Rogers had seen this picture, or something similar, and patterned Slap Happy after it? Boody’s explanation for Slap Happy’s feet was that he got the cosmic ray treatment from Doc Static, and it made his feet grow big. Or, it could be that Boody Rogers was just taking the slang term for old-time “bigfoot cartoonist” to an extreme.

*Sparky once shared a bed with Hitler in a two-part story! Click on the thumbnails to see.

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Number 1329: Sparky Watts, the cosmic ray kid

In this Sparky Watts story, Sparky shrinks his way into Hubba-Hubba Land. Hubba-hubba is a term you just don’t hear any more. For those who don’t know that archaic expression, it was a way for a guy to let a babe know she was hot; a wolf-whistle and a loud “Hubba-hubba!” when she walked by.* In the forties you could even wear the expression on your belt and wallet.

Sparky Watts was given his super powers as “the world’s strongest funny man,” by cosmic rays. You remember that’s the source of the Fantastic Four’s powers, also. The FF got their powers from going into space; Sparky got his cosmic rays administered by his friend and housemate, Doc Static. But Sparky must have his cosmic rays renewed or he begins to shrink into a microscopic world. Sparky’s creator, Boody Rogers, used the idea of Sparky becoming super-small and entering a world unseen by normal-sized humans several times. It’s the plot of this funny 26-page story from Sparky Watts #6 (1947). I showed this a few years ago, but these are new scans.

*Beware, boys. Such behavior is also known as sexual harassment.

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