This is the second part of a look at the complete rare 1977 QUINCY comic book. The first part is here.
OK, the blog title is "1977: QUINCY Comic Book Part Two," but "What Have They Done to HENRY?!?!?!!" was a close second. And a third would be "Who in the World is 'Little Guy and Professor Noodle?" But I digress.
This QUINCY book has HENRY as a backup feature. The HENRY comic strip by Carl Anderson was, like Otto Soglow's THE LITTLE KING, a pantomime strip. HENRY, a hairless boy with a receding mouth, did not speak. This all changed when the comic strip HENRY became the comic book HENRY. In Dell Comics' CARL ANDERSON'S HENRY, the title character spoke like anyone else. So much for the feature staying "on model." It sure sounds like a wrong-headed idea to take away a comic strip character's gimmick, but the transformation worked. The Dell Comic was around from 1946 to 1961. Every issue drawn by Carl Anderson's successor, John Liney. This King Comic continues the tradition of HENRY speaking.
Above is one of the educational pages, with the pretty blonde floating head of "Ms. Anne" (Dr. Anne Mueser) asking you to work out some subject/verb agreements using QUINCY as her muse.
Another educational page, this time with Richard Guttenberg "Mr. G." And now we have a 6 page feature: "Little Guy in 'The Big Swap' with Professor Noodle." It's signed by John Liney. This story features much making fun of being small, being fat and features a kid who talks to strangers about trading comics. But it's all in fun, and the QUINCY comic itself makes a cameo which is very exciting.
Today's lesson: five 'Klunks' equal one 'Quincy.'
Above: the answers to all those educational questions posed by the floating heads.
An inspirational page filler telling you that if you want to get ahead in life the follow directions.
And thus completes the complete scan of QUINCY "R-05," copyright King Features 1977.
I remember seeing a Quincy comic book in school, but I seem to peg the date as somewhat earlier than 1977. If memory serves, it was around 1974/5, and I saw it in either 3rd or 4th grade. If the book you have is "R06", then this may have been earlier in the series. That "KING" logo looks really familiar, too...
ReplyDeleteI'm not obsessing over this. Really, I'm not.
ReplyDeleteHowever... While on Amazon, I stumbled across this listing for a Beetle Bailey comic book, which also featured Blondie and Popeye. It's obviously from the same series... The KING logo on the cover is identical, and it carries a item number of "R-02", like the "R-05" of the Quincy book. The listing gives the date as 1977 as well...
Thanks for the info, John. My guess is that this series was produced for a couple of school years maybe.
ReplyDeleteThe King logo is familiar since there was, for a short time in the early 1960s, a King comic book line. I believe it was part of Western Publishing, and all of King's titles (POPEYE and FLASH GORDAN to name 2 off the top of my head) were folded into the Dell line (also part of Western).