My Ten Favorite Comic Books (’50s & ’60s division) Ever

By Gene Sculatti

Dick Tracy
The late-'50s comics reprinted previous months' Sunday strips, which meant that redundancy was a built-in. But who'd carp when Chi-town's square-jawed dick was matching wits with the most grotesque villains in print--like 400-pound chow hound Oodles, whip-wielding Mrs. Pruneface or Mineo-graphed JD Joe Period? Arcane cliffhanger plots, Chester Gould's barely-there visual perspective and frequent torture (often censored by the Comics Code) push the series over the top.

Little Lulu
This cute (but defensive and easily riled) kid beat Peanuts in the minimalist-strip sweepstakes (Lulu made her debut in the '30s). Stories and character are kept clean as haiku, and there's nary a panel nor thought balloon that conveys anything but the most essential information. Hers is a cool little world: G-rated and genuinely funny, stocked deep with memorable sidekicks (Witch Hazel, bucktoothed Annie, and, best of all, Lulu's Kramdenesque nemesis Tubby).

Our Army at War featuring Sgt. Rock
Joe Kubert's war-weary non-com was as vulnerable as he was courageous, hourly haunted by his responsibility for the safety of "the combat-happy Joes of Easy Company." Which made him far more interesting than contemporaries like Gunner and Sarge, PT skipper Captain Storm or Sgt. Fury (of the Howlin' Commandos). But it's really all about the art: expansive flash panels sprayed with onomatopoetic flak ("Brrrrrp!" "Takatakatakataka!"), vivid color and grunts like Bulldozer and Ice Cream Soldier. Somebody cast Henry Rollins as Rock before he gets too old.

Plastic Man
Ric Ocasek's already too long in the tooth to play Plastic Man. But that needn't stop the longest overdo comic-to-film crossover, especially now that special effects can credibly simulate an elastic superhero capable of, within seconds, stretching to skyscraper height and shrinking to golf-ball compactness. Those red-and-yellow drapes, chairs, mailboxes and manhole covers? That's Plas, chemically doused in a lab-experiment-gone-wrong and turning his handicap into a crime-fighting asset. Wolverine who?

Tales from the Crypt
Along with fellow E.C. Comics titles Vault of Horror and Haunt of Fear, Tales will forever define '50s horror. As with Sgt. Rock, it's primarily an art thing, most notably Graham "Ghastly" Ingels' spittle-dripping ghouls and Jack Davis' leering Southern Goth hicks, all of it drenched in the blackest of humor.

Batman
DC's continuing republication of the series in its Archive Editions lets the secret out of the bag: In contrast to the self-consciously dark, edgy (and, frankly, brutal) Bat-guy of the big screen, Bruce Wayne's alter ego inhabited a universe that was, originally, much closer in spirit to the underrated TV series of '65-'66: hyperactive, silly, pun-stuffed and, yes, fun. Pow! to you too.

Blackhawk
In the early '50s this patriotic squad battled sallow Koreans and Chi-Comms (the team's politically incorrect cook-manservant was the pidgin-speaking Chop Chop). Later it morphed into a kind of Mission Impossible strike force, circling the globe to confront an outlandish criminal class that brandished weapons like the War Wheel, the Flying Buzz Saw and the Flying Tank Platoon. Eventually, the hood lineage ran low and the 'hawks were reduced to fighting crooks like lethal ring-tosser "The Villain with 1000 Hoops."

Mad
Too young to have experienced the comic-book edition of Mad in real time, like most kids my age I learned of its greatness from the magazine version's frequent reprints, whose panels boiled over with Harvey Kurtzman's wit and the signature illo styles of Jack Davis, Wally Wood and Bill Elder. Later I discovered the comic's deep field of clones, who played P.F. Sloan to Mad's Dylan: Wild, Nuts, Crazy, Eh!, Bughouse, Flip, Get Lost, et. al.

Classics illustrated
Don't knock 'em if you haven't tried 'em. Admittedly, sometimes their appeal never went beyond the strikingly painted covers to such dubious "classics of children's literature" as Toilers of the Sea and The Master of Ballantrae. Just as often, though, the adapted stories played well in panels (Gulliver's Travels, Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum). Further study: William B. Jones' 2001 book Classics Illustrated: A Cultural History, with Illustrations.

Weird Western featuring Jonah Hex
OK, I'm fudging here; the ornery anti-hero didn't slide into the saddle until 1972. Justice and vengeance were often kissing cousins in this spaghetti Western strip built around a former Confederate soldier wandering the Southwest with a nasty facial scar and a chip on his shoulder. This was a cynical, ambiguous, violence-heavy strip long before such qualities became lucrative and tiresome investment properties in popular culture.