Bicentennial Believe it or Not!

I always loved the Ripley's Believe it or Not comic strip growing up, an admiration that grew even stronger when the TV show hosted by Jack Palance premiered in 1982. That show set the stage for a lot of my personal interests through the years, so I still look back at it fondly (although I'm sure I would cringe if I tried to re-watch any of those episodes today).

How does all of this tie into the Bicentennial? Well, the Ripley's comic strip contained all sorts of Revolutionary War-type facts throughout 1976. The strip (drawn at the time by Paul and Walter Frehm) didn't take a very sensational approach to any of this material, but neither did it get as reverential as many other strips of the day.

Here are a couple of sample entries. I'll dig up more of these in the future, but for now these represent the tone pretty well:

January 1, 1976

July 4, 1976

July 5, 1976

Side note: I remember taking my very first cartooning class in 1985 or so from an artist named Frank Mack, whom, I recall, said he once worked on the Ripley's strip, either as the main artist or an assistant. There's precious little about Mr. Mack online or in any of the newspaper archives to which I have access. If anyone has any information to share about him, I would be eager to hear it.

How Dennis the Menace celebrated the Bicentennial

Few comic strips in 1976 took the Bicentennial as seriously (or as humorously) as "Dennis the Menace."

Hank Ketcham and his talented crew of cartoonists started their Bicentennial celebrations a week early, on June 27, 1976, with this strip where Dennis and Joey play Revolution:

That followed with several days in which the cast traveled back in time to 1776 and witnessed a few key events during the Revolutionary War. (Excuse the bad scans. Microfiche isn't always the best resource for recapturing old artwork. It took me looking through several different papers just to locate these.)

The whole cast then came together again on Sunday, July 4, for a Yankee Doodle parade, which even mean ol' Mister Wilson couldn't criticize:

That's pretty much all of the Bicentennial in the "Dennis the Menace" comic strip, but there's more Dennis to come. During the 1970s Dennis was also the star of several different comic books, and Bicentennial themes abounded in those issues. Expect a look at them in the weeks ahead.

How the Pink Panther celebrated the Bicentennial

A pink icon celebrated the red, white and blue in 1976.

Yes, you'd never know it from this garishly colored and off-model cover image, but issue 35 of the Pink Panther comic book series (cover-dated June 1976) featured a Bicentennial-themed story called "Pink Spirit of '76." (Okay, you could tell that if you read the small text, but who ever does that?)

Our little six-page tale starts with our titular panther strolling beneath the cherry trees in Washington, DC, while remarking on how it brings him into the spirit of the Bicentennial season:
 

See that little "poof" on the side of the panel? Well, that's one of Pink's ancestors (another pink panther, naturally) popping into the future to share how (of course) he was present at just about every important event during the Revolutionary War.

Events such as Paul Revere's famous midnight ride...

 ...the crossing of the Delaware...

 ...and, obviously, the sewing of our brand-new flag (which he felt needed a better symbol):

Older pink isn't welcome at any of these events -- he's more than a bit obnoxious -- and at the end of the story George Washington leaves him freezing on top of a mountain, where the technicolor feline ends up becoming the foundation for another national symbol to come:

It's all pretty amusing stuff, with some great cartooning. The story is uncredited, both in the issue (as was typical of the time) and the Great Comics Database. Previous issues of this series listed in the GCD are all drawn by Warren Tufts, so it seems likely that he drew this one, too.

What's totally odd here -- at least to me -- is seeing the Pink Panther talk. He never did that in the cartoons, right? I guess they couldn't have done an entire comic book series in pantomime, but still, it's pretty jarring to a guy like me who is used to the old animated cartoons.

The rest of this issue moves away from the Bicentennial. It includes a story of the Inspector tracking down a purse thief, another Pink Panther story about piracy, and a final story that ends with the panther getting thrown off a plane after saying "Hi, Jack" to a passing celebrity. You'd never get away a joke like that these days, that's for sure.

This particular entry into the comics of 1976 doesn't come across as all that noteworthy -- too many other comics took the "let's have our characters participate in the Revolution" route -- but it's still a fun entry into the genre.

How Horror Comics (Barely) Celebrated the Bicentennial

I love horror comics.

Well, let me rephrase that. I love horror comics when they're done right.

Sadly, Ghosts number 51 does not fit into that category.

Published in late 1976 (officially dated January-February 1977), this issue of DC Comics' long-running horror anthology has a great cover that promises some excellent Bicentennial comics action. The cover by Ernie Chua advertises a story about the "Haunting Spirits of '76" -- so this is bound to be a great Revolutionary War-themed ghost story, right?

Not so fast. That title actually belongs to a little three-page story in the middle of this comic. Heck, calling this a "story" is being overly generous. It's actually just a laundry list of supposedly haunted sites in Brooklyn dating back to the era of the late Eighteenth Century.

Oh, sure, it starts well, mentioning (and showing) the ghost of General William Howe, who led the British forces during the War of Independence and who supposedly still haunts a house on 33rd Street. Here he is, in all his spooky glory:

A story starring a ghostly General Howe would have been great, right? Nah, that's dropped almost immediately. The second half of this page switches quickly to a discussion of someone else seeing a couple of sea serpents.

Yes, sea serpents. In Brooklyn. Again, that would have made a hell of a story. Again, it's recounted in two simple panels and then forgotten.

After the ghost and sea serpents, page two of this little travelogue switches to a tale of a mean sea captain, followed by a couple of details about a British Navy vessel that supposedly locked some rebels up in its hold. Finally, the comic resolves with a four-panel recounting of a guy named William Axtell, a Tory sympathizer who (the comic claims) locked up a bunch of patriotic revolutionary women to starve in the basement of his house. (There really is a supposed Axtell haunting, but what we know about the true story is actually much creepier than this little blurb would lead you to believe.)

Ghosts doesn't credit the creators of this weak little three-pager. The Grand Comics Database identifies the art as being by John Calnan and Tex Blaisdell, but the writer remains a mystery. Perhaps he's a ghost as well.

The rest of this particular issue is a little bit better. It opens with a tale of Pancho Villa (whose ghost seeks his disembodied head) and closes with a third story about a dead scientists, a typewriter and an atomic bomb. Not bad, but hardly classics.

Horror comics of the 1970s were pretty toothless beasts, de-fanged by the Comics Code Authority, which wouldn't let them do anything remotely interesting. Ghosts issue 51 is a pretty sad example of how that history of self-censorship haunted the comic-book field for decades.