Liberty Bell March, Day 25: Aw geez, John Cleese!

Can you make a comic story out of photographs? Sure, we all do! Italian photographic comics ("fumetti") have been around for over a hundred years, and the genre has been copied across the world. It's never been as successful in the English language, but you can point to 2000 AD's "Starlord" photos comics or some of TV Century 21's "Thunderbird," adventures, or even in the mainstream with 1984's Marvel Fumetti Book or Stan Lee's constant, constant attempts to make still pictures with funny word balloons happen. And it was an ongoing feature in Harvey Kurtzman's satirical magazine Help! Here's the cover of #24, which we're gonna be looking at (a little of it) today:


cover of Help! #24 (Warren, May 1965), model is John Massey, photograph by Terry Gilliam
Help! features work by Terry Gilliam in his not-yet-a-Python days, most notably the fumetti "Christopher's Punctured Romance," which starred John Cleese, also not-yet-a-Python, although he'd been featured in musical stage revues and as a star of the BBC Radio sketch show I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again (which also featured future Goodies and I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue panelist Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, and Bill Oddie).


from "Christopher's Punctured Romance" in Help! #24, script by Terry Gilliam and Dave Crossley, photography by Martin Iger, Christopher played by John Cleese, Wilma played by Cindy Young
Christopher is outraged and yet intrigued with his daughter's "Barbee" doll (an odd Americanism, since the leading fashion doll of 1960s Britain was the competitor Sindy, "the doll you love to dress.")



It's those dresses that lead Christopher into his obsession with Barbee...not to mention her realistic...um..."things."


That's about all of "Christopher's Punctured Romance" that I can safely reproduce here, not because it gets pornographic (only mildly saucy), but because hey, I'm only seven. Hey! John Cleese! Leave that doll alone!

Now knowing that, how do you feel about John Cleese now? Uh, pretty much the same as I'm thought o him for the past few years.