Today in Comics History, July 13: Happy birthday, Dave Garroway!

Dave Garroway, today's birthday boy (born 1913), would like you to talk to the hand, right here on a cover of Harvey Kurtzman's Help!


from Help! v.1 #5 (Warren, December 1960), photographer uncredited and unknown

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.

Today in Comics History, January 23, 1919: Happy birthday, Ernie Kovacs!

Born on this day in 1919: comedian, actor, writer and broadcasting pioneer Ernie Kovacs! Among his TV shows were The Ernie Kovacs Show, Three to Get Ready, host of The Tonight Show and commentator on the radio show Monitor. Broadcasts of some of his work under the title The Best of Ernie Kovacs ran on PBS in the late seventies, a perfect time for many (including me!) to rediscover his groundbreaking work. Using ad-libs, absurdity, camera tricks, and blackout sketches, Ernie and his work became a major influence for comedians and television comedy from Monty Python's Flying Circus and Saturday Night Live to Andy Kaufman and Mystery Science Theater 3000.