This is "Look Back," a brand-new feature that I plan to do for at least all of 2019 and possibly beyond that (and possibly forget about in a week, who knows?). The concept is that every week (I'll probably be skipping the four fifth weeks in the year, but maybe not) of a month, I will spotlight a single issue of a comic book that came out in the past and talk about that issue in terms of a larger scale (like the series overall, etc.). Each week will be a look at a comic book from a different year that came out the same month X amount of years ago. The first week of the month looks at a book that came out this month ten years ago. The second week looks at a book that came out this month 25 years ago. The third week looks at a book that came out this month 50 years ago. The fourth week looks at a book that came out this month 75 years ago.

Today, we take a look at Marvel's humor comics in 1944, during Stan Lee's time in the United States Army when another creator took over Editor-in-Chief duties for a few years! The specific comic we're discussing is Gay Comics #1, launched in May 1944. "Gay," of course, is being used in the old-fashioned sense of "lighthearted and carefree."

As noted at the onset, when Stan Lee went into the Army in 1942 during World War II, Martin Goodman had to replace him with another Editor-in-Chief. While every comic book company at the time tried to copy each other and thus, during the 1940s, that mostly meant superhero comics, other comic book companies were having success with humor-centric comic books and Timely decided to get in on that action, as well. Their top humor creator at the time was Vince Fago....

So Goodman gave Fago both Lee's job and a mandate to make Marvel more humor-centric.

In a brilliant interview for TwoMorrow's Alter Ego #11 by Jim Amash before Fago passed away, Fago explained the situation at the time...

Jim Amash: Why do you think you were offered the job?

FAGO: Martin and Stan knew they needed to put a new accent on the books. Goodman was interested in me because of my humor background; they wanted more humor comics for the soldiers. They also wanted to tone down the hero comics and thought I had the background to do it. They knew that, if I could put that into the work of the people who worked for me, it would be good for the company. And Martin would be my watchdog. Anything I put into the books and he didn't like, he'd let me know.

At one point, right before Stan left, he told me that now would be the best time to ask Goodman for a raise. I asked him for a $100 a week raise, and he said he wouldn't give it to me on general principles: "I'll give you $75." And I made believe I fainted on the floor. So I was making $250 a week now.

Martin Goodman used to lie back in a big chaise lounge, and he'd look at the sales charts every day. He was counting his money. He had been a hustler who'd had a rough life and he was trying to live it up. Goodman did things the hard way, but he succeeded.

We put a subscription notice in Miss America Comics; $1 for 12 issues, and in maybe a couple weeks' time, we got 20,000 dollar bills. I took some of the artwork out of the bins and put the $20,000 in the bins! Money flowed, and anybody who worked for me was making a lot of money.

JA: Was the comic book division as important to Goodman as his magazine department?

FAGO: Even more so. The print runs were 250,000 to 500,000 copies. Sometimes we'd put out five books a week or more. You'd see the numbers come back and could tell that Goodman was a millionaire. The comics were what gave him that chaise lounge.

In fact, we sold 90% of our print runs, because many of the comics were going to soldiers. For a time, we were called Magazine Management. But as far as I was concerned, the company was named Timely. The guys who published were monsters. They knew all about how to get the paper and the plates and distribution, but they cared nothing about the people who worked for them. Goodman had a good paper allocation and diverted much of it from his pulps to the comics. That's how we were able to out-produce much of the competition.

JA: How long were you editor before Stan left?

FAGO: Oh, he went right out. He was stationed in New Jersey. He was stateside the whole time. Stan told me that he had to pick up cigarette butts on the ball field. He'd peel off the white paper and put it in something. And he'd let the excess tobacco scatter to the wind. That's the way he described it.

JA: Were you in charge of all the comics? Hero and humor?

FAGO: Yes.

JA: Did you deal with Goodman every day?

FAGO: Yes. He had to approve every cover. Or I'd show him a new artist's work. Goodman would just shake his head, because he didn't know what the hell it was all about. We had a good working relationship. He'd go in and sleep on that chaise lounge. It was in a corner near the windows. I'd come in and look at him and make believe I'd turn away. He'd open his eyes and tell me to come in. Goodman never once said no to anything I wanted. He was scared of me in some way, because if I decided to quit (and I did look for other jobs), then he'd be stuck.

Humor comics of the 1940s are one of the biggest areas of mystery in comic book history because the early days of comic book scholarship was almost exclusively centered on superhero comic books and because of that, where there are any number of comic book historians who could safely look at a 1944 superhero comic book and say "Oh, artist X drew that story," the same could not be said for the humor titles, which often had their own distinct group of artists working on them. No records exist for pretty much ALL of Timely's comics of the era, but there has been enough scholarship for the superhero stuff to get a good sense of who did what. With the humor stuff? It is an almost complete crapshoot, outside of the few super-prominent creators from the era, one of which we will get to in a moment.

The launch of Gay Comics was fascinating in the sense that it was really just a continuation of another Timely comic book series, Joker Comics...

Generally speaking at the time, comic book companies went out of their way to avoid starting new titles. This is because they had to pay a separate mailing registration fee with the postal service for every new periodical that they published. So comic book companies would find ways to keep the numbering going on titles rather than starting new ones. The fact that Martin Goodman felt it was necessary to essentially split Joker Comics into two separate titles must have reflected a very high level of sales for Marvel's humor titles at the time.

The lead feature in Gay Comics is the first attempt by Timely to do a female comedic lead, ahead of Millie the Model. Dubbed Tessie the Typist, the feature carried over from Joker Comics (like all of the other features in the comics). In this issue, Tessie decides to move to Washington D.C. to try to get one of the many jobs that have opened up for women during World War II (although, of course, Tessie is doing it mostly to meet cute officers)...

What's really weird about the comic is that after Tessie moronically screws things up all story long, it ends with a general, "Oh, but yea, women, do be sure to join the WACs!"

Look how out of place this ending is within the comic book!

As noted, the rest of the comic had the regular features from Joker Comics, done by comic book creators mostly lost to history.

There were the two hapless cops in the Squat Squad...

The Native American riff, Half Chief Poke-In-Nose...

The...let's say "parody" of Li'l Abner, because it is pretty clear that it is really just a cheap rip-off, Eustace Hayseed and Choo Choo...

The Navy mishaps of Star and Tar (by the way, the way that Tar whispers into Star's ear is bizarre, right?)...

the comic stylings of Snoopy and Dr. Nutzy (I'm skipping this one as it is SUPER racist. It makes Poke-in-Nose look non-racist in comparison) and Mopey the Merchant Marine...

All relatively decent comedic features (okay, some of them are pretty awful), but then you would not be prepared for the pure perfection that is about to show up next! Basil Wolverton was so far better than his peers working on Timely's humor comics at the time that it is kind of insane. There is a reason why his comics are the only ones to give the artist a byline, ya know? However, at the same time, he's also the only artists where you don't even NEED to see a byline, as his art style is just THAT distinct!

Here is his most famous creation, Powerhouse Pepper, a bald superhero who doesn't wear a traditional costume. Introduced in Joker Comics #1, Wolverton then continued the feature in whatever Timely humor comic would have him, going from Joker Comics to Gay Comics to Tessie the Typist (yes, she got her own series) to Millie the Model (the better version of Tessie) to even his own short-lived comic book series.

While he did not always use alliteration, Wolverton picked up quickly and made it a highlight of his offbeat comic book work...

As you can see, the little sight gags by Wolverton (like all of the signs) were big influences on the other comedic comic book creators of this era, like Al Feldstein and Harvey Kurtzman. They made sure to bring Wolverton to EC Comics during the 1950s, where he worked on Mad and some other brilliant comics of the era.

In this particular comics, we see what happens to the guys who try to swindle Powerhouse Pepper....

There's an interesting piece of comic book history in the comic, as well, with the results of a fan contest...

This is interesting because I'm sure you have noticed how many of the fans of the era were women. Comic books during the Golden Age, even when geared towards the soldiers (because the military spent so much money on comic books for the soldiers to read), were very much popular among men and women. It would be a number of years before women were made to feel as though they were no longer the audience for most of the comic books being released.

When comic book sales dwindled after World War II, Fago left the comic book industry. He briefly did some children's book work before taking on the Peter Rabbit nationally syndicated comic strip in 1948 when its original artist, Harrison Cady, retired. Cady recruited Fago himself personally.

If you have any suggestions for June (or any other later months) 2009, 1994, 1969 and 1944 comic books for me to spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Here is the guide, though, for the cover dates of books so that you can make suggestions for books that actually came out in the correct month. Generally speaking, the traditional amount of time between the cover date and the release date of a comic book throughout most of comic history has been two months (it was three months at times, but not during the times we're discussing here). So the comic books will have a cover date that is two months ahead of the actual release date (so August for a book that came out in June). Obviously, it is easier to tell when a book from 10 years ago was released, since there was internet coverage of books back then.