A Real Rust-Up

As longtime readers of this blog know, I've been trying to document the various comics Topps included with Bazooka before Bazooka Joe became their ne plus ultra.  From roughly 1947 to 1949 Topps issued a seemingly long series of sepia five-cent comics featuring mostly funny animals and humorous characters from DC Comics. They mixed in some other, non-DC stuff during this period so things look pretty random sometimes.  The length and cast of characters for the DC series (or any pre-Joe comic for that matter) is indeterminate but seemingly extensive as they pop up more frequently (a relative term, these are hard to find) than most others of the period and new subjects often appear when this happens. 

Case in point, numbered and unnumbered DC series exist and all are from the foil-wrapper nickel rolls, which both pre-and-post date the DC's. The five cent foils ended with the second release of the Bazooka Joe's in 1954, which were duo-tone essentially, and followed on the heels of a sepia-toned Joe. Penny foils ended a little earlier, probably in late 1953 but I have not seen any sepia DC's in one-cent form (given the nature of the strips, this is not surprising) and Topps seems to have let a divergence occur between the one and five cents comics at some point during the DC run as some other issues could be found in penny and nickel pack versions. As for the five-centers, let's take a look at some of the DC's.

"Peg" no. 112. The series likely starts at #101 but that is very much unconfirmed and is also useless in determining if an even one hundred comics came before.

#115 finds "Lad and Dad" pushing a familiar Topps product in a way:

Dig that inked in July 1949 date!  "Jerry the Jitterbug" at #123 resembles, at least to me, a very milquetoast version of Harold Teen:

"Bonny" continues the fun and shows at least one subject appeared twice:

Note, however, the different style of the text at bottom as Topps used a tagline about saving Bazooka wrappers. Also, neither is numbered:

"The Dodo and the Frog" was a long running feature in some DC comic books and is my favorite of all the DC Bazooka's. It may be numbered in the lower right corner of the lower-right panel, can't quite tell:

"Chip" (two, even), "Gerry", "Rusty Rhino" and "Bronco Buster" s are all known subjects and BFF o' the Archive Jeff Shepherd; recently unearthed this beauty:

The lowest number I've seen is 107 and none have been found extending past the 120's; where and how long both the numbered and unnumbered versions come into play are open questions. I'm sure other characters exist beyond the ones above.  

These pre-Bazooka Joe sepia comics are very hard to suss out, especially the five-centers, until 1953 rolls around.

Foiled Rotten

BFF o'the Archive Jeff Shepherd recently listed some rare Bazooka five cent foil wrappers on eBay, many with comics still attached to their underside.  I've got a few of these myself (there's over a dozen different from the "foil" era), just added a couple of the below, and can attest how difficult these early Bazooka wrappers are.  They are very delicate and very old, not a great confluence of circumstances for survival. Shep seems to have rounded up the rarest ones for this offering though.

The foil wrappers, introduced in 1947 in nickel form were mostly similar to this one on the outside, with some slight variation over the years, although the earliest ones didn't have the Parents Magazine seal:

They only sold nickel packs of Bazooka until mid-1949 when the penny tabs came out but I'm not addressing those in this post.

The oldest of these Shep offerings also Willard Mullin artwork, namely the 1950-ish Know Your Sports, which is also known as Sports Oddities in some circles.  Behold the master:

Yes, that is a reference to the Harlem Rens in the lower right corner, who were founded before the more famous Globetrotters. It seems like the fact the team had been together 28 years when the comic was released would help date the issue but it's complicated. The Rens were founded in 1923 but had moved to Dayton, Ohio after the war, disbanding after the 1948-49 National Basketball League season when the NBL merged with another league to form the NBA (the NBL was integrated, the NBA would not be until their second season), so....I think Mullin jumped the gun and missed the team's dissolution.  So it's 1950-ish for this one.

If you think that's one tough, here's an even tougher one, with two known comics having survived in the series.  Topps obviously had an affinity for the bazooka!

The Bob Burns story can be found here and and the Topps Bazooka story has been covered here before. Click the links at right for a boatload of Bazooka posts if that one doesn't do it for you.

Pixie is from 1953 and hardly ever seen:

Lots to do there!

Last up is a late entry, namely an oddball from 1969 that harkens back to the originals of the 40's and 50's:

Love the discount sticker from Grant's!

Even the comic was a throw back, although Bazooka Joe had reigned supreme since his introduction in 1954 and the phasing out of the third party produced comics:

Based on that fortune, I'll bet someone just got their clock cleaned!  It's a little odd to see a sepia Joe in the late 60's but what the hey.