The Magic Whistle #2
Am I wasting my time with all this mini comics nostalgia? Possibly, yes. On the other hand, it’s entirely possible that there’s a younger generation of comics readers who may have heard some of these names but haven’t seen much of the actual work outside of what’s available in whatever collections happen to still be in print, in which case this is a vital service to the world. The world that reads this website, that is. This is another packed collection of funny, starting with another page of jokes from the 50’s (my best guess on the time period, anyway. Sample joke: When is a steamboat like a witness in a trial? When it is bound to a pier), and then moving on to the comics. Again, reviewing one panel gag strips is one of the dumber things a person could do, but that sadly prevents me from going into detail about some of the funnier stuff in the book. Other stories include Li’l Brainy and his calculations, three men at a urinal, the man and the bear (sampled in the last issue) with a center spread of silent hilarity, how a “got any pictures of your wife naked?” joke went horribly wrong, and the story of Sam and the Secret Service. Sam, see, sent a nasty letter to the first president Bush (under his friend Scott Russo’s name, who did a comic called Jizz for years that I should probably put up here at some point too, lack of being in print be damned), but had the whole thing traced back to him only after his friend had gotten in big trouble. This story details Sam’s side of the story (which is mostly “boy was I stupid”) and how he avoided Scott and his friends for years at cons because he thought there was serious bad blood. Other bits of this book include more “always funny” jokes and a review of a number of zines he’s heard of (or was just making up, this far out it’s impossible to know), including one called Time that’s been running since 1923 and seems to have a bright future. Basically these old reviews serve two purposes. 1. When this rental project gets off the ground at least a few of these creators are going to give me permission to use my copies of their older books in this idea, which means these reviews will serve a useful function now or 2. If you are lucky enough to go to a comics shop with a box of old minis and are digging through, not sure what to buy, maybe having these names brought to your attention will help. Either way, if you see something with Sam Henderson on it, but it.Â
