Pappy's Sunday Supplement #3: Last and first Herbie

This begins a week of stories from ACG comic books.

A couple of months ago I went through my ACG Herbie comics and found I was missing four of the 23 issues. Horrors. After lying dormant for at least a couple of years, my lifelong collector’s obsessive-compulsive behavior came back full force. I went to eBay and found the missing issues. Now I have a complete collection. After reading and admiring them they went into a box and I may never look at them again.*

Herbie, the comic book written and illustrated by ACG editor Richard E. Hughes using the name Shane O'Shea and drawn by longtime comic book journeyman Ogden Whitney, ended its run when ACG went out of business in 1967. As a fan I loved the absurdist humor. I have given several of my interpretations of Herbie, the character, over the years. Despite the hundreds — thousands? — of comic books editor Hughes oversaw and brought to market, I think Herbie was his magnum opus. It was actually not all that different than many other absurd comics that Hughes wrote, but for some reason Herbie struck the comic buyers’ fancy, and after a few tryout runs in Forbidden Worlds, his own comic book was launched in 1964.

This issue has the last official ACG Herbie story, and the first, reprinted from Forbidden Worlds #73 (1958). Based on this self-portrait Whitney did in 1961 for Midnight Mystery #1 I believe he drew himself (with Mrs. Whitney?) in  the top two panels of page 2 of “Herbie’s Quiet Saturday Afternoon.”

Also, in “Can You Bear It?” after eating one of Herbie’s lollipops, watch Herbie’s dad have a sixties psychedelic experience.

Scanned from my personal copy of Herbie #23 (1967):

*Just kidding, I hope.

Posted in: Pappy Comics