Number 2447: Babe #1: “This sounds more like a comic book than real life”

I have shown several stories of the voluptuous Babe by Boody Rogers. Babe was sometimes known as “Darling of the Hills,” yet on the cover of issue number one she is called “Amazon of the Ozarks.” Babe is a take-off on Al Capp’s L’il Abner, but while the Babe stories were often bizarre, they were without the savage satire Capp often used in his strip. The Babe comic books portray a poverty stricken area of America, like Capp’s Dogpatch. There are lots of people in shabby clothes, living in shacks. Would that stuff get by nowadays? I don’t know. The 1940s was a time of hillbilly humor in movies and literature.

Babe is also the best baseball pitcher in America. She can pitch, and the sequences where Rogers shows the various pitches and what happens as Babe batters the  batters is funny. Babe has an offer from a baseball scout to join the Blue Sox team, and the story takes off from there. Babe may come from the most humble of lifestyles, but she is beautiful, and also talented in sports.

According to Wikipedia, Boody Rogers retired from comic books in 1952, and went to Texas to open two art supply stores. Rogers had started his comics career by drawing for The Funnies from Dell, which began in 1929. Before creating the characters mostly known to us fans of old comic books, he had assisted Zack Mosley on the newspaper strip, Smilin' Jack. After his long history at a drawing board, maybe it was time for him to retire.

From Babe #1 (1948):

More zany Boody humor. Just click on the thumbnail.

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