by Shane O'Shea (Writer) & Ogden Whitney (Illustrator) Publisher: Dark Horse Books (December 23, 2008)
Hardcover, 256 pages
Herbie
is perhaps the most surreal comic of all time. Technically listed as a humor
comic, it is eschews the typical 1960s humor of manic characters and stupid
puns, and delves into the psychological bizarreness of a young boy who secretly
is great at everything, but his family cannot see the truth. Many contemporary
(to the 1960s) and historical personages appear and call him by name, adding to
the oddness.
Herbie
Popnecker is a short rotund boy with thick glasses whose one passion in life is
the consumption of lollipops. He seemingly can do anything. He walks on air,
talks with animals, is well known throughout time and space (he calls in a
favor from J. Edgar Hoover in one episode), and when he “bops you with his
lollipop” you won’t be getting up. He talks in a terse, stilted style, leaving
out superfluous words. It is rumored that Alan Moore mimicked the character
Rorschach’s, from Watchman, speech
patterns after Herbie.
His
father, on the other hand, looks like the model of a 1960s junior executive. Well
dressed and handsome, but is really an arrogant braggart and complete idiot. He
routinely puts his son down for not conforming to the athletic norm (calling
him a “fat little nothing”), while blowing all of the family's money on
get-rich-quick schemes and bad stocks.
It
is almost impossible to describe the oddness of these stories, so I will simply
give you a synopsis of one. From Herbie # 6, the story “A Caveman Named
Herbie”. Our titular hero argues with his teachers over how smart cavemen were.
He is then offered the ultimatum to prove his theory that cavemen were
intelligent or apologize to her. At home, Herbie’s father has a new job selling
lumber and plans on selling a lot of it to a Hollywood studio. He takes Herbie
along as an educational journey. As they enter, Ava Gardner comes up and asks
for Herbie’s autograph. While Father is talking to the studio head, Gregory
Peck comes up and asks Herbie to stand in for him in a scene. His gorgeous
starlet, kisses Herbie on camera and passes out in ecstasy. Herbie’s father is
successful in the sale, and the studio head shows Herbie a lot where a new
caveman movie is being filmed. Herbie insults the lead, claiming the man
doesn’t look like a caveman and the star then refuses to act anymore.
The
sale now in jeopardy, Herbie decides to prove his point. He takes a time
lollipop, climbs into a grandfather clock, and travels back to the past. There
he meets a cavemen and his sister, who is Herbie’s female duplicate and falls
in love with him. Then a group of dinosaurs (wearing helmets to protect them
from the cavemen’s rocks) attack. Herbie grabs them by the tail and throws them
across the planet. The cavemen accept Herbie and his female counterpart,
Ticklepuss, smashes a giant club over his head and drags him off by his hair.
Herbie flies away and heads back to the grandfather clock, only to find
Ticklepuss’s brother waiting for him. He takes the caveman back to 1965 and
shows him off to the studio head. Delighted, the man doubles his order. Father
then brags what a great salesman he is. Herbie then brings the caveman to see
his teacher. After the caveman answers some historical questions accurately,
the teacher falls in love with him and is dragged off by her hair to his new
cave.
As
you can see, completely insane. But what adds to the surrealness of the story
and sets it apart from other “funny” comics at the time, is the art of Ogden
Whitney- the sole artist on the series. A veteran of the golden age of comics,
Whitney's style at this point was more commercial realistic than fantastic, so
everything is drawn as realistically as possible. Thus when an odd event
occurs, such as Herbie air walking away, it becomes all the weirder.
This
volume collects issues 6-14 of the series, originally published by American Comics
Group (ACG). ACG was a large publisher of low-rent and forgettable comics.
Their range included all stripes Western, Mystery, Horror, Adventure, Science
Fiction, War, Romance, and Humor. WHaat’s missing from that line up? That’s
right, no superheroes.
Our
costumed heroes had been out of fashion (with the exception of Superman,
Batman, & Wonder Woman) since the comics collapse of the 1940s. But an
upstart company, Marvel, had recently scored several hits with Fantastic Four and Spiderman, so management sent down the word. Make a few superheros.
The results were mixed. They created Magicman, a magic based superhero, with a
green turban- ala Zatarra, and Nemesis, a man who returned from the dead with
superpowers, to right wrongs- ala Deadman.
But
then they gave the superhero treatment to Herbie and in issue 8, after flunking
out of Superhero School, he dons some red flannel long johns, makes a mask out
of a burlap sack, sticks on plunger on his head, and becomes The Fat Fury.
Obviously Forbush Man ripped him off slightly.
For some reason Herbie is clumsier as The Fat Fury and reminds me of the
protagonist from The Greatest American Hero. He actually does a team up with
Nemesis and Magicman in the last issue of this volume. It is only notable in
that fact that two literally come out of their respective comics and then are
ushered back in. It is easily the weakest story in the bunch.
Actually
all of the Fat Fury stories are lesser-than when compared to the regular
stories. Probably because editor-in-chief and writer for the series, Shane
O’Shea (a pseudonym for Leo Rosenbaum) disliked superheroes and felt the genre
has been played out. Luckily the Fat Fury only appears for one story (there
were two per issue) every other issue.
For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst. 
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