4/10/10

Babe #3 - Slide, Babe, Slide (1948)

Although he was creating comics before World War II, the years immediately following WWII were very productive for Gordon "Boody" Rogers. It was as if he felt a need to make up for the missed time when he was away from the comics world.

Big Shot Comics, published by Columbia Comic Corp., came out monthly from May 1940 through August 1949. The first appearance of Sparky Watts is issue #14 in 1941, and Boody drew it until 1944 (#42) when he left to fight in WWII. After the war he resumed drawing and writing Sparky Watts from 1947 (#77) through the last issue of Big Shot Comics (#104). The Big Shot strips usually ran four or five pages.

In addition to Big Shot, Babe, a bi-monthly, was entirely written and drawn by Boody from issue #1 in 1948 through #11 in 1950. He also worked on the very occasional Sparky Watts comic, which started in 1942 and ended 10 issues later in 1949, #6-10 drawn between 1947 and 1949.

If you do the math it means Boody was turning out 30+ pages of comics per month in 1948!

In "Slide, Babe, Slide!", the concluding story in Babe #3, Mr. Teapot rushes Babe in her wedding gown to the World Series between the Brookdale Blue Sox and the New York Hanks. In Babe #1 he enlisted her as a pitcher for the Blue Sox. From the airport Babe tucks Mr. Teapot under her arm and runs through a city that doesn't really look like New York, but it's still entertaining. Arriving at the stadium it's the first of the ninth, two strikes on the batter and the bases are loaded. The Hanks' coach protests Babe's appearance, so she agrees to pitch with her arm tied down (is there a touch of bondage here?).

Babe pitches and strikes the whole team out. Then, when it's her turn to bat... well, just read it.
Here are the other stories from Babe #3, "Wedding Bells" and "Babe and the Dying King"
Here's my review of Boody: The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers.



Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

No comments:

Post a Comment