Secret Histories of Comics - Finds in an Arlington Flea Market

 Arlington has a perfectly pleasant monthly free market put up on by Civitan for charity. It started up again for the year on April 1st, and I spent about $30 on this pile. I wonder how much of this will be familiar.

Below is Marge's Little Lulu character, of which the ace cartoonist historian Rodrigo Baeza told me ""TVE" logo at top right is from Spanish TV (Televisión Española). Probably tied to this Japanese-animated version from the late 1970s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Lulu_and_Her_Little_Friends "

I picked it up because historian Charles Hatfield and I were talking about his upcoming DC-based class on comics, I'm a fan of how comics mutate to follow the money. Little Lulu started as a panel cartoon by Marge Buell in the Saturday Evening Post, moving into being a spokeswoman for tissues, became a well-lauded set of comic books by John Stanley for Dell, appeared as a comic strip, and then sometimes popped up in things like the cartoon Rodrigo mentioned. Dark Horse did a set of reprints most recently.

Next are some cartoon postcards. The first one is an advertising on using a Heath Robinson / Rube Goldberg scheme to make pea soup. I've already bought 2 different versions of this and gave them to the Library of Congress.

Mosquitos have been a recurring theme in cartoons for years. I have no idea who Lotus Pub of NY is, but you can see a linear descendent of this mosquito, which I'm guessing is from about 1915, in the Navy's World War II cartoons about Private Snafu and malaria.

I have no idea what the below is except that I guess it refers to President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal programs to stop the depression?

Going to the Library of Congress are those two postcards and the Tio Rico comic below, titled Brujerias, featuring Magica de Spell and Uncle Scrooge, according to Rodrigo again, is "a Chilean edition from Editorial Pincel, probably from the early 1980s."

Big Little Books were popular off and on since the 1930s, and have been done within memory for Star Wars. I don't collect them anymore, BUT this beat-up Ellery Queen appealed to me, because I loved the character, and read all my parents and grandparents books, even when they dealt with murder victims having their heads cut off and being nailed up on crosses.

I imagine this is adapted from one of the comic books, which I've never seen.

Finally, this 1944 print of The Sea Wolf by Harry A. Gardner, Jr. confuses me. At first I thought this was Leonard Sansone's Wolf character, also from World War II, but it's obviously not. Anyone have any thoughts?

Little Golden books exhibit at Smithsonian includes Little Lulu

Bruce Guthrie has pointed out that there's a Little Golden Books exhibit at Smithsonian's Museum of American History and it includes Little Lulu book. Bruce's photographs can be seen here.

In case you're wondering about the tissues - licensing deal. Marge drew a LOT of magazine ads with Little Lulu needing Kleenex tissues.