Bazooka Joe and His Gang
BAZOOKA JOE AND HIS GANG have been synonymous with bubble gum ever since their debut sixty years ago, providing an irresistible combination of cheap laughs wrapped around pink, sugary sweetness. This first-ever compilation celebrates these iconic mini-comics recognized the world over, and includes extensive essays by Talley Morse, Nancy Morse, Kirk Taylor, Len Brown, R. Sikoryak, Bhob Stewart, and Jay Lynch, as well as a profile of Wesley Morse, the original illustrator of Bazooka Joe. Included are high-quality reproductions of more than 100 classic comics—including the complete first series, reprinted in its entirety for the first time—complete with jokes, fortunes, and tiny ads for mail-order merchandise, along with rare advertisements, ephemera, photographs, preliminary sketches, and more!
OTHER TOPPS BOOKS AVAILABLE FROM ABRAMS:
Garbage Pail Kids
Mars Attacks
Wacky Packages
Wacky Packages New New New
Yankee Greats
Copyright © 2013 The Topps Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Topps Chewing Gum shipping label, 1950s.
Bazooka Joe metal printing plate, 1973.
TO THE SHORIN FAMILY, WHOSE VISION, CREATIVITY, AND PERSEVERANCE ENTERTAINED GENERATIONS OF LOVING FANS AND PROVIDED A FUN PLACE TO WORK FOR THOUSANDS OF DEDICATED TOPPS EMPLOYEES
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Thanks to Ira Friedman and Adam Levine at Topps; Len Brown, Jay Lynch, Nancy Morse, Talley Morse, Bob Sikoryak, Bhob Stewart, and Kirk Taylor (for editorial contributions, as well as patience, generosity, and all-around availability to help this book come together); Art Spiegelman (guidance and moral support); and Jeff Shepherd (for generously donating his collection and his time to make this book a reality. Without you, Jeff, this would have been just a random collection of comics). At Abrams ComicArts: Charles Kochman (editorial); Clarissa Wong (editorial assistance); Chad W. Beckerman, Sara Corbett, and Robyn Ng (design); David Blatty (managing editorial); and Alison Gervais (production and flexibility beyond measure). Also: Les Davis, The Wrapper (www.thewrappermagazine.com); Roxanne Toser and Harris Toser, Non-Sport Update (www.nonsportupdate.com); David Hornish at the Topps Archives blog (www.toppsarchives.blogspot.com); Frederick and Karen Taylor; Ben Berkley, Alyssa Wise, and Grant Ossler at the Onion; Bob Conway; Peter Maresca; and Gene Weingarten at the Washington Post. Finally, a very special thank-you to Woody Gelman and Wesley Morse for the creation of this material.
Editor: Charles Kochman
Editorial Assistant: Clarissa Wong
Designers: Chad W. Beckerman, Sara Corbett, and Robyn Ng
Managing Editor: David Blatty
Production Manager: Alison Gervais
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Topps Company.
Bazooka Joe and His Gang / by The Topps Company, Inc. ; selected by and from the collection of Jeff Shepherd ; preface by Talley Morse ; introduction by Nancy Morse and Kirk Taylor ; essays by Len Brown, R. Sikoryak, and Bhob Stewart ; afterword by Jay Lynch.—1 [edition].
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-4197-0632-5 (hardback)
1. Morse, Wesley, 1897–1963—Themes, motives. 2. Bazooka Joe and his gang (Comic strip) 3. Shepherd, Jeff–Art collections. I. Title.
NC1764.5.U62M672 2013
741.5′973—dc23
Copyright © 2013 The Topps Company, Inc.
Bazooka Joe and His Gang and Topps are registered trademarks of The Topps Company, Inc. All rights reserved.
Preface copyright © 2013 Talley Morse
Introduction copyright © 2013 Nancy Morse and Kirk Taylor
“Woody Gelman and the Bazooka Joe Story” copyright © 2013 Len Brown
“Bubbling Over” copyright © 2013 Bhob Stewart.
A version of this essay first appeared in Blab! no. 3,
edited by Monte Beauchamp, published by Kitchen
Sink Press in 1988.
“Chew! Pop! Gum Wrappers Aren’t Just for Kids” copyright © 2013 R. Sikoryak
Afterword copyright © 2013 Jay Lynch
COVER DESIGN: Sara Corbett
CASE PHOTOGRAPHY: Geoff Spear
Presentation piece by Wesley Morse, c. 1954.
Although Bazooka Joe was created in 1953, the first printed material was released to the public in Spring 1954.
The advertisements reprinted in this publication are included for historical and editorial purposes only. All offers are no longer valid.
The views expressed in the editorial commentary are solely those of the individuals providing them and do not represent the opinions of The Topps Company or the publisher.
For further information about Bazooka Joe, please visit www.bazookajoe.com and www.topps.com, or contact Jeff Shepherd at www.bubblegumarchives.com or at jeffshep77@gmail.com.
Published in 2013 by Abrams ComicArts, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Abrams ComicArts is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc., registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Abrams ComicArts books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.
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The following Bazooka Joe/Topps artists have been identified: Tom Bunk (this page), Robert Crumb (this page), Howard Cruse (this page, this page, this page), Jay Lynch (this page, this page), Wesley Morse (this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page), John Pound (this page), Norm Saunders (this page), and Craig Yoe (this page). As additional information becomes available leading to the identification of other artists included in this book, updates will be made in future reprints.
Unless otherwise noted below, all of the images were scanned from the collection of Jeff Shepherd.
From the Topps archives: this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page (top), this page, this page, this page (top), this page (top), this page, this page (top), this page (top), this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, this page, and rear endpaper.
Additional images courtesy of: Talley Morse and Nancy Morse: this page, this page, this page, this page, this page; Kirk Taylor: this page, this page, this page, this page, this page; Alex Winter, Hake’s Americana & Collectibles (www.hakes.com): this page, this page; Candy Industry magazine: this page; Mark Newgarden: this page; Chris Mosher: this page; The Taylor-Morse Collection: this page, this page; Jon Berk: this page; Chris Hart: this page; Richard Gelman: this page, this page; Robert Lifson, Robert Edward Auctions, LLC: this page; Howard Cruse: this page, this page, this page; Todd Riley: this page (left); Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com): this page; R. Sikoryak: this page, this page; Grant Geissman: this page; Jay Lynch: this page.
This page: Copyright © 1955 E.C. Publications, Inc. Used with permission.
Ancillary images: DC Comics/Fawcett Publications, Inc.: this page (bottom), this page (bottom right); Abbott and Costello: this page; Willard Mullin: this page (bottom right), this page (bottom right); Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus: this page; Carl Anderson/Henry, King Features Syndicate: this page; Al Capp/Li’l Abner, United Feature Syndicate: this page; Archie Comic Publications, Inc.: this page; View-Master/GAF: this page; Funko: this page; Erik
Larsen/Savage Dragon, Image Comics: this page; Ron Barrett, Tart Graphics, Inc.: this page; Ogilvy & Mather: this page.
PREFACE: TWO TUXEDOS AND A HOT PLATE BY TALLEY MORSE
INTRODUCTION: BEHIND THE EYE PATCH BY NANCY MORSE AND KIRK TAYLOR
WOODY GELMAN AND THE BAZOOKA JOE STORY: BY LEN BROWN
BUBBLING OVER: BY BHOB STEWART
CHEW! POP! GUM WRAPPERS AREN’T JUST FOR KIDS: BY R. SIKORYAK
AFTERWORD: IN THE LAND OF THE BLIND MAN, THE ONE-EYED MAN IS KING BY JAY LYNCH
“Bazooka Joe’s been good to us.”
—WESLEY MORSE, 1961
In 1953, when Woody Gelman, head of product development at Topps, was looking for an artist to create a comic strip to wrap around their bubble gum, Mitch Diamond (a family friend from the Blackstone Agency) recommended my father, Wesley Morse, for the job as a means of drawing him out of his continuing grief over the death of my mother two years earlier. Woody was familiar with my father’s comic strips from the 1920s and 1930s and his pinup art from the 1940s, and felt Dad was made for the task. Having come from the underside of the publishing business, he fit nicely within the wacky Topps machine.
For as long as I can remember, Dad’s drawing board invariably bore the brunt of his cigarette habit, with burns all over it. He thought nothing of putting out his cigarette stubs in his paints or in a cup of coffee sitting nearby. One day he called me over to show off the pen-and-ink illustration he’d done of a dark-haired kid wearing jeans and a beanie, holding a baseball bat. It was the prototype of the as-yet-unnamed central character for the Topps cartoon strip. Dad knew enough about the business to know that the powers that be always have the last word. Sure enough, somewhere along the line Topps decided that the dark-haired kid should be blond, the beanie switched to a baseball cap, an eye patch added for effect, and the kid christened Bazooka Joe.
I used to race home from school to watch Dad at his drawing board, a cigarette dangling perpetually from his lips, smoke curling into his eyes as Joe, Mort, Pesty, and the other kids in the Bazooka Joe gang came to life. Dad would ask me what I thought about the latest comic strip he was working on—after all, it was for kids, and he wanted a kid’s take on it—and I was always happy to oblige. I was also eager to earn my allowance by doing the four-color acetate pasteups for the printer, a job that Dad hated doing but made me feel like a part of the action.
At the time I didn’t realize just how much a part of the action I really was, but I found out later that some of the antics of Joe and his gang were taken from my childhood experiences. I loved playing baseball and got into trouble whenever my ball went sailing through a window. We weren’t allowed to play ball on the premises of the apartment complex where we lived in Queens, New York. The superintendent, a guy named Tom, would chase us kids away, so we’d post lookouts for him, and when he was spotted, we’d run like our pants were on fire. After work, Dad and Tom often went down to the local bar for drinks, where Tom would bemoan the latest mischief us kids had caused, and Dad would find ways to use the stories in his strips. Once, he showed me one he was working on and asked me if it looked familiar. I had recently been showing off on my bike and crashed it into a tree. Sure enough, there it was in the strip. Everything was fair game for the gang.
Wesley Morse and his son, Talley, April 1951.
Talley Morse, age seven, in Bayside, New York, 1953.
Never-before-published initial Bazooka Joe concept drawing from 1953 by Wesley Morse, modeled after Talley. Note that Bazooka Joe has dark hair and no eye patch.
The Bazooka Joe strip wasn’t my father’s only creation for Topps. He also drew sixty Goofy Series Post Cards (1957) and a series of cards depicting natural disasters (although what they had to do with chewing gum and kids has always been a mystery to me), as well as an advertising campaign called “Bazooka’s Out Front” that appeared in National Candy Wholesaler magazine (March 1957). Dad didn’t shield me from much, least of all the buxom beauties he also drew. I can recall taking one look at an overly endowed lady on his drawing board and stammering something. Dad just laughed, his purpose achieved.
I was proud of my father’s work for Topps, but being a kid, the thing I loved most about it was the uncut production sheets of baseball cards he brought home, especially those of my hero, New York Yankees center fielder Mickey Mantle. It was also a big deal for me to go with Dad to the Brooklyn headquarters of Topps, where he’d talk business and I’d walk out with handfuls of gum. Other times he would bring home boxes and boxes of gum and baseball cards, and I’d score points with all the kids in the neighborhood by sharing with them.
My father’s career began long before Bazooka Joe and I were born. Dad glorified the American girl with illustrations of the Ziegfeld Follies’ best-known beauties; penned comic strips; drew ads that ran in Life, Collier’s, and Judge; and painted watercolor pinups that appeared in men’s magazines. Stuffed into drawers and suitcases are decades of artwork, some complete, some left in progress, that chronicle his long career. He also gave the world some notoriously sexual shenanigans in his series of Tijuana Bibles in the late 1930s, but if there were any samples of these eight-page pornographic comic books lingering around the house, I was unaware of them. There was only so much an impressionable kid was allowed to see, even by Dad’s liberal standards. In fact, I wasn’t even aware of those raunchy renderings until well into my adult years when writer-artist Jay Lynch told me about them.
Over the course of Dad’s fifty-year freelance career, there was hardly a nightclub or restaurant in New York City whose program or menu did not feature his artwork, including the Hurricane, Cavanagh’s, the Harem, the Village Barn, Basin Street East, El Morocco, Leon and Eddie’s, the Cotton Club, Jack Silverman’s International, Casino de Paris, and—beyond New York—the Las Vegas Tropicana.
Folies Bergere program for the Tropicana Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada, c. 1959. Nightclub impresario Lou Walters brought in Latin Quarter house artist Wesley Morse to illustrate the promotional material for his newest Parisienne extravaganza.
One of the nightclubs most associated with Dad’s art was the Latin Quarter, with its twenty-seven-girl revue, where as club illustrator, his drawings of frisky cancan dancers appeared on virtually every program and menu. I’d sometimes take the train into the city with him and we’d hop a cab to Times Square, and while Dad talked shop with owner Lou Walters (“Uncle Lou” to me), I’d watch the showgirls rehearse. I remember seeing a girl, somewhat older than myself, standing in the background, who paid no attention to a shy, awkward kid like me. I didn’t realize until years later that the girl was Uncle Lou’s daughter, Barbara Walters (who would grow up to become the award-winning journalist).
Monte Proser’s Copacabana promotional postcard featuring Morse’s iconic Copa Girl, c. 1943.
The other nightclub most associated with Dad was the Copacabana. The logo, created by him in 1943, of a sultry beauty wearing a bonnet of fruit, is one of the most iconic and recognizable images from that era. Dad got a good laugh that everyone thought he modeled her after the South American actress Carmen Miranda when, in fact, he didn’t. Only Dad, Copa owner Monte Proser, George White (who produced the long-running Broadway revue Scandals), and, of course, the girl herself knew who the model really was. I wish I’d thought to ask him, but as a kid you never stop long enough to document history as it is being made.
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Dad worked tirelessly on his Bazooka Joe comic strips simultaneously with his Latin Quarter and other nightclub art. Although these were legitimate, well-paying jobs, on the side he drew risqué cartoons for gag digests, harking back to his vaudeville work of the 1920s and his Tijuana Bibles of the 1930s, indulging his own prurient interests and delighting in giving everyone a good, hearty laugh. Dad left an indelible mark, building a reputation on Broadway and making connections from which I benefited. It was a thrill for me, as a teenager, to get in free and unescorted to places like Basin Street East to hear Peggy Lee, and the Metropole to s
ee my music idol, drummer Gene Krupa.
Covers from Wesley Morse Tijuana Bibles, c. 1939.
It always amazed me that a soft-spoken, self-effacing guy like my father counted among his friends the famous and the infamous—like the actors George Raft and William Demarest, and cartoonist Chic Young. One enduring friendship was with boxing champ Barney Ross (“Uncle Barney”—I had a lot of uncles in those days), who, like Dad, had grown up on the streets of Chicago.
I loved listening to Dad’s stories about the Jazz Age. He often said that all he needed in those days were two tuxedos and a hot plate. He’d work in his studio all day and then at night get decked out in one of his tuxedos and head downtown to sip bootleg whiskey with Legs Diamond or stay uptown to trade gossip at the Stork Club with columnist Walter Winchell.
Dad liked to boast that back in those early Broadway days he was quite the ladies’ man. Yet despite having dated women like Ruby Keeler and Barbara Stanwyck (both of whom went on to become movie stars), and countless showgirls who never went beyond the speakeasy floor shows, he often told me that the only woman he ever really loved and wanted to marry was my mother. She was everything he was looking for—neither a showgirl nor a budding movie star, but a businesswoman with a wicked sense of humor to match his own.
From his bawdy cartoon strips and half-clad beauties of the 1920s to his scandalous depictions of the 1939 World’s Fair in his series of Tijuana Bibles and the legitimate nightclub art of the 1940s and 1950s, Dad is perhaps best known for the Topps strip. From the e-mail I receive from fans around the world, the name Wesley Morse is synonymous with that of Bazooka Joe. He drew the strip from its debut in 1954 until the early 1960s, when his lifelong cigarette habit finally caught up with him and he became too ill to work. Although the characterizations of Bazooka Joe have changed in the years following his death, the most memorable and sought-after gang is the one created by my father and featured in this book. It’s ironic, since he almost didn’t take the job.