Bazooka Joe and His Gang Read online

  One night, walking to the train on my way home, I noticed a gum wrapper among the litter, and was thrilled to realize that soon my work would be joining it as detritus on the urban landscape. I had truly arrived! Working for Topps would be the height of my freelance career.

  Bazooka Joe-Savage Dragon crossover chrome trading card, back by R. Sikoryak and front by Erik Larsen. Image Universe, Topps, 1995.

  But how does one carry these characters into a new decade, and flesh them out and reimagine them for a new audience? Actually, it’s best if you don’t. The idea was to continue the tradition of short, snappy gags with the current gang of characters. It would have been a betrayal of the original comics to deviate from their one-dimensional personalities. Besides, as each comic was printed at 2.5 square inches, the physical strip barely had any dimension whatsoever.

  One of the pleasures of the traditional comic strip is the conciseness of words and pictures, and the Bazooka format takes this compression about as far as humanly possible. While many comic books in the late eighties were extending page counts and reinventing panel layouts, Bazooka Joe remained constrained to three or four panels. Each situation had to be boiled down for near-instant comprehension. My strips contained an average of approximately thirty-five words. As with haiku, there is a great power in the constraints that must be respected by obeying a format. The current layout allowed for a full rectangle of two tiers, rather than the classic L-shaped strip of the 1950s. (The extra space almost felt like cheating—did Bazooka Joe really need that additional ¾ inch by ½ inch–panel space in the second row?) The text for the fortunes and prizes were to be written by others.

  Studying the library of thirty years of strips available at the Topps offices, I found a consistency of voice in the Bazooka oeuvre. Despite the change in art styles, many known and anonymous authors contributed to make a singular vision out of a series of shticks. Once I read enough of the strips, it was easy to latch on to their worldview. The 1980s strips relied on a few broad topics: mostly homework, cars, music, food, television, and relationships. Within those themes there were a lot of variations; the job was to dig them up and keep them simple. Also, to best utilize the limited space, the visual tropes were crucial: flying feet, flying sweat, and flying punctuation (both exclamation points and question marks). These were employed over and over, either individually or collectively, mostly in response to the verbal punch lines.

  Who were the characters at that point? There was our protagonist, Joe, a typical teen with an eye patch. He was joined by Mort, his wacky best friend and a neurotic sweater-wearer. Val was the reliable, long-suffering, blond love interest. In a radical break from industry standard, she was not joined by a nearly identical brunette love interest. Supporting characters included Shades, the snarky, vaguely new-wave/eighties teen antagonist; Blotch, Shades’s sunglass-wearing shaggy dog; Mr. Martin, the well-meaning mustached teacher; and Jane, Joe’s little sister. You’ll note that their chief character traits are hair color, height, or fashion sense.

  The character with the most potential was clearly the loose cannon, Mort, and I was relieved to learn that Mort would again be wearing his collar over his face. For some reason, his entire face was visible in the 1983 series, which I felt completely forsook the character. (I believe Mort’s sartorial choice is even more crucial to his power than bat ears are to Bruce Wayne’s.)

  Unpublished Bazooka Joe gag layouts by R. Sikoryak, c. 1987.

  The one addition I hoped to make to the canon was a new relative of Mort’s: a younger sister, with a nearly identical crazy-haired, sweater-fixated appearance. I suppose her name would have been … Mortina? But the strip was rejected. Possibly her presence would have altered the delicate dynamics of the cast and thrown off the perfect balance of characters. Mort should probably remain an only child. When it comes to neurotic sweater-wearing icons, there can be only one.

  I don’t recall getting too much feedback from Art and Mark, except for an occasional audible groan for the oldest and lamest jokes I tried to incorporate. (Jane: “Does your dog bite?” Kid: “Nope.” Dog: “Chomp!” Jane: “You said your dog didn’t bite!” Kid: “That’s not my dog!”) They would usually read the strips and check off their favorites. I seemed to have a knack for miniaturized comics—I sold a few every week, and kept at it for a while.

  After two or three months of submissions, I learned Topps had decided not to continue the Cruse-illustrated series, but to reboot Bazooka Joe from scratch once again. None of my scripts saw print (they are being shown here for the first time). But during that period it was very satisfying to write such pure comics.

  Bazooka Joe has reentered my life a few times since then, and hopefully he will again. In 1989, for Raw magazine, I created what I hoped would be the definitive Bazooka statement: Inferno Joe, a parody that retold the entirety of Dante’s Inferno in ten wrappers, using Wesley Morse’s original cast. But no parody can be definitive; there’s always another spin. In 1994, for a crossover with Image Comics and Topps, I drew a meeting of Joe, Mort, and Erik Larsen’s super hero, Savage Dragon. Because Topps published it, I assume “Bazooka Joe and His Special Crossover Guest” is considered a canonical story. Topps hasn’t established alternate universes for different incarnations of its characters—yet. And in 2008, for The Onion newspaper, I illustrated an article on the shocking secret beneath Mort’s sweater.

  Now that Bazooka Joe has warranted the deluxe hardcover book treatment, it isn’t hard to imagine the strip evolving for the new century and joining the ranks of more stately graphic novels. Perhaps an artisanal vegan gum maker in a hip Brooklyn neighborhood will license the characters to be printed on its acid-free archival wrapping paper. Whatever the future holds for the gang is unknown, but most likely it will be epigrammatic and ambrosial. Or, to put it more simply: short and sweet.

  R. SIKORYAK is the author of Masterpiece Comics (Drawn & Quarterly). His drawings have appeared in many magazines, several books, and a few television shows. He teaches and lectures on comics and illustration, and hosts the live traveling comics reading series, Carousel.

  “Adventures of the Rubber Bubble Kids” by Harvey Kurtzman and Will Elder from MAD no. 21, published by E.C. Publications, Inc., in March 1955. This Kurtzman-Elder classic was a parody of the character Pud and a brand of bubble gum from Fleer called Dubble Bubble, which pre-dated Bazooka Joe and Bazooka bubble gum. The satires of Kurtzman and Elder were huge influences on many of the writers and artists who worked for Topps over the years.

  An alleged “controversial strip” that ran in the October 30–November 5, 2008 issue of The Onion. This illustration by R. Sikoryak accompanied the parody article “Burned Lower Half of Mort’s Face Revealed in ‘Bazooka Joe’ Stunner.”

  Topps parodied their own Bazooka brand on several occasions. “Gadzooka,” Wacky Packages sticker no. 5 by Norm Saunders (Series 1, 1973).

  “Joe Blow/Rod Wad,” Garbage Pail Kids sticker no. 84.

  Pencil sketch by John Pound (Series 3, 1986).

  Bazooka parody postcards illustrated by Ron Barrett, issued by Tart Graphics, Inc., 1970s.

  “Bazooka Jerk,” Garbage Pail Kids Giant Series sticker no. 1, 1986. Front illustrated by Tom Bunk, and back illustrated by Howard Cruse.

  Nineteen fifty-three was the year of the eye patch. David Ogilvy’s ad campaign, “the Man in the Hathaway Shirt,” which was introduced in 1951 and featured a distinguished looking gentleman (Baron George Wrangell) wearing an eye patch, was an advertising sensation. In the funnies, Brenda Starr had been having a series of synchronistic encounters with the enigmatic Basil St. John, whose eye patch added to his mystique. And if you watched television, you were likely to see the Will Mastin Trio with Sammy Davis Jr. on the The Ed Sullivan Show. Sammy had been in a car accident, lost his left eye, and began sporting an eye patch, as did Zsa Zsa Gabor, who was putting a public-sentiment spin on her allegation that her then-current beau, the international playboy Porfirio Rubirosa, had given her a black eye. And
written in first person, with the author as main character, Steve Harragan’s series of crime-fiction paperbacks, with titles like Side-Show Girl and Sin Is a Redhead, were all the rage in 1953, with Harragan always sporting a black eye patch on the covers.

  With all this Zeitgeist (or should one say, Sightgeist?) Bazooka Joe was given an eye patch as well. Back then an eye patch, it seemed, was the ticket to mass cultural recognition. So you can’t blame Woody Gelman (head of product development at Topps), freelance artist Wesley Morse, and art director Ben Solomon for outfitting Joe with one. Today Topps’s official statement on Joe’s eye patch is that it’s just an affectation. Joe has two good eyes, but he wears the patch because it makes him look distinctive. For Joe, the eye patch is a fashion statement. You can’t slight him for that. Justin Bieber wears dog tags, but he’s never been in the military.

  These days the name “Bazooka Joe” has entered the vernacular. Montana Gold brand acrylic spray paint comes in a variety of colors. The bubble-gum-pink hue is called Bazooka Joe. There are and were a number of rock bands called Bazooka Joe, the most famous being the one in which Adam Ant got his start in the 1970s. But that doesn’t prove much. Any word or phrase in the English language that you might choose to Google these days will likely turn up a rock band or two by that name. In bars, there is a mixed drink called Bazooka Joe. There are a wrestler and a disc jockey who each call themselves Bazooka Joe. In Chicago, there is even a male stripper who goes by that handle.

  Not surprisingly, after sixty years, the character has become a cultural icon. It’s safe to say that Bazooka Joe is the most well-known character on the planet associated with a confectionery company. At one point in the late sixties, with a billion pieces of Bazooka gum being sold worldwide every year, Bazooka Joe’s gag writers found themselves the holders of the title of the world’s bestselling authors. World’s most widely read authors, though? I’m not too sure of that. But in the seventies, if you were to go to almost any country in the world and look in the gutter, you couldn’t walk fifty feet without seeing a crumpled-up Bazooka Joe comic. Paris? São Paulo? Istanbul? It didn’t matter. You couldn’t miss him.

  The 1951 “Man in the Hathaway Shirt” ad campaign (featuring Baron George Wrangell) from David Ogilvy and the Ogilvy & Mather ad agency was the inspiration for Bazooka Joe’s eye patch.

  Art Spiegelman gave me my first freelance Bazooka Joe gag-writing gig back in 1967, when he was working full time in the Topps creative department. Trying to recall work on Bazooka Joe from almost fifty years ago is what you might call looking through an eye patch darkly. Most of us have hazy memories of the actual work we did at Topps. I can, however, easily remember what we ate for lunch in the Topps cafeteria. Woody Gelman, for example, would have a meat loaf sandwich. Len Brown (creative director) and Rich Varesi (from product development) would go down the street a lot and have baked ziti at a storefront eatery.

  To jog my memory, I phoned Art to see what he remembered about our Bazooka Joe days. After recalling some interesting lunches at the Burger King down the street from Topps, Art related an amusing anecdote: At one point he had come down with conjunctivitis and had to wear an eye patch for a few days. When he came into the office, Woody Gelman’s secretary, Faye Fleischer, saw Art first. She pointed to the eye patch and kiddingly said, “Bazooka Joe!” As Art passed Woody’s office, Woody looked out his door and quipped, “Bazooka Joe!” Walking a little farther, Art was stopped by Len Brown, who looked at Art and chuckled, “Bazooka Joe!” Finally Abe Morgenstern (a longtime product development executive at Topps) came out of his office. Abe looked at Art’s eye patch and immediately exclaimed, “Moshe Dayan!” I suppose everyone’s personal Bazooka Joe lies in the eye of the beholder.

  The humor of the Bazooka Joe comics has always been the topic of one-sided debate. Two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and humorist Gene Weingarten wrote the following in his column in the Washington Post on September 5, 2010: “‘Bazooka Joe’ comics are not juvenile humor and never were. Over the years, they have been secretly written by a series of brilliant satirists—including Groucho Marx, René Magritte, Woody Allen, and Garry Trudeau—in a long-running, highly sophisticated sendup of bad humor. As such, they are actually the highest form of humor. So are ‘your momma’ quips.”

  Jay Lynch character studies, 1990.

  Although Weingarten’s comment was meant to be facetious, it well may be that he actually hit the proverbial nail on the head. True, Groucho, René, Woody, and Garry weren’t among the gag writers on these things. But the real list of the then down-and-out crowd of anonymous freelancers and the nine-to-fivers in the Topps offices who came up with these old vaudeville-style gags was almost as impressive. But we’ll get to that momentarily.

  Wesley Morse, who had been drawing Bazooka Joe since the strip began in 1953, passed away in 1963. But he had completed enough Bazooka Joe strips to last another twenty years or so. Topps would slowly trickle out these previously unseen comics, and each new Bazooka Joe series would be padded with other strips that would run during those post-Morse years under the title “Bazooka Joe Presents.” Some of these were gags that parodied Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Some of them were “Bazooka Joe’s Funny Fortunes,” which would be illustrated gag fortunes that would comprise the entire strip. Or they would be gags that introduced new sets of characters.

  “Little Creeps” gum comic written and illustrated by Jay Lynch, c. 1981.

  Layout by Jay Lynch, 1990.

  I remember writing and drawing one of these subseries of tiny comics called “Little Creeps,” which had gags presented by a cast composed of Frankenstein, Wolf Man, and Dracula as children. (Later I pillaged the gags from Little Creeps and used them as comic strips on the backs of the Garbage Pail Kids cards, redrawing them for that series.) But the new Bazooka Joe comics published during the late sixties to the end of the seventies still included the rare and finite fast-dwindling supply of unpublished Wesley Morse strips. During these years, many now-forgotten freelance artists were hired to draw new Bazooka Joe images for “Learn Spanish with Bazooka Joe” and “Learn French with Bazooka Joe,” which were additional strips created to pad out each new series. But by 1983, the previously unpublished Morse-drawn material had run out, and Topps hired cartoonist Howard Cruse to redesign the characters as teenagers, as well as introduce a whole new crop of supporting cast members to fill out Joe’s gang.

  As I recall, as time went on these comics had to be printed with vegetable-based ink (in case some really dumb kid decided to eat the comic strips). The ink, combined with the fact that they were printed on wax paper, made the final images look less sharp than if they were printed on regular paper. The only way you could print on a wax stock at that time was by using the flexography method of printing, which was kind of crude. So not only were the comics tiny and the color palette limited, they’d often come out blurry.

  Despite the brand managers and marketing companies responsible for the various revamps of Bazooka Joe over the years, and their valiant attempts to make the characters and the gags more “hip,” I’ve always thought that the primary appeal of these tiny comics was their overall lameness. Back when I wrote Bazooka Joe, I’d usually start by going through turn-of-the-century joke books and rewriting the ancient quips to turn the 1908 ragtime aficionados into 1990s heavy-metal enthusiasts, updating the corny old gags a bit to make ’em understandable to the new generations of kids to whom Bazooka Joe was their first introduction to classic American humor. It was always my belief that the more forgettable the gag the better. That way, when a kid bought another piece of gum a week or so later, he would have no recollection of the gag he had gotten previously. So even though he might conceivably get the same gag again and again, it would always be new and fresh to him.

  Let’s face it, just leaf through the pages of this book or Google “Bazooka Joe and His Gang” online and you’ll see what I mean. Bazooka Joe has become the personification of the lowest form of humor. And this is wh
y he’s one of the most widely known comics characters on the planet. Sure, the gags were cornball. But that’s their appeal. And, as Gene Weingarten waggishly postulates, I actually do think every gag writer who ever worked on Bazooka Joe realized that the strip is a conscious effort at stale humor. That’s what makes it memorable. Bazooka Joe, by his very nature, is corny, retro, old-school, or whatever you want to call it. It’s intentionally lame. His gags have always been groaners. So let’s embrace it: Lame is the new hip!

  Over the years, references to Bazooka Joe continue to infiltrate prime-time television sitcoms, Just do a search on YouTube—segments of most of these are viewable there. On one episode of Seinfeld from 1991, Jerry pulls his turtleneck up over the lower part of his face. Elaine looks at him with befuddlement as Jerry explains: “Bazooka Joe!” Of course he means Mort—but the confusion is understandable. Besides, who am I to criticize Jerry Seinfeld?

  In an episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun from 1996, John Lithgow sits in front of hundreds of pieces of Bazooka, loading his mouth with the gum as he rapidly opens piece after piece. After reading each comic strip with no reaction whatsoever, and while chewing a dozen pieces of gum at the same time, he exclaims in frustration, “Oh, Bazooka Joe … You’re an imbicile!” He then spits out the gum into a giant glass jar loaded with even more large wads of expectorated Bazooka bubble gum.