Happy, Happy, Happy

Apr 10, 2009

Drawn & Quarterly announced this morning that October marks the release of a collection of one of my favorite, least-remembered comics series: Thirteen Going On Eighteen by John Stanley. One of the more successful Dell Comics runs of the 1960s, Thirteen is (a) an absolute riot of (b) brilliant cartooning that is (c) almost impossible to track down–even I’m still missing half the 26-issue run, and I’ve been searching for decades. It’s not an especially original concept–teenage humor comics in the vein of Archie–but Stanley’s style, as anyone who’s ever checked out his Little Lulu work, is endlessly entertaining and, in the case of Thirteen, wildly frenetic. At some point, I’ll do a much longer post on Stanley and how influential I find his material.

 

At a page count of 336, it’s not the entire series–Dell Comics ran 32 pages, no ads, AND material on the inside front and (often) back covers, so we’re getting maybe ten issues’ worth, and Stanley drew almost all of it past the first two issues–but I hope the BOOM! staffers like it when they all get copies for Christmas this year.