This is an in-universe article with out-of-universe material.
Scribbly #10 is an issue of the series Scribbly (Volume 1) with a cover date of April, 1950.
Synopsis for Scribbly: "The Glamorous Saga of 'Gorgeous Gertie:' A Hilarious Romance in Four Parts!"
Part I:
Clover Cooley is reading a book titled The Life of Casanova and exclaims that he's quite the wolf. Her Unnamed Sister notes that all boys are like that, implying that Scribbly could be just as unfaithful, since he's never said that they are exclusive yet. Having introduced doubt into her heart, Clover's Sister smirks as Clover dashes to the phone in a manic fury to know that her boyfriend loves her, since she's secretly being paid 25¢ by Bentley Bilgewater to break up Scribbly and Clover! He tells her he'll get the money when it happens, not beforehand. At the Morning Bugle, O'Hara is furious as usual, since Scribbly left gum in his seat and then because Clover is calling him on his phone and asking for “Ducky-Wucky.” O'Hara fiercely shouts at him to get off of his phone while Clover tries to ask if Scribbly is just not casually seeing other women, answering a quick yes and hanging up. Clover says to her sister this should prove it, but her sister asks if he really sounded like he meant it, reintroducing doubt immediately. Bentley soon has another secret window meeting with her sister, revealing her name is “Daffodil” and that the Life of Casanova book was also planted by her on Bentley's orders. Daffodil waits until she gets her payment, which Bentley has boosted to a whole dollar before she asks him what has made him such a rat. Clover, lounging on her bed (with her shoes on) thinks on how she must finds a foolproof test of Scribbly's commitment to only her.
Elsewhere in town, two men on a scaffold are putting up a four-sectioned poster of the amazing new movie star “Gorgeous” Gertie, who is appearing at the nearby Bijou Theater. They've pasted on the three portions that don't include her face, but when the first laborer, Hector, looks at the final piece, his hat pops off, his face turns pale and he rockets off the side of the scaffold to the ground below, head-first and is injured severely. Paramedics soon arrive in an ambulance with a police office on the scene, but when a paramedic sees the poster, he also gets dizzy and begins softly twirling into the air and then also landing on his head. The cop and a detective try to look at it, but the other poster man runs down and warns them that the face of Gorgeous Gertie has become too powerful. The cop, the detective and two other nearby men dare to look at it anyways, refusing to believe it, then comically fly back off their feet, meaning it soon is on the front page of the Morning Bugle and people around town become convinced that she must have a supernatural level of beauty. This seems to be the case as men are actively being carried out in piles on stretchers from the Bijou where she's meeting them. Theaters close and hospitals fill in her path as President Truman begins entertaining the possibility of weaponizing the beauty of Gorgeous Gertie. Hearing on the television that no man can resist her, which she thinks means that if Scribbly doesn't faint in her presence, it will definitely prove he loves her and her alone!
Meanwhile, Mr. Birdnest finds that O'Hara is interested in trying his luck at interviewing her for the Morning Bugle, but when he steps out of Birdnest's office, he notices Red is glaring daggers at him. He assures her that she certainly won't have any effect on him, but she counters that if he does faint in her presence, it means that she's definitely breaking up with him. O'Hara puts on his coat and thinks on how he knows that the O'Haras have never been “dame-proof!” and so he foists this off on Scribbly instead. Scribbly dashes in… only to say he won't do it, knowing full well that he'll likely fall prey to this. O'Hara angrily encourages he just do it anyways, but Clover shoves her way in to say that he could lose her in all of this, but also that she wants Scribbly to interview Gorgeous Gertie! Clover wraps her arms around him, saying she'll be proud if he succeeds… but then coldly let him know that if he faints, she won't speak to him again. O'Hara grins snidely and offers him luck.
The Saga of Gorgeous Gertie, Part II:
Scribbly gets dressed as Snoony bets him that he won't faint, but Scribbly says he won't take his money. Later, Scribbly heads to her hotel and the concierge sends him up to Room 602 to see her. Two elderly men in the lobby loudly voice worry for him. Gertie's maid soon answers his knocking, but fifteen minutes later, Scribbly is seemingly alright, then after an hour, then after three! After three hours, radio stories report that he's alive still and also that Gertie wants a sandwich. Snoony hears on the radio that odds are going up 15:1 that Scribbly is sure to die about this and rapidly builds a stand in a field to start betting for marbles that Scribbly will make it. Scribbly soon emerges with a well-impressed Gorgeous Gertie as he walks out, not only alive, but invigorated! Naturally, Scribbly quickly becomes a national sensation yet again due to his unprecedented four hour interview with Gorgeous Gertie, being offered numerous television offer, radio contracts and The Scribbly Story being optioned by producers in Hollywood. Snoony walks from the Hunkel Cousins with Dizzy carrying a giant bag of marbles and dumps them into a wagon to wheel home. He reveals to Sisty that he was able to do so by not looking at her and removing the lenses from his glasses to do it!
Elsewhere in town, two goons, Geoffrey and Montgomery, point out how Montgomery has lost his shirt and Geoffrey has lost all his clothes (wearing a barrel on suspenders) to their foolish bets that Scribbly couldn't make it, then decide to recoup their losses by kidnapping Scribbly to use him to somehow force Gorgeous Gertie to help them rob banks with her knockout looks.
The Saga of Gorgeous Gertie, Part III:
Clover dashes to meet her hero Scribbly with Daffodil announcing “your drip is here!” before she has a somehow secret window meeting with Bentley while Clover makes out with her boyfriend in the same room. Bentley tells her to just break them up though and Daffodil asks if Clover kisses better than Gertie. Scribbly returns that he didn't kiss her, despite being there for four hours. When she asks if he was alone with her, he returns that he wasn't, which leads Clover to think he didn't not kiss Gertie because they're exclusive, but because they weren't alone. When he denies it, Clover insists he's surely still thinking it and Daffodil gets a second dollar from Bentley. Bentley soon just walks in to her window and physically drags Scribbly outside, demanding that he just fight him while Snoony informs two naked strangers where his brother is. However, when they go to grab Scribbly, he's currently in a dust cloud sort of fight with Bentley in which his glasses fall off and land on Bentley. They assume he's “the one with the glasses,” not knowing exactly what he looks like and knock Bentley out with a claw hammer to the head. They carry him off, but later realize that they probably can't get into her hotel naked, so they hit Bentley in the head with a hammer again, then steal his clothes, shove him to Room 602 and pull guns on him, demanding that he have Gertie put on a veil and come out to meet her “long-lost relatives.” However, Bentley soon screams, begins levitating out of the room and somehow flies out a window into the night sky, while both goons shout at him for having defrauded them.
They call up the Morning Bugle and O'Hara decides he's less interested in proof than hearing how to upset Scribbly, insisting that no one actually saw that he was looking at Gertie, saying he should do it again with witnesses. Meanwhile, Clover helps the unconscious Scribbly off her front walkway, but finds he's still raring for a fight and isn't aware that he's lost or that Bentley has been abducted by the most visible men in New York City. She drags him inside to get him something cold to put on his new black eye, but drops him on the floor when she hears a supposed retraction on the news that the Morning Bugle has denounced Scribbly on live television as “a no-good low-down cheap, chiseling fake!” When Scribbly insists it's not true, the newsman (on the television) insists that it's what he has written down, continuing to let him know “wherever you are, Scribbly Jibbet, if you value your good name, come out in the open and face Gorgeous Gertie again — this time with witnesses!!” Scribbly, furious that his boss has embarrassed him on regional television, stomps home to get his spare eyeglasses, since he's functionally blind right now and retrieves his backup pair. He orders Snoony to call the papers as he prepares to interview Gorgeous Gertie… this time in public. Snoony internally realizes that he doesn't have a second pair of trick glasses to make this work… and starts up a new stand for bets on Gertie winning this time and that Scribbly will surely fail this time!
The Saga of Gorgeous Gertie: Part Four — Conclusion:
The news is out that Scribbly Jibbet is doing an unprecedented follow-up interview with Gorgeous Gertie at Carnegie Hall before a crowd of thousands. A veil is lifted to protect the public from direct contact with Gorgeous Gertie. When the bell sounds, she will turn away from the audience and then begin her interview with Scribbly. When the second bell rings, the curtain will be lifted and they will see if Scribbly can truly be the sensation that everyone believes in. We find Bentley is currently in the hospital with a head injury and a broken leg. Clover delights at home about how Scribbly is probably going to become famous yet again, but Daffodil quickly points out that (as they've seen before) Scribbly get heavy attention of media darlings that will surely make Clover look like no one. Clover wonders how she can stop this and Daffodil offers that this means he needs to lose this time. Clover accepts this logic and begins lunging at top speed to obstruct him.
Similarly, at the hospital, Bentley gets up and decides that if Scribbly wins this contest, he'll definitely never have a chance with Clover himself, so he also reasons he needs to make sure Scribbly loses. Snoony tells Sisty that he's due to become the richest man “fer his size in the whole town!” but she rightly points out that he has yet to collect on them. Snoony tells her that Scribbly has real glasses on and could easily see her now, but Sisty reminds him that Scribbly is a clumsy dope and that he could easily get his hair in his eyes, break his glasses, forget to clean them or just forget to wear them. Thus, Snoony grabs a slingshot from his dresser and decides that he needs to lose. At their hideout, Geoffrey and Montgomery find that Scribbly has called their bluff and now he's got up to 100:1 odds in his favor! They decide they can certainly manage to rig this and win all their earnings back as Montgomery casually offers they brain him in the head with a blackjack, because he needs to lose. Back at the Cooley House, Daffodil decides that if Bentley can't continue courting Clover, she can't make money off of him, so she grabs a potted plant by the stem and whips it around like a flailing weapon as she also was the first person to say that he needs to lose.
At the Morning Bugle, Red is confident he'll win tonight, but O'Hara chalks his first win up to mere luck. Red says he's merely jealous because he's half the man that Scribbly is, driving him into a chain-smoking psychopath who decides to murder Scribbly with a moderately-sized rock since he realizes he needs to lose. He begins to investigate a still photograph of Carnegie Hall and plans to hit a child in the head to knock him out with a small rock and then calls for tickets to Carnegie Hall for the exact reserve box he'll need. However, when the lights come on, he finds that Snoony, Montgomery, Geoffrey, Daffodil and Clover all also came with the exact same idea of throwing something at Scribbly's head. What's more, they shockingly reveal that they've agreed on a plan wherein Snoony will drop the potted geranium on his head, then drag it back up out of sight on a string. Clover protests that they could actually give him a chance at this, but the goons and Daffodil tell her to hush. The newsman begins the play-by-play as Gorgeous Gertie arrives on stage. She turns to face Scribbly and Snoony prepares to smash a pot into his head, but the second the second bell goes off, the newsman of WHEW announces that this is insane what's happened: Gorgeous Gertie fainted when she looked directly at Scribbly. Roses are thrown, Clover dives into his arms as they take his picture for numerous papers. Snoony, the goons, O'Hara and Bentley all run to find Gorgeous Gertie's manager, insisting that he's the “fake” in all of this and demand an explanation. The Manager says that the only reason he'd think she would faint is… she's allergic to the smell of geraniums! The men all slip and fall in utter shock, much to the Manager's confusion.
Appearing in Scribbly: "The Glamorous Saga of 'Gorgeous Gertie:' A Hilarious Romance in Four Parts!"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- "Gorgeous" Gertie
- Littul Snoony
- Sisty
- Red Rigley
Antagonists:
- Geoffrey
- Montgomery
- Bentley Bilgewater
- Daffodil Cooley
- O'Hara
- The WHEW News Anchor
Other Characters:
- The Hunkel Cousins
- Hector
- Mr. Birdnest
- "Gorgeous" Gertie's Manager
- Dizzy
- A Cop
- A Detective
Locations:
- New York City
- The Bijou Theater
- A Hotel
- The Cooley House
- The Hospital
- Carnegie Hall
Items:
- The Life of Casanova
- A Potted Geranium
- A Claw Hammer
- The Bankruptcy Barrel
Vehicles:
Synopsis for "Littul Snoony"
Littul Snoony is mumbling quietly to himself as he and Dizzy encounter Sisty around a corner. He suddenly leaps into the air laughing to himself, then starts to mumble, seemingly to no one, much to the confusion of his dog and his girlfriend. Sisty begins to question his sanity as he, in turn, “AHHR… PHOOEY!”, figuring something in his head, then starts laughing uproariously again. She starts to drag him by the ankle to see his mother, but he admits he does have a reason. He proudly states that he was telling himself jokes and they were really funny. She asks why he was angry about one of them and Snoony says he's heard that one before. Bamboozled by this, Sisty starts mumbling a joke madly to herself while Dizzy shouts “AHHR… PHOOEY!”
Appearing in "Littul Snoony"
Supporting Characters:
- Sisty
- Dizzy
Antagonists:
Other Characters:
Locations:
Items:
Vehicles:
Synopsis for "Pam"
Pam runs up to her friend, Stanley, to show him she's got a new camera! She offers they go to the park to give it a nice scenery. Once there, he asks if she asked him because she wanted to take a picture… or because she wanted to take a picture with him. She says she prefers to take a picture of him, which he takes well. Suddenly, local bullies Alan and Duke appear, asking about her camera. She casually offers to take a picture of them near the flower garden and Stanley becomes mildly incensed with how he's taken two guys' pictures instead of him first and promises to give them a print tomorrow too. She offers to finally take his picture and offers she might need to give him a place to stand… but he insists that she doesn't have to tell him as he knows where he stands!
Appearing in "Pam"
Featured Characters:
- Pam (First appearance)
Supporting Characters:
- Stanley (First appearance)
Antagonists:
- Alan (First appearance)
- Duke (First appearance)
Other Characters:
Locations:
- The Flower Garden
Items:
- Pam's New Camera
Vehicles:
Notes
- "The Glamorous Saga of Gorgeous Gertie" is a four-chapter story, with each chapter being as long as a standard Scribbly story.
- Only the first chapter of the story is titled "The Glamorous Saga of Gorgeous Gertie". The other three chapters shorten the title to "The Saga of Gorgeous Gertie".
- This issue also includes:
- A one-page Jerry the Jitterbug story by Henry Boltinoff.
- A one-page Skooter story.
- "'It's Fun to Be Healthy!' Says Wonder Woman", a one-page public service announcement starring Wonder Woman that appeared in many DC Comics in this time period.
- This is the first appearance of Pam Porter, who won't return for another year until a single issue of A Date with Judy before showing up in Sensation Comics# 103 before being relegated to the backup feature in Buzzy
Trivia
- Despite the cover, Scribbly doesn't sit in a lake in a canoe with Clover until the change of seasons. If anything, Clover is consistently angry and distant with him this issue!
- Clover's Sister, who appeared a few issues ago, is finally revealed to be named "Daffodil"
See Also