Scribbly #3 is an issue of the series Scribbly (Volume 1) with a cover date of January, 1949.
Synopsis for "Scribbly"
Red enters with free tickets to a football game, but O'Hara says he has work to do and leaves with Red. Red calls him out on just wanting him out of the way and O'Hara admits it, saying that this isn't a day off from the office, it's a day off from Scribbly! He is alack to find that Scribbly is somehow also at the football game! He reveals that Mr. Birdnest gave him a ticket too, but mostly to tell O'Hara to do a feature on the game for the Morning Bugle. Red wonders why that's the case, since this isn't a big game, but O'Hara grumbles that something's bound to happen with Scribbly around! Scribbly loudly shouts at the players so hard he grips O'Hara by the hat and shoves it against his head, crumpling it. O'Hara gives him a fiver to get some hot dogs for them and change. Red asks why he's grinning so hard and O'Hara says he has a hunch Scribbly won't return without the fiver for fear of reprisal before he subtly hides the fiver, which had a string tied to it the whole time.
Scribbly begins trying to get the hot dogs from a vendor, having them handed over to him across three men. Scribbly says he needs them with mustard and passes them back along the line until the hot dog man says that's 30¢ and Scribbly finds he doesn't have the fiver on him, panics, drops the hot dogs on the three men and legs it. Scribbly, while escaping, hits a man in the leg, making him punch over another man thinking he's being taunted. The beaten man finds Scribbly on the floor, who says he's still looking for that five-dollar bill. On the field, yet another player has been injured and the owner, Magillicuddy, refuses to let the Coach forfeit, even though they're down 60-0 and don't have an eleventh man, despite no one being available. Magilicuddy offers they don't need someone who's good at football. The Coach tries to offer it to their Doctor, who refuses vehemently and Scribbly asks one of the cast-bearing unconscious players if he's seen that fiver he dropped. The Coach offers Scribbly a fiver if he plays football, but Scribbly points out the half-dead men around him. The Hot Dog Man races after him though for that 30¢ and Scribbly agrees, quick-changing into a football uniform.
In the stands, Red complains that Scribbly has been gone for 20 mins, but O'Hara points out nothing can really hurt Scribbly (thinking on how he's tried.) Scribbly is announced on the field and O'Hara blanches as he sees him on the field with his binoculars. Meanwhile, Dinky goes to pick up Sisty for a date at the football game… only to reveal he means watching it on television. Dinky is shocked to see that Scribbly is the one getting trounced on the field though and Sisty calls over her assortment of cousins to help out. They try to head into the game when Sisty tells the single inept guard that there are kids sneaking in from a hole in the way out of sight… then just lets them all in. The players for the Bull-Necks decide quietly to give Scribbly the ball to save themselves. Red tells O'Hara to stop him, but he finds he clearly can't hear him from up there. Red tells him to take it seriously or their date that night is off. Scribbly has started heading the wrong way after tucking the football into his waistband, meaning it's trapped there. Spotting O'Hara climbing off the wall, he thinks he's still after that fiver and does a mad dash in the opposite direction. Nine of the Hammer-Heads try to get in his way, making Scribbly head horizontally to the sidelines, only for the Hot Dog Man to appear and demands his 30¢. Scribbly runs incredibly fast to escape him as well and slams through the other players, getting a touchdown as Red accidentally punches a man in the face and breaks his hat. Scribbly somehow manages to have dogpiled on top of O'Hara and the Hot Dog Man in the fracas. One of the Hunkel Cousins uses a slingshot to help Scribbly make a point kick and the Hammer-Heads decide to use their “deadly” Routine No. 28. Sisty and the Other Hunkel Cousins decide to then unleash Hunkel Routine No. 77B, which is much deadlier and they get into position. This is likely more deadly, since it is revealed to be leaping out of lockers and punching people in the face with brass knuckles (revealing that Routine No. 28 was literally just attacking other players with brass knuckles) and jumping on a bench in way that clocks three players in the jaw. The Hammer-Heads try to stop them, since they could easily report their plan of brutalizing their opponents on purpose, but Dinky and the Hunkels unleash a barrage of metal pipes and wrenches, forcing them to forfeit by default.
Later, Red tells Mr. Birdnest about Scribbly “winning” the game as they see O'Hara with the Hot Dog Man's case smashed over his head. Scribbly discovers the trick fiver in O'Hara's beaten jacket and Red is so upset that she once again decides to have a date with an underaged boy instead of O'Hara. On her way out, the Hot Dog Man tries to stop them, saying he's going to get satisfaction instead of his 30¢ and Red tells him to get it out of O'Hara. They leave on a date as Scribbly worries about his boss, but Red says she never talks business on a date!
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- Mr. Migilicuddy
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Synopsis for "Scribbly (2)"
Scribbly is overjoyed to show off to Red Rigley that he has an intercom box on his desk from Mr. Birdnest. Mr. Birdnest goes to try it out, but finds he's late to a luncheon with Sen. Gimmick at the Club. He goes off while his cat manages to accidentally turn on the radio. The cat jumps back at the radio's loudness and hits Scribbly's intercom, making it start sounding like Mr. Birdnest is advertising DB Headache Powders to Scribbly personally (who doesn't seem to realize that Mr. Birdnest doesn't sound like a man reading a radio ad.) Thus, he runs out to get an economy size bottle, thinking Mr. Birdnest demands it.
At the Club, Sen. Gimmick asks how a newspaper man like Mr. Birdnest doesn't go crazy dealing with so many cartoonists, but more because he knows his cartoonists would draw funny pictures of him. Birdnest tells Sen. Gimmick he's sure that Scribbly is just as sane as he is… Back at the office, Scribbly comes in with the headache powder and hears a different show similar to The Maltese Falcon, demanding he bring the Green Jade Elephant with what sounds like a heavy and violent threat from someone who is real and exists. Scribbly asks Mr. O'Hara if he's seen the Green Elephant (forgetting to mention it's jade) while he's taking a Bromo-Seltzer for a hangover, earning him a bottle of Bromo flying past his head for being “sarcastic.” Birdnest's cat changes the station by batting at it, switching it to an exercise show for women, which Scribbly also does.
Back at the Club, Mr. Birdnest offers Sen. Gimmick he meet Scribbly and Sen. Gimmick says he'll bet him $1,000 (Over $11K today!) that he'll see a ridiculous cartoonist there. Scribbly gets confused by the program, thinking he's going to be shot (despite the fact that Mr. Birdnest isn't in the room) and his secretary turns off the radio in his office. Mr. Birdnest and Sen. Gimmick arrive and Scribbly emphatically begs not to be murdered and tortured like he thinks is going to happen. Mr. Birdnest pays up angrily and heads back to the Club, offering he'll show everyone a maniac cartoonist any time to no one, making the waiters think he's crazy too!
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Synopsis for "Littul Snoony"
Sisty tells a friend she's taking flowers to her fella and to the movies, though her friend says that she ought to play hard-to-get and that fellas don't cotton well to flowers. Sisty demands to know how old her friend is and she reveals she's seven and says that young moderns like her work fast and she will get her man! However, she finds Snoony is playing “G-Man” with his dog, upsetting her. She asks if he even wants his flowers and he tells her to “Put ‘em down somewhere,” meaning it lands pot-first on his head as Sisty orders two tickets to the stunning romance She Made Him Love Her. Snoony loudly complains that he wanted to see a “G-Man pitcher” and refuses her offer to hold her in his arms. She complains how he doesn't speak romantically to her, but he points out that their situation is obviously different. She decides to try her friend Lulu's outlandish seven-year old tactic of playing hard-to-get. A man steps out and accidentally knocks out Snoony with the end of his umbrella, making him fall into Sisty's arms and making her think that it worked after all!
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Synopsis for "Scribbly (3)"
A girl reads a large book titled How to Win Your Man and looking out for Scribbly, who is fantasizing about Red Rigley. She tells Scribbly her heel came off her shoe and asks for his help, but he just immediately tells her to go to the children's shoe store down the street. She sits down with her likely purposefully broken shoe and begins burning the book. She sends in a letter to Lulu Lovejoy, the agony aunt for the Morning Bugle, signing the name DESPERATE. The next day, O'Hara storms in and complains that “Lulu Lovejoy” who writes the lovelorn column has joined the Army (and is apparently actually named Joe.) O'Hara tries to ply Red into writing it due to her “feminine touch,” but she dismissively refuses, saying she's strictly art department. O'Hara decides to just have Scribbly do it, ambushing him with a hand on his shoulder at the water cooler. He picks up Scribbly by his entire ass and sits him at the Lovelorn Department, saying he'll learn about love from the letters anyways. Scribbly decides to purposefully do this wrong so he won't be pressed into doing it again and writes back to DESPERATE, telling her that she's ugly and the only way to get a man's attention is beating him in the head with a baseball bat and pretending you had a date with him while he's suffering from brain damage. (P.S. “For more dates, repeat the procedure!”) He offers this to O'Hara, who decides this is a comedic take on the lovelorn column and DESPERATE soon reads it in the paper. Scribbly storms off in a huff, thinking that O'Hara is crazy and wonders who could be dumb enough to read a love column like that… right as DESPERATE prepares to smash him in the face around the corner with a baseball bat, per his advice.
The next day, Scribbly comes in and Red says he looks terrible. O'Hara asks how his date was last night and Red jokes that she thought she was Scribbly's girl. She taunts him when he tries to protest it and O'Hara walks after her, complaining that Scribbly could start taking her seriously. She points out she's three years older than him, but she can't help but feel some kind of strange jealousy. O'Hara begins fuming to himself, imagining Scribbly stealing Red from him and marrying her. O'Hara decides to get Scribbly back together with DESPERATE and coyly just asks Scribbly for his girlfriend's number and threatens that he'll steal her from him. Reading a second letter from No Longer Desperate illustrating how she “won” Scribbly over by beating him in the head with a blunt object and managed to take a 10¢ photo, which she thinks is romantic. Scribbly realizes No Longer Desperate is his neighbor, Clover Cooley. Later, Scribbly just gives O'Hara Clover's address and Red, having been informed of O'Hara's statements, presses him into a date with Clover at 7pm. O'Hara realizes Clover isn't happy and she openly points out she realizes she's being pawned off and Scribbly is getting ready for a “date” with Red. O'Hara amends this by making this a double date and they all drive over to pick up Red. Clover is shocked that Red is a very beautiful woman and that it's no wonder that Scrib “I mean fellows” go for her. Red figures out Clover immediately and offers they go “freshen up” in the bathroom. They take too long in the bathroom, but exit with Clover in a nice gown from Red. Scribbly is stunned and O'Hara loudly exclaims HUBBA HUBBA! Red offers they stop gaping at people and puts on some “hot jive platters.” Three hours later, O'Hara is very busy eating everything in Red's fridge and Red offers that Scribbly take Clover home. After they leave, O'Hara thanks Red for supposedly sparing Scribbly's feelings and having a date with him instead, but Red tells him she did it take to save Clover from a bad date and hands O'Hara his hat. The next morning, Scribbly points out he got a letter that sure does look like it's in O'Hara's handwriting at the lovelorn column and O'Hara tells him to just shut up and answer it anyways… if he can…
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Synopsis for "Scribbly (4)"
Scribbly is struggling but eager to work hard, making cartoons, typing answers for the lovelorn column and cleaning up as a copy boy all at the same time. Red points out that this is too much work for him, but O'Hara complains that despite being this busy, Scribbly still somehow found time to leave gum in his chair and a goldfish in the water cooler (somehow.) Red demands Scribbly be given a vacation or she's leaving him and O'Hara gets jealous thinking of Scribbly, reminding himself and the reader that Scribbly is roughly 16 and Red is almost nineteen and when he's 19, she'll be “an old lady of 22” and no one gets married with that kind of age difference. His cat and fish talk to each other about his neurosis in abject pity. Going to bed, O'Hara realizes that his parents have a three-year age difference and gets no sleep that night and, when he does, has a nightmare of Scribbly asking O'Hara to be his Best Man and then getting married without him when he refuses. Two years later (in the dream,) Scribbly invites O'Hara over for dinner with the wife… as a ruse to get him to babysit their rowdy children Scribbly, Jr. and Wilton. Fifteen years later in the dream, Red presses an elderly O'Hara into hiring her own children, finding six of them (even the baby!) have come in to join him in a horrible messy catastrophe. He falls out of bed and wakes up and swears he must stop this from happening. He decides that he'll separate them by sending Scribbly on vacation for two weeks, in which he'll try to marry Red Rigley. Later, he tells her he sent Scribbly to the Tura-Lura-Lura Lodge in the Adirondacks and asks if she wants a date, but Red reveals she's also going on vacation tomorrow and is also going to the Tura-Lura-Lura Lodge, mostly to keep Scribbly company. Later still, O'Hara looks through books like How to Be a Bachelor and Like It, How to Cook for Yourself and The Art of Living Alone! as a homely librarian tells him to leave for the tenth time, since the library is closing.
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Notes
- This issue also includes:
- A one-page Bonny story by Hy Rosen.
- A half-page Dot story by Harry Lampert.
- A half-page Lad and Dad story by Harry Lampert.
Trivia
- The Littul Snoony Story reuses the Sisty Going to the Movies with Dinky plotline from All-American Comics # 12, wherein Sisty drags Dinky to She Made Him Love Her, tries to play "hard-to-get" on Dinky, Dinky is knocked out by an umbrella and Sisty thinks she won his heart.
- The third story reuses the Lovelorn Column needing help plotline from All-American Comics # 52, wherein Mr. Macklin demands Scribbly (and later the Red Tornado) help him out at the lovelorn column (with similar tact,) when the writer, Abigail Veranda (Real Name: Joe), joins the Army.
- The fourth story features a cameo from Scribbly's son, Scribbly, Jr. who will return for a single issue of Sugar and Spike
- This issue reveals that Sisty is not yet seven, Scribbly is somewhere north of 15, Red Rigley is almost 19 and O'Hara is presumably older than her.
See Also
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