What’s Going On In Alley Oop? What happened to King Guz? December 2023 – March 2024

The current story in Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop sees Alley Oop named King of Moo. Longtime readers of the comic strip may wonder, doesn’t Moo already have a king and wasn’t it Guz? Even longer-time readers may remember, wasn’t Alley Oop fleeing King Guz after trying unsuccessfully to become King when Doc Wonmug first brought him into the future year of 1939?

So first, yes, Guz used to be king of Moo. But we learned in June 2022 that Guz had retired and Moo had elected President Krash. And, third, uh … I thought that was what Alley Oop was doing when Doc Wonmug plucked him out of the past. But the GoComics archives miss the days right before Wonmug’s introduction so I’m not positive. Sorry.

So this should catch you up to early March 2024. If you’re reading after about June 2024 please check this link for a more up-to-date plot recap. All going well. All not going well, well, that’s normal enough.

Alley Oop.

11 December 2023 – 2 March 2024.

Last time you’ll recall Lord Odom, a giant dragonfly with the ability to change history, had turned Alley Oop, Ooola, and Doc Wonmug into trees. So they spend several decades turning sunlight and carbon dioxide into food and water, until insects that should have been limited by the cold winters that global warming has stopped overwhelm them and destroy the forests. So, uh … that’s it then, comic strip’s over.

Next Week!

If I can make my way through the Comics Kingdom Redesign Morass of Suckiness and Poor Decisions I get to see Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom, weekday continuity, look back over old stories without snickering.

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Oh, uh … wait. Yeah. So, Tree Alley Oop remembers from a previous adventure that plants can communicate with each other. So why can’t Tree Oop, Tree Ooola, and Tree Wonmug command the local vines to envelop Odom. You wouldn’t think it that easy for vines to get a grip on a giant bug. But Odom’s a bit touch-starved and likes the hugging. At least until the hugging threatens to cut off his breathing and then he relents, turning Our Heroes back to human.

Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 22nd of December, 2023. I quite liked this twist, by the way. It seemed a nice bit of chaos tossed into the situation and yet was explained logically by the end of the story.

Odom reveals how he manages to do reality-changes greater than theory says he should: he doesn’t know. He was just an ordinary dragonfly, going about his business, thinking about George Orr, and then suddenly he woke up giant, superpowered, and ready to take over the world. Wonmug can’t buy this, not until he accidentally ejects Arval, a talking Larva, from Odom’s mouth. Arval’s a parasitic wasp larva, the kind that burrows into a being’s brain and controls them. Arval wasn’t out to do anything, he just crawled into this dragonfly and what the heck but together they were a nigh-omnipotent being and at that point why wouldn’t you try taking over the universe? Wonmug gives Arval a home in a little jar for safekeeping. And as Odom’s neither a menace nor really at fault for anything, Our Heroes let him go. And it’s back home to start a new adventure. (With a stop to reveal Wonmug keeps hitting the timeline-reset button after adventures, which feels like a very 90s Web Comic beat, given how it smashes any story’s suspense into just ‘can they get away’?)

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That adventure began the 9th of January, our time, with Alley Oop and Ooola returning home to Moo. And Alley Oop gets to thinking about how he’s had all kinds of great adventures. He starts telling them to his Moo friends who love the stories even if they don’t know what he’s talking about. One of his friends suggests Alley Oop write a book. It’s a lot of work. There’s the book-writing. Also the paper-making and the ink-making and the binder-making and the book-publisher-making, and bookstore-making, and you see where this is a lot of work that could fail at any step.

None of them fail. He’s an overnight sensation with the most popular and only book in Moo. Before long he’s doing one-man shows to sold-out audiences. That’s barely started when he’s having other people pretending to be him for one-man shows to sold-out audiences. With huge sacks of money coming in, what else is there to do but let it go to his head?

Jonathan Lemon and Joey Alison Sayers’s Alley Oop for the 2nd of March, 2024. I’m sorry not to have seen more of Krash. The goofball politics of Moo have been fun when we’ve visited them.

So he buys a McMansion Cave. And you know what follows enormous wealth: undeserved power. Krash, President of Moo, has had enough of the corruption surrounding her office and wants to retire, taking Moo’s treasury with her. So she reinstates the monarchy, naming Alley Oop the King, and leaves. So that’s where we are.

Next Week!

But yeah, it’ll be Tony DePaul and Mike Manley’s The Phantom (Weekdays) up for plot recapping unless I decide I don’t want to deal with that until Comics Kingdom gets their web site functional again. If they can’t manage that it’ll be Mike Curtis, Shelley Pleger, Charles Ettinger, and Shane Fisher’s Dick Tracy.

60s Popeye: Rags to Riches to Rags, with Wimpy, who never wears rags

And now as promised we are into the big patch of Seymour Kneitel. He’s credited for the story, the direction, and the production of this 1960 Paramount Cartoon Studios short. Here’s Rags to Riches to Rags.

Wimpy is such a great character. If Elzie Segar had created him before Popeye, it surely would have been Wimpy that took over the strip, down to its name. Wimpy’s blend of sloth and gluttony and intelligence and venality and luck fits so well together. As it is Wimpy almost overthrew Popeye. The Lost Popeye Zine has been publishing late-30s and early-40s Thimble Theatre strips showing how much more action Wimpy drove in that era.

So this cartoon is Wimpy-focused. Popeye’s essential, sure, but we open with Wimpy inheriting a fortune. Also a butler, Jeevie, a joke I wouldn’t get when I was six, voiced by Jack Mercer finding the median of his Wimpy and Popeye voices. Also since Lord Percival Wimpy has only the one living heir we learn Wimpy’s the only survivor of his immediate family. I’m sure that’s the one piece of the Popeye continuity to never be challenged in any medium, ever.

If I expect anything from Paramount Cartoon Studios shorts it’s competence. The premise will be clear, it’ll develop reasonably, it’ll end at an appropriate spot. Also, I’ll wonder if this is adapted from a Thimble Theatre storyline. I don’t see that it is. I have suspicions, though. That Popeye’s scheduled fight is against “Kid Nitro”, not Brutus or a Brutus-model character, is suggestive. The scene of Kid Nitro training by punching out a train of identical boxers is the comics strip’s sort of thing. Jeevie also feels like the sort of supporting character brought in for a Thimble Theatre story.

How do you get decent odds going up against Popeye? His fight record is something like 2,038-0, with 2,036 wins by knocking the opponent out of the arena and into the crescent moon, that flashes a giant ‘TILT’. Kid Nitro would have to be rated as, like, a thousand-to-one shot, surely, in which case Wimpy can’t put his whole fortune up. There isn’t the money to cover the bet.

And the central scheme of the cartoon feels very comic strip. Not that Wimpy would see a way to double his fortune gambling. But why bet against Popeye? Other than how the cartoon needs some conflict? (Maybe also a way to reset the status quo, but there’s many ways to do that.) Wimpy or Olive Oyl would bet against Popeye in this sort of scenario all the time in the comic strip. But this would get some motivation, like, they think Eugene the Jeep predicted Popeye to lose. Or the odds given for Kid Nitro are just so good it’s almost wrong not to rig the fight.

That logic gap aside, there’s a lot done nicely here. You get why Wimpy’s doing all this. Joining the fight as referee makes sense, and opens the prospect for good mischief. Likely that’s more fun than just seeing him enjoy his wealth. (Although there’s probably jokes about Wimpy living in a hamburger mansion they could have made.) Wimpy’s change of heart is inevitable, and maybe sketchy but reasonable. And it has a nice sequence of Wimpy imagining his fortunes floating away as he counts Popeye out.

The resolution, Wimpy cadging a burger at a diner (Roughhouse’s Cafe?), is emotionally satisfying. Popeye closes by singing how “Even down to the end // You’re still the best friend // Of Popeye the Sailor Man”. The sentiment is almost justified by the action. It’s one more thing to make me wonder if the story’s condensed from a better-motivated version.

Franklin P Adams: The Rich Man

[ It’s been a month or so since I last swiped a spot of public domain verse from Franklin P Adams and Tobogganing on Parnassus. Please, enjoy a spot more. ]

The rich man has his motor-car
   His country and his town estate
He smokes a fifty-cent cigar
     And jeers at fate.

He frivols through the livelong day,
   He knows not Poverty her pinch.
His lot seems light, his heart seems gay,
     He has a cinch.

Yet though my lamp burns low and dim,
   Though I must slave for livelihood —
Think you that I would change with him?
     You bet I would!

Peter Finley Dunne: Avarice and Generosity

[ I’d like to offer another piece from Peter Finley Dunne’s Observations by Mr Dooley today, this one, about exactly what the title says. ]

Avarice and Generosity

“I niver blame a man f’r bein’ avaricyous in his ol’ age. Whin a fellow gits so he has nawthin’ else to injye, whin ivrybody calls him ‘sir’ or ‘mister,’ an’ young people dodge him an’ he sleeps afther dinner, an’ folks say he’s an ol’ fool if he wears a buttonhole bokay an’ his teeth is only tinants at will an’ not permanent fixtures, ’tis no more thin nach’ral that he shud begin to look around him f’r a way iv keepin’ a grip on human s’ciety. It don’t take him long to see that th’ on’y thing that’s vin’rable in age is money an’ he pro-ceeds to acquire anything that happens to be in sight, takin’ it where he can find it, not where he wants it, which is th’ way to accumylate a fortune. Money won’t prolong life, but a few millyons judicyously placed in good banks an’ occas’nally worn on th’ person will rayjooce age. Poor ol’ men are always older thin poor rich men. In th’ almshouse a man is decrepit an’ mournful-lookin’ at sixty, but a millyonaire at sixty is jus’ in th’ prime iv life to a frindly eye, an’ there are no others.