Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride

November 9, 2013

About time I reran one of my favorite Saturday Comics installments. This one shows the true newspaper origins of Willie Lumpkin, and a strip you may have never seen.

from July 9, 2011

Anyone who has read Marvel comics for any amount of time has likely run across Willie Lumpkin, senior citizen postal carrier. He has no super-powers (unless you count his ear-wiggling) yet is always in the thick of the action.

I stopped reading Marvel Comics a few years back when Joe Quesada decided to screw the fans by having Peter Parker make a deal with the devil and dissolve decades of continuity. And before you Marvel Zombies start writing me nasty comments, yes, DC is about to do the same thing and I’m dropping them too. Come September I will be following exactly one title, The Boys.

So unless Willie Lumpkin has been retconned out of existence, killed in another silly crossover aimed at the tin foil hat conspiracy brigade, or outfitted with an odd number of cybernetic arms, here are some highlights of Willie Lumpkin’s comic book career. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. You see, Willie Lumpkin has had a long career starring in a newspaper comic strip, looking quite a bit different.

Ah, Willie was so young back then. Not a Doctor Octopus or High Evolutionary in sight. And this was back in the days before “going postal” meant anything other than mailing a letter so all Willie had to put up with were frantic housewives.

Neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night stayed that courier from the swift completion of his appointed rounds

This version of Willie Lumpkin pre-dated his first comic book appearance by three years but only ran a single year, 1960. It was scripted by Stan Lee himself and illustrated by Dan DeCarlo, who is best known for his work on Archie Comics. 

Personally, I prefer this version better. In the comic books he’s comic relief, here he’s the comedian. Maybe I’m just a sucker for nostalgia. DeCarlo’s art gets me every time.

Tags: Archie Comics, Aunt May, bmj2k, comic books, comic strips, comics, Dan DeCarlo, DC Comics, Fantastic Four, Marvel Comics, Mr. Blog, Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride, Mr. BTR, newspaper comics, Peter Parker, Spider-Man, Stan Lee, The Watcher, Willie Lumpkin