"The Hiss Parade (with conductor Raymond Scat)"

Today's WFMU Comics Supplement Section shines a light on an interesting find: the ninth issue of 'From Here to Insanity', the Charlton Comics answer to MAD magazine, originally published as the April 1955 edition.  I had never seen famed composer and conductor Raymond Scott parodied in a comic book before, so this was a real shock when I stumbled upon it! In fact, this issue is full of music references, and I've included a single page feature and another short story from this same book, along with the featured tale which sends up the  'Plucky Strike Hiss Parade'.

The Hiss Parade yarn is bulging with 1955 pop culture references, most of them identifiable, but several that I can't quite put my finger on just who is being parodied, and I'm hoping our readers can help me out with those. Here in order of appearance is the group of players in this nutty story:

Our hero Raymond Scat, who is easy enough to peg - I had never thought of his ears as being all that large (see photo), but people did look much different than in real life on camera in those earlier days of cruder transmission technology, and also the colorist made him a blonde, but did retain his mid-fifties flat-top look;   the interviewer 'Dick Johnstown' - obviously drawn to resemble actor Jack Webb,  but just whose name is being joked with I'm not sure;   'all-knight DJ Vary Grayface' - I don't have any idea on this one -but it's probably easy for someone with a better knowledge of 1950s DJs than me to identify;   'Spooky Lambsclub' (series regular Snooky Lanson);   singer 'Dorothy Collars' - there's an easy one - Dorothy Collins, the regular singer on most seasons of the show and the wife of host Raymond Scott);   'Givesall McKillsme' - (another series stalwart- Gisele MacKenzie);   'Van Monotone' (love these names!) - no idea who he's supposed to be;  an unbilled Lee Liberace sticks his mug in there for one panel;  and in the third piece shown below, "What in the Heck is a Mambo?" we see Groucho Marx, who delivers a pointed MAD magazine reference and tells a character who says 'mad', "That was the lucky word!"

No writer credits (and this is some fudged-up 'humor' writing - those MAD imitators had their work cut out for them, the scripts in this book are almost completely incoherent), but the book was produced in the Al Fago studio (so he may well have had a hand in the writing), and the cover and single page feature were drawn by Fred Ottenheimer, who also drew for Charlton's other MAD clone "Eh!",  and the two full-length stories were drawn by famed 1950s-1960s comic book artist Dick Ayers.

Let's take a look at this odd and insane magazine right after the jump!

 

I would imagine that the above use of the term 'LO-FI' is one of the earliest on record, if not the first.

Again, thanks go out to the Digital Comic Museum, where my careful trolling of random books has produced some extraordinary finds like this. I didn't know that I would find anything interesting in this book at all, and then a few pages in I find Raymond Scat as a character! Great balls of fire!       Stay tuned to WFMU for more crazy fun!

Comments

[woid]

"Vary Grayface" must mean Barry Gray, who did late-night talk and phone-in shows on New York radio, mostly on WMCA, for around 40 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Gray_(radio)

[l'atalante]

"Van Monotone" is clearly Vaughn Monroe, a popular postwar singer whose hits included "Racing With the Moon."

[Mindwrecker]

Thanks you, kind readers for those helpful answers! I should have guessed Mr. Monroe, but hadn't really thought about him in quite a while!

[diggy]

Another reference (avant la lettre): "Iggy,Lou?"

[Mindwrecker]

The "Iggy, Lou?" reference is on page three, panel two of the 'Hiss Parade' story. Again, it sounds familiar but I don't recall where it comes from. Thanks diggy, for pointing that one out. There are probably some other obscure jokes sprinkled throughout that wacky script.

[l'atalante]

No clear answers this time, just some odd mysteries.

The "Iggy, Lou?" panel with the reference to Nome would SEEM to be about Johnny Horton, who sang both "Let's Take the Long Way Home," and "Springtime in Alaska," (not to mention the theme to "North to Alaska"). However, this is a 1955 comic and those sides were released in '57 and '59 respectively.

"Iggy, Lou?" seems even more out of joint, since my immediate reaction was Iggy Pop and Lou Reed hanging around Berlin with David Bowie in the 70s. That's even more of a chronological leap, unless this comic was written by some guy named Noster Damus.

The simplest explanation for the two names is that it's a pun on "igloo."

[diggy]

> "Iggy, Lou?" seems even more out of joint, since my immediate reaction was Iggy Pop and Lou Reed hanging around Berlin with David Bowie in the 70s.

That's the one I was referring to (avant la lettre = before its time).

[Martin]

Hehe this is weird because I also had no idea that “Van Monotone” is actually Mr.Monroe. But is so much clearer now. Racing with the Moon hah that brings me back to 1941 :)