Number 589


The patriotic Yankee


Yankee Longago, who travels in time (as we saw in Pappy's #366), this time has a near-Bill Murray Groundhog Day experience, where he relives a day. He then steps into a war bonds poster and becomes part of the shooting war in Europe. In this morality tale by Dick "Frankenstein" Briefer our boy Yankee realizes he's not doing enough to help win the war. He's selfish, spending his savings on a bicycle instead of a war bond.

In 1944 terms the story made sense; in 2009 we think of the poor shopkeeper. He refunds Yankee's money, tells him he'll hold the bike and when Yankee saves more money he can buy it. Yankee says, "...when I save up another $18.75 I'll buy another bond." That was then, this is now. A consumer was then guilty of not spending money on bullets, as consumers today we are made to feel guilty for not spending our money on things we really don't need so we can "help the economy."

If the bicycle man was still in business when the war ended maybe Yankee got his bike. The story is from Boy Comics #18, October 1944.

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Number 366


Dick Briefer's Yankee Longago


Right on the heels of my last post featuring off-the-wall back-up features, here comes yet another weird feature, Yankee Longago, by Dick Briefer, the Golden Age Frankenstein artist himself.

If you drop down to the labels on the bottom of this posting you'll find his name. Click on it and you will see I've posted 25 stories by Briefer. That's the record for any one artist on Pappy's.

This particular story episode reminds me of another feature that came later, "Danny Dreams" by Kubert and Maurer for Joe Kubert's Tor, a caveman comic from the early 1950s, published by St. John. The premise was much the same, although Briefer played his as a humor feature, unlike "Danny Dreams" which was played straight.

This is scanned from Boy Comics #13, December 1943.

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