Snafu #2, 4 of 4

And here we are with the final installment of Snafu, one of Marvel's many attempts underone of their tax shelter companies, to cash in on the success of Mad. This issue, written entirely by Stan Lee, is dated January 1956.

This piece, like everything here, is drawn by Joe Maneely

They did a lot of one-pagers like this to pad the issue.

Parody of this particular ad campaign that was drawn by Whitney Darrow.

This back cover parodying The New Yorker duplicates the stok image from the front cover.

Snafu, 3 of 4

Not much to say about this issue of Snafu that I didn't say the last two weeks, other than this was drawn by Stan Lee and drawn by Joe Maneely and John Severin.

Snafu, 2 of 4

Last week when I posted the first few pages from this issue of Atlas' Snafu, I ended with the cliffhanger where there was a promise of a nude photo on the next page. Here it is, fellas...

Such was the level of humor in this magazine from this, the second issue of Snafu from January 1956. It was all written by an undoubtedly overworked Stan Lee. The majority of art, like this, was drawn by an also probably overworked Joe Maneely.

The parodies of gag cartoons were also a feature in a feature in Riot. Here we see imitations of William Steig, George Price, Virgil Partch, and Syd Hoff.

And Saul Steinberg,Sam Cobean,Charles Addams, Peter Arno, and Otto Soglow.

Howard Post did this article but is not credited in the contents page. Here he caricatures Guy Lombardo, Spike Jones, Gene Krupa, Benny Goodman, and Louis Armstrong.

And Woody Herman, Armstrong again, and Dave Brubeck.

A lot of things that take up two pagers with the teaser “Turn the page to see this” followed by the punchline.

Snafu, 1 of 4

When Marvel Comics (or Atlas as it was called then) was the comics arm of Magazine Management and was in the business of making carbon copies of other publications, they also got in the game of Mad-inspired humor magazines. First with imitations of Mad when it was a color comic (Crazy,Wild, and Riot) then as a magazine, which they changed to Snafu. Like most of the other humor magazines then, it was fairly short-lived, lasting only three issues. This was the second in January 1956. I posted an article from the first issue a few years ago (have I really had this blog that long?)

Humor magazines, even before Mad, often used “old” photographs. But to put chronology into perspective, it would be like if now a magazine used photos from the seventies.

Normally I don't post the contents page of magazines like this, but here we can see some of the early roots of Marvel. Many comics scholars stay Stan Lee was more of a mascot than actual writer of the later superhero stories, but here's proof that he at least wrote the humorous credits with nicknames of all the contributors and quips about their character. Irving Forbush was a name that would be recycled.

John Severin and Joe Maneely are credited as the sole artists, though there are others and Severin did very little for this issue. Maneely did most of the work here and played the role of Stan Lee's other half before Kirby came along.

For those who didn't know, in the “naughtier version” mentioned here, the F in Snafu stands for “fucked”.

I also don't think Stan Lee realized Harvey Kurtzman's use of “Ferschlugginer” was a parody of Yiddish adjectives when he used the real word “mashuguna”.

Parody of Pete Kelley's Blues

Yes, there is a nude body in this issue on the next page, but you'll have to wait until next week to see it.