Update: A cover image of FOO has been unearthed by Canadian comic detective Jim Strange and follows the original posting below:
FOO Magazine was published at the end of 1951 by the Monarch Publishing Company of Canada. This information comes from an interesting work titled Culture & the Comic Strips by Sol M. Davidson published in December 1958. EC comics Tales Calculated to Drive You MAD No. 1 came out in October of 1952 as a comic book followed by a pocket-book edition of The Mad Reader (advertised in issue 23), before changing to magazine format with issue no. 24.
Davidson says of FOO that it was “pretty obviously written and drawn by Americans, but it was printed in Canada and exported to the U.S. FOO spoofed the movies, the ads, the pin-up magazines, themselves. There were no comic strips in this humor magazine” Sounds intriguing ?
Since I was unable to track down any images on the internet I have posted the ‘blank’ cover above in hopes that someone, somewhere, has a copy and can supply a decent image. It may have been a co-incidence, and it takes nothing away from the brilliance of Mad magazine, Gaines, Kurtzman and Feldstein, but it would be interesting to see how close in conception the two titles were.
* Many thanks to Jim and the owner of the following copy who supplied the startling image.
while Im not quite sure of why your interest in Foo; I'll point out that David Sloane's AMERICAN HUMOR MAGAZINES AND COMIC PERIODICALS (1987) mentions that Foo #4 May 1952 exists.
ReplyDeleteHi Steven,
ReplyDeleteUnlike our freinds in the US Canadian comic history is still murky and a fairly recent field of inquiry. I'm quite sure FOO is an important part of our story and I don't mean to disparage MAD which was always my favorite reading material.
the only thing new in MAD was that it was a comic book. I was sorta thinking the 1950s Judge revival was pre-Mad as well. I see the revival of Ballyhoo was 1953. Someone does need to do an article on the pre-Mad satire magazines.
ReplyDeleteThere are a few serious collections in the United States but it is difficult to examine huge numbers of comic periodicals. A lot of the Victorian publications are on microfilm but the modern age book are harder to find. I collect numerous cover illustrations from ebay but it would be better if the books could be examine from cover to cover.
ReplyDeleteThis is of course,no relation to the FOO Fanzine that was published roughly the same time by Robert and Charles Crumb.
ReplyDeleteHi, I have one more Foo (and one the same as you). Can we exchange printable copies for a project I am working on?
ReplyDeleteI have a copy of Foo from 1952. Let me know if you'd like to see the cover or interior.
ReplyDeleteI would like to see the cover and some of the interior. I would really like to see the page with the publisher indica if possible. My email is top right on this page. Thanks!
ReplyDelete