Herbie Popnecker Graduates

1964 and after 5 years and 5 measly stories, Herbie graduates to his own title.

The silver age of comic books had set into full swing by this point and super-heroes were once again on the top of the charts. With the comics code taming down ACG's horror and science fiction line, Herbie - a humor feature with a heroic adventure bent - was just the ticket.

Not only would we get more regularly scheduled Herbie stories, but with his own book we get longer stories and 2 per issue to boot.

Some features would suffer moving into a longer format, but Ogden Whitney just made Herbie shine more. In this case, more was better!

In the first outing from Herbie issue #1, Herbie crosses an adventure in King Arthurs Court (complete with getting under Merlin's skin) with a stroy about the US/Soviet space race. By this time Kennedy had been assassinated and the President is LBJ. Jackie Kennedy fawning over him was so much more enviable than Lady Bird Johnson...but oh well...

Enjoy!

The letters page (not yet populated by fandom, this being the first sisue and all) holds a text story of our erstwhile and unlikely hero.

And feature number 2 has more "Cold War Fun" as Herbie takes on Fidel Castro. Cigars are no substitute for lollypops!

This book is just great fun, and I hope you're enjoying reading along with me one of the great UNDER appreciated features of silver age comics

Talk to you soon.