Number 39

Mark Foley's Comics Pages
As soon as I heard about Congressman Mark Foley's resignation because of impropriety toward Congressional pages I remembered an old issue of Treasure Chest with a story about page boys who work in the Capitol. This is from Treasure Chest Of Fun and Fact, Volume 18 Number 12, February 14, 1963.

Treasure Chest, for those who don't know, was a comic book distributed during the school year to Catholic schools. What issues I've seen or owned I've found a bit pedantic. There was this notion, when it was started in 1946, that despite their popularity comic books were bad for kids, and adults, too. This was a way of getting kids to read about so-called healthier subjects in a format they liked.

Joe Sinnott, who is probably most famous for his inks on Jack Kirby's Marvel work of the 1960s, did the artwork. At that time Sinnott was not only inking Kirby's Fantastic Four, but drawing comic books like the life story of The Beatles for Dell, or doing stories for Treasure Chest. Sinnott worked in many genres of comics over the years, from some spooky horror stories for Stan Lee in the early '50s, to this more prosaic work in the 1960s and beyond.

Treasure Chest lasted from 1946 until 1972. A decent run for any comic book with a non-specific theme.

This story ends abruptly on page 5. Page 6 was probably drawn, but cut during the editing process; maybe the issue was one page too long. The last panel of the published story seems to leave things hanging a bit, but the story gets its point across.

In that more innocent era, the page boys are more concerned about girls someday becoming pages (horrors!) than they are about chickenhawk Congressmen lusting after them.

And as for Representative Mark Foley, I guess he thought pages were for turning.

Click on the pictures for full-size images.

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