Number 1101


What ho, it's Tally-Ho!


Tally-Ho Comics might be one of the oddest comic books ever published. The cover makes it look like a kiddie comic, and parents might have been fooled into buying it for their kid. The unsuspecting kid would be turning the pages past "Snowman" and find himself reading a gory horror story featuring a–YIKES!–bloody dismembered hand.

The comic is dated December 1944, and is one of a series of oddball releases during the latter part of World War II. Paper was rationed, but comic books were selling well–entire print runs, whatever they could get to newsstands or to military bases–so my guess with Tally-Ho is that a package was created with material at hand (credited by Overstreet to "[Bernard] Baily Publishing Company"). They found someone with a paper ration (in this case, the Swappers Quarterly from Chicago) and either made them part of the package deal or paid them for their paper ration. That's an educated guess on my part based on what little evidence I have.

The comic is known as Frank Frazetta's first published comic book work, inking John Giunta. An artist I don't recognize did "Man In Black,"*, the aforementioned horror story. I'm showing both stories today. "Snowman" is another recycled story I've shown before, but these are new scans.

Wednesday: Another John Giunta story.















*Not to be confused with Bob Powell's Man In Black.