Felix the Cat by Jack Mendelsohn, c. age 36 1/2

Jack Mendelsohn worked in comic books and animation. His Sunday syndicated strip, "Jackys Diary," ran 1959-61. Written and drawn as if by a five-year-old, and bylined "Jacky Mendelsohn, age 32½," the joke at its heart evidently flew over the heads of readers and newspaper editors who thought it was by a five-year-old.

When I went to index Dell's early-Sixties Felix the Cat for myself, I figured I'd differentiate the artists by "Felix artist 1," "Felix artist 2," and so on. One I gave a more descriptive identification: "Mendelsohn-like," since the simplicity somehow reminded me of the deliberately childlike style he affected on "Jacky's Diary."

But as I was looking at the stories' art, I realized that I recognized the writing on a run of three issues that included the "Mendelsohn-like" artist's work. I'd seen it on the earlier Supermouse at Pines and the later Tippy Teen at Tower, which I knew from the Who's Who that Jack Mendelsohn had worked on. Bails and Ware also place him at Dell at the time. His website mentions the Dell issue of Miss Peach that he wrote and drew in a spot-on imitation of Mell Lazarus's style. As I found after "discovering" these Felix stories, the Who's Who has him writing the syndicated strip in 1948-52, and his site mentions Felix as one of his comic book credits.

Eventually I tied together the art styles between Jacky's Dairy and Felix, I think; note the cobblestones as well as the background buildings in the street scenes. I find that deliberately primitive art style on only two Felix stories, but it seems to me that other artists could have been working over Mendelsohn's layouts on other stories he wrote here; I think I see one of those artists on a later issue or two. I can't tell if he wrote any of the one-pagers in #2-4. These three are the only issues out of the twelve-issue run that he wrote; I'm still trying to see if I can ID anyone else on the strip at Dell.

Felix the Cat
written by Jack Mendelsohn

Jan-Mar/63	2	Beaux and Arrows	a: Mendelsohn
		You Must've Been a Beautiful Baby	a: Mendelsohn
		High Finance
Apr-Jun/	3	Fair Weather Enemies
		You Auto Be in Pictures
		Good Neighbor Policy
		Frozen Assets
Jul-Sep/	4	The Vicious Cycle
		Tale of a Fish
		A Sample Assignment
		There Auto Be a Law

Felix the Cat backups
written by Mendelsohn

Jan-Mar/63	2	Early to Bed [ROCK AND ROLLO]
Apr-Jun/	3	Spring Fever [PUSSYFOOT]
Jul-Sep/	4	A Moving Story [ROCK AND ROLLO]