Open the Door Six Times, Then Two More

In my skimming the 1950s DC funny animal titles, a couple of stories with reused scripts jumped out at me, because the originals were so distinctive--they were part of a comic book with a running gag throughout the different strips in the issue.

All the strips in Funny Stuff 25 (Sept/47) are untitled stories. At the end of the first Dodo and the Frog story, the Frog is stuck in the Dodo's closet yelling "Open de door, Dodo!"

("Open the Door, Richard" was a vaudeville routine whose song verion was released as a record in 1946 and got on the Billboard charts in 1947.)

Then in the 3 Mouseketeers story a house is seen in one panel's background with "Open da door, Dodo" coming from it; likewise in the Henry the Laffing Hyena story a similar balloon is making its way under a door. (These could be editorial emendations.) Blackie Bear in his story interacts with the Frog in the closet; so does J. Rufus Lion in his. There's a Dodo and the Frog half-pager with the Frog still in there, and finally the second D&F story gives the situation a punchline.

In Animal Antics 49 (Mar-Apr/54) the Nip and Chip story refries the first of FS 25's D&F stories--never getting to the actual punchline of the entire Frog-in-the-closet saga. Interestingly enough, there's a cameo at Nip's home: the Dodo. The Raccoon Kids story "Boom!" refries the earlier Blackie Bear story, but the house in this version remains the Dodo's--and he's the one in the closet this time. The Professor from the Nutsy Squirrel strip plays the same role in both the Blackie and Raccoon Kids versions.

I don't know who wrote the Funny Stuff stories, and the refries are pretty much that person's work transcribed, but from the tales about editor Larry Nadle, he may well have vouchered DC checks for himself for the "new" scripts.

stories in HOLLYWOOD'S ANIMAL ANTICS 49
reworking earlier scripts

Mar-Apr/54	49	(NIP AND CHIP)
		from FUNNY STUFF 25 1st Dodo and the Frog story
		Boom! (RACCOON KIDS)
		from FUNNY STUFF 25 Blackie Bear story

One Springboard for Two Stories

As EC's publisher, Bill Gaines would read at home as much as he could to bring in "springboards" to story conferences with editor Al Feldstein. Generally they would take ideas, including some from Gaines's reading, to come up with plots and build new new stories around them. Famously, Ray Bradbury differed with them on the definition of "new" when they hewed too closely to a couple of his stories.

If comic book writers do any reading at all, of course others' ideas may resurface even unconsciously as springboards for scripts. Where is the line crossed into plagiarism?

C. M Kornbluth's story "The Little Black Bag" was published in Astounding Stories, July/50. The situation involves a doctor finding a bag of surgical instruments from the future. I've recognized that situation in two comic book stories that came out a few years later.

"Little Black Bag" is from Marvel Tales 134 (May/55); artist Robert Q. Sale, and writer unknown. "The Strange Package" is from Strange Suspense Stories 36 (March/58); art by (of all people, at Charlton) Gene Colan and script by Joe Gill. [CORRECTED FROM SSS 33 PER PAUL BRIGG'S COMMENT]

Neither follows the Kornbluth story's plot at all closely; that had a grisly ECish ending, and these two stories came out under the Comcs Code. Still, (especially considering the Marvel story's title), it's obvious the writers were familiar with the prose story. I wonder if Edmond Hamilton springboarded it even further into "The Burglar Kit from the Future" in Jimmy Olsen...

As to Joe Gill's style, in "The Strange Package" there's a good example of his joining two sentences with an "and" but no comma in a caption: The hospital was close and he walked through the early, gathering darkness toward it!

Dr. Varsag's Experiment 2.1

The story "Dr. Varsag's Experiment" in DC's Plop! 12 (May/75) loosely adapts a pulp prose story published over 30 years earlier, but not the story with precisely the same title, "Dr. Varsag's Experiment" (Amazing Stories, Jan/40). The basis for the comic-book piece about creating a mole man is "Dr. Varsag's Second Experiment" (Amazing Stories, Aug/43).

Both Varsag pulp stories were credited to Craig Ellis, but that pen name covered a different writer on each one (see the ISFDB; I found the info in the 1952 Day Index.). The first is the only SF story that Lee Rogow had published, as far as I know. The second is by David V. Reed. He used the pen name Coram Nobis for his Plop! scripts like the "Dr. Varsag" refry. (The artist is Lee Marrs.)

The first Varsag experiment in Amazing involved giving someone superspeed with mongoose-based injections. Does that sound as if some comics writer lifted it a lot sooner than 1975?

Double Date with Millie

The first tier above is the beginning of a one-page gag (in Millie the Model 32, Jan/52); the second tier comes from the top of a two-page piece ("What Makes Millie Mad?" in A Date with Millie 6, Aug/60). Stan Lee creates a splash page for the latter by—what do you think?—recycling again; in this case a cover gag from just the previous year (Millie 92, Sept/59). He adds a bit to connect them that may or may not be new.

Stan recycles Millie titles even more frequently than storylines; "A Peach at the Beach" turns up on three stories besides the one listed below. "Bedlam at the Beach" he uses twice within two issues: Life with Millie 12 and 13. "Beauty at the Beach" he uses twice within one issue: for a one-page gag and then a full story in Millie the Model 105.

A Date with Millie, the companion title to Millie the Model, changes its title to Life with Millie with #8.

Stories in A Date with Millie
reworking earlier scripts

Dec/59	2	[taking up a collection gag]
		from MILLIE 29 2nd 1-page gag
		[art museum gag]
		from MILLIE 32 3rd 1-page gag
		[the man in the tuxedo]
		from MILLIE 29 The Scheme
Jun/60	5	"The Burpi-Cola Beauts"
		from MILLIE 29 "Meet Miss Burpi-Cola"
Aug/	6	"A Peach at the Beach"
		from MILLIE 32 1st story
		"Millie's Merry Pin-Up" [soda gag]
		from MILLIE 21 cover
		"What Makes Millie Mad?"
		from MILLIE 92 cover for splash
		and MILLIE 32 5th 1-page gag for story
Oct/	7	"And That's No Bull"
		from MILLIE 39 Chili story
		"Millie's Secret Admirer"
		from MILLIE 42 2nd Millie story

in Life with Millie

Dec/	8	"The Restless Rassler"
		from MILLIE 39 2nd Millie story
		"Chili Dates a Star"
		from MILLIE 32 Chili story

Dèjá Vu for Millie the Model

This list is only the first wavelet in a tide of Millie the Model refries, to use the term cat yronwode came up with for Spirit self-plagiarizations. Scripts are reused, if lightly rewritten, but the art is all-new. There are refries too in the Millie the Model Annual, and in the companion title A Date with Millie/Life with Millie. When the feature takes a turn into soap opera, of course the humor-related earlier stories can't be mined any more. But when Millie returns to humor in 1967—comes the deluge!

This is no doubt an incomplete list in that there are gaps in the early issues available; I could well have missed any number of first-time stories. What makes it harder is the lack of story titles in the Fifties. If a story seems familiar it has to be tracked down by looking at the comics themselves--and some around 1960 may be familiar because they're the originals for refries published around ten years later. ("Millie's Museum Madness" in 97 is the second of three uses of that story.)

As far as I can tell, Stan Lee reused his own scripts; he didn't dip back into the earliest Millie stories by other writers.

1953-61 stories in Millie the Model
reworking earlier scripts

May/53	42	[The Scout] (CHILI)
		from MILLIE 35 Chili story
Dec/56	73	[Male Model] (CHILI)
		from MILLIE 32 Chili story
May/59	90	[No Proposal]
		from MILLIE 73 1st Millie story
Jul/60	97	The Other Woman
		from MILLIE 23 Clicker and the Other Woman
		Millie's Museum Madness
		from MILLIE 35 3rd Millie story
Sept/	98	It's a Bet, Pet
		from MILLIE 39 4th 1-page gag
		No Chance to Dance
		from MILLIE 39 1st Millie story
Jan/61	100	How Millie and Chili Met...
		from MILLIE 43 1st Millie story
Mar/	101	[information booth gag] cover
		from MILLIE 53 cover
		Run, Millie, Run
		from MILLIE 41 1st Millie story
		Let's Look for the Book
		from MILLIE 44 3rd 1-page gag
		The Late Date
		from MILLIE 43 4th 1-page gag
		Come to Baby
		from MILLIE 41 2nd 1-page gag
May/	102	Fuss in the Bus
		from MILLIE 32 4th 1-page gag situation

Double Date (Cover Division) with Kathy and Vicki

When Martin Goodman started the new Atlas Comics after having sold Marvel, he wanted books as much like Marvel's as possible. You'd think that would be hard to do with Vicki, which repurposed reprints of Tippy Teen from Tower. But:

Kathy 1 (Oct/59) was published by the company going without a cover name between calling itself Atlas and Marvel; Vicki 4 (Aug/75) by Atlas/Seaboard. Both covers were drawn by Stan Goldberg. The question is whether he needed any help for the eight words of dialogue on the Kathy cover if he came up with the situation Marvel-style (as the artist-before-writer method would later be called); on the Vicki one, was he reusing something he'd done all by himself?

Of course in the intervening years at Marvel he could first-hand see Stan Lee recycling story stuff over and over on Millie the Model.

Double Date with Judy and Debbi

Swing with Scooter 20, the Summer 1969 Special, wasn't the only time DC reused story material from A Date with Judy.

They had gone to that well in late 1968 for the first few issues of Date with Debbi. Here, at least, they didn't redraw reprints; they bought new scripts and art, but the scripts were rewrites of 1947-48 Judy stories. Both A Date with Judy 1 and Date with Debbi 1 open with a letter to the reader from the main character, introducing the characters pictured around the page edges: parents, boyfriend, little brother, rival, and Judy/Debbi..

The liberated woman story in Debbi 2 is the one that veers the furthest from the original, but still, the writer obviously saw the emancipated woman Judy story.

Alvin Schwartz was the first writer on A Date with Judy, and wrote her stories cited here; Graham Place drew the originals. I can track one writer on early Date with Debbi stories without being able to put a name to him or her; it doesn't seem to be any of the ones already known on the strip: Henry Boltinoff, Steve Skeates, Barbara Friedlander, or John Albano. Samm Schwartz was the first artist, but even by issue 2 the powers that be decided that some Schwartz faces had to be reinked. By issue 3 new artists began arriving.

DATE WITH DEBBI Stories with
A DATE WITH JUDY Plot Sources

"Detention's the Thing" DWD 1 (Jan-Feb/69)

Story 1, ADWJ 1 (Oct-Nov/47)

"Eeeek—It's a Heap" DWD 1 (Jan-Feb/69)

Story 3, ADWJ 1 (Oct-Nov/47)

"Who's Blue?" DWD 2 (Mar-Apr/69)

Story 4, ADWJ 1 (Oct-Nov/47)

"I'll Be Suing You" DWD 2 (Mar-Apr/69)

Story 2, ADWJ 1 (Oct-Nov/47)

Story 3 (Liberated Woman), DWD 2 (Mar-Apr/69)

Story 2, ADWJ 2 (Dec-Jan/48)

"The Cave-Man Cometh" DWD 3 (May-Jun/69)

Story 2, ADWJ 3 (Feb-Mar/48)