Three on a Match (Wanted Comics, 1950)

 “Three on a Match,” Wanted Comics #24, January 1950. 

 

Dr. Pepper Aids Breast Growth – Rule of Thumb – Clever Madman Avoids Being Committed

Bobbie Brown with Caroline Ryder, Dirty Rocker Boys (New York: Gallery Books, 2013), 34. (As a high school teenager, Brown lived near Baton Rouge, LA.)

My new best friend was Mona, a petite girl with big breasts and four sisters all as pretty as she was. She became an ally in my quest to become pretty enough to be a model. But what were we going to do about that chest of mine? I was still flat as a pancake.

 “If you drink Dr. Pepper, your tits will grow,” she told me.

 “Are you sure?” I asked.

 “Positive.”

 I drank so much Dr. Pepper that summer my tongue turned brown. Sad to say, my chest refused to blossom.

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Detail from “Facts About Crime,” Crimes by Women #14, August 1950. “In Massachusetts, according to an old law, a husband may not beat his wife with a stick bigger around than his thumb.” (Cf. Henry Ansgar Kelly, "Rule of Thumb and the Folklaw of the Husband's Stick,” Journal of Legal Education, Vol. 44, Iss. 3 (Sep 1, 1994): 341-65.)

 https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=38645

Jeffrey Sconce, The Technical Delusion (Durham: Duke University Press, 2019), 356-7, n. 37. A cunning lunatic on the way to a mental asylum succeeds in getting his escort committed instead of himself.

 

Unwitting Theft of Watch (1949 comic book story)

 “The Watch,” Real Clue Crime Stories, vol. 4, no. 5, July 1949.

Coming home from a café after midnight, a Buenos Aires businessman meets a man in the street who asks him to light his cigarette, which he does. The businessman then notices that his watch is missing. He catches the presumed pickpocket and threatens him with a gun. The man hands over his watch. The businessman then returns home and finds out he left his watch on the dresser in the morning. 

 

 

  

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=40034

The Graveyard Wager (comic book variant, 1947)

 “New Kind of Murder,” Real Clue Crime Stories, vol. 2, no. 9, November 1947. A comic book story based on “The Graveyard Wager.” To prove his bravery, a man agrees to drive a stake into a certain grave at midnight. He dies of fright after unknowingly driving the stake through his own coat.

 https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=40007

Lost Objects Found in Fish (Parodies)

Three parodies  of reports of a personal object (watch, ring, etc.) found in a fish by the person who had lost it.

B. A. Botkin, ed., A Treasury of American Anecdotes (New York: Random House, 1957), 266, citing Jacob Richman, Jewish Wit and Wisdom (New York: Pardes Publishing House, 1952), 316.

Ernie Kovacs (writer), Wallace Wood (artist), “Strangely Believe It!”, MAD magazine #37, vol. 1, no. 37, Jan. 1958, p. 34. “PETER J. EVERSHAM, Owner Of A Fish Store In BROOKLYN, N.Y. LOST HIS SPECTACLES OVERBOARD DURING AN OCEAN VOYAGE IN 1951. FOUR YEARS LATER, WHILE CUTTING OPEN A FISH, PETER FELT HIS KNIFE STRIKE SOMETHING HARD. It was his thumb.” 

“Believe It Or NUTS!” This Magazine Is Crazy, vol. 3, no. 4, Feb. 1958, p. 32.