Take me to your ... reader? We've got some intergalactic knee slappers here as cartoonist Joseph Farris presents a roundup of '60s flying saucer funnies, guaranteed to make you go UFO - HO HO!
Your mileage may vary, as it turns out. Farris does deliver some bangers here and there and his house style aliens are whimsical enough, but cartooning is a tough job, especially delivering reliable single panel yuks day after day. I think Farris can be forgiven for his share of duds given the highs along the way. By way of example, above we have two cartoons. One features a horny astronaut, the other some space trash, both chuckle worthy but no world beaters. Let's move on.
Here's a cute one illustrating a sci-fi truism about our limited perspective with regards to other forms of possible life in possible places.
This one just falls flat half a century later. The alien is a hippie! Hippies are weird, in the manner of space aliens, ho ho! Who needs the space corps, am I right?
Here's some midcentury sci-fi black humor in a popular vein, paired with a very midcentury joke about the (former) Pan Am Building. You can land on top of it!
This one on the left looks like it belongs in Playboy, but it's actually from Medical Economics, a long running magazine that provides "the expert advice and shared experiences doctors need to successfully meet today's challenges in practice management, patient relations, malpractice, electronic health records, career, and personal finance." Different times, I suppose. If we could zoom in on the globe on the right we might see the USSR or Formosa too.
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| Completely indistinguishable covers! |
Two final toons which represent the breadth of Farris' output. On the left, a cute gag about hotels and traveling on the road in America. On the right we have some more Americana of a much darker tone. Not life as we know it ... Once again, our search for life out there leads within ourselves.
Popular Library, 1968
Particularly thankful to Ethyl News and For Men Only.
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