Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Tim Tyler's Luck-1973


TIM TYLER'S LUCK was a long-running newspaper strip created by Lyman Young, brother of BLONDIE creator Chic Young. Despite its quality, its once hefty circulation and its nearly 70 year run, it was ultimately a relatively uninteresting and unimportant strip that dealt with a young man's African and international adventures.
What we have here is a 1973 issue of TIM TYLER'S LUCK from King Comics. Okay, now let us discuss the problems with that sentence.

1) King Comics suspended their line six or seven years earlier and according to GCD never published a TIM TYLER'S LUCK comic.
2) The indicia indicates this comic was published by Charlton in spite of what the cover says.
3) This is predominantly a FELIX THE CAT comic, featuring only one brief badly drawn TTL story and a cover.
4) According to the Grand Comics Database, TIM TYLER'S LUCK only ever appeared in comic books in the 1940's in ACE COMICS and never had its own title!

I wrote veteran comics historian Lou Mougin for help with info on this title which is found often on EBay but never with any real descriptive info. He replied that it was a new one on him. According to Lou, King DID distribute educational comics to schools in the seventies so one can presume--in spite of very little educational content--that this was one.

This, of course, begs the question of what OTHER unknown comics King had in this series. The back cover here seems to indicate the possibility of comic books featuring POPEYE, HI & LOIS, QUINCY (Not Jack Klugman's), TIGER, HENRY (who has one page in TIM TYLER'S LUCK) and THE LITTLE KING.

Anyone have any other info on these?

2 comments:

  1. I'd never seen the TIM TYLER, but I can confirm the POPEYE, HI & LOIS, and TIGER for certain. I think that QUINCY is only the back-up in TIGER (though it's possible that it had its own book, too. I halfway feel like there was a HENRY, but I wouldn't swear to it under oath). They were sold as some sort of reading comprehension program; that's why they're lettered in an upper/lower case comic sans-looking style. I've never seen it, but they probably came in some sort of vinyl case with a teacher's manual and ditto masters for worksheets. I've got such a package for an ARCHIE reading program, but it just used multiple copies of various then-current issues ("then" being circa-1973).

    ReplyDelete
  2. check the Overstreet Giveaway section for "Comics Reading Library" for information on this series,and a list of all known titles.

    ReplyDelete