Buncha Dingbats!

We’re at day three of the sec­ond annu­al Jack Kir­by Trib­ute Month, cre­at­ed by Howard Simp­son! The week’s theme (at least for the three days that fall into August) has been char­ac­ters cre­at­ed by Jack who appeared in DC’s 1st Issue Spe­cial. Today’s prompt is the Ding­bats of Dan­ger Street! From left to right up top are Good Looks, Krunch, and Bananas. At low­er right is Non-Fat.

As men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, I nev­er saw any copies of 1st Issue Spe­cial on the spin­ner rack when it was first pub­lished, but lay­ing hands on copies years lat­er did­n’t prove to be too cost­ly. Appear­ing in 1st Issue Spe­cial #6, the Ding­bats is kind of a quirky strip. You get to see Jack­’s sense of humor, but there’s also a bit of an edge to it too, the sense things are dangerous.

Jack and Joe Simon were the pio­neers of the “kid gang” genre in the Gold­en Age, find­ing fun and dra­ma in pulling togeth­er dis­parate per­son­al­i­ties who might rub each oth­er the wrong way on occa­sion, but ulti­mate­ly had each oth­er’s backs. They came up with the Young Allies, Boy Com­man­dos, the News­boy Legion, the Boy Explor­ers, and Boys’ Ranch (maybe oth­ers that I’m not think­ing of at the moment). So this was Jack­’s lat­er attempt at anoth­er group in that vein. Maybe there’s a bit of the Bow­ery Boys in there, or maybe it’s just Jack­’s own expe­ri­ence of grow­ing up in a tough neighborhood.

Though DC only pub­lished the one sto­ry, there were at least two more issues of Ding­bats Jack drew, which were ulti­mate­ly “writ­ten off.” If you want to see those (in col­or, no less!), I high­ly rec­om­mend get­ting your­self a copy of TwoM­or­rows’ Ding­bat Love, which final­ly brings to light a lot of mate­r­i­al Jack did for DC in those days that pre­vi­ous­ly nev­er got to see the light of day.

If you’ve seen the one pub­lished issue, you might at first think, “He col­ored Non-Fat wrong!” Nope! DC got it wrong in the orig­i­nal com­ic! Jack intend­ed that Non-Fat be African-Amer­i­can. There’s even a draw­ing he did of the cast where there are brief descrip­tive notes for each char­ac­ter, and next to Non-Fat, Jack wrote, “Non-Fat is an eager beaver Black kid.” Appar­ent­ly the col­orist who han­dled that issue of 1st Issue Spe­cial did­n’t get that memo!

Like with the oth­er 1st Issue Spe­cial char­ac­ters, this is the first time I ever tried to draw these guys. Hope you enjoy! Stay tuned for tomor­row, and a new theme!

4 thoughts on “Buncha Dingbats!

  1. joe musich

    Yikes! The sto­ry unfolds. Snake Meat’s glass­es take a hit, and the Ding­bats are won­der­ing how and why. The Ding­bats were in my opin­ion the best of Jack­’s “kid” groups. He pulled the con­cept of kid groups right into a more mod­ern era. It’s regret­table DC did not fig­ure it out. Thanks to John Mor­row, and now you Mark for keep­ing the Ding­bats alive. I had to look up the col­orist and was sur­prised by who it was. Not sure how that mis­take was made. If Ms. Wood was work­ing direct­ly with Jack, I sort of doubt incor­rect col­or­ing would have hap­pened; she had plen­ty of expe­ri­ence. Maybe I have read and for­got­ten. I was also not a fan of the book’s title logo. I think the redo logo for Jack Kir­by’s Ding­bat Love was more fit­ting. All that being said, I am antic­i­pat­ing how you fit every­thing togeth­er. But my impa­tience is drown­ing me, Blup blup. Hahah!

    Reply
    1. Mark Post author

      Glad you liked my shot at the Dingbats.
      I was curi­ous about the orig­i­nal col­or­ing too, so I looked the book up on comics.org just now. It does­n’t give a cred­it for the inte­ri­or, but the cov­er col­or­ing was cred­it­ed to Tat­jana Wood. The col­or mis­take on Non-Fat is there too, so per­haps she also col­ored the interior?
      Per­son­al­ly, I don’t mind the logo at all. It kind of sets things up that you expect every­thing to be all wacky, but then you get the sur­prise when you find out the strip also has some­thing of an edge to it. Not sure who’s respon­si­ble for the design. My guess would’ve been Gas­par Sal­adi­no (who did a lot of logos for DC), but accord­ing to Todd Klein, Sal­adi­no only did two cov­ers for 1st Issue Spe­cial. He believes the oth­ers were done by either John Work­man or Joe Letterese.

      Reply
  2. Lyle A Dodd

    Even if Non-Fat was­n’t ren­dered prop­er­ly, I still always thought he was black. In fact, I did­n’t real­ize the col­or­ing issue until your post.
    I like the Ding­bats and you did them jus­tice. The pan­el you drew begs for a sto­ry, whose sun glass­es? Why are they bro­ken? Do they do some­thing spe­cial, like allow you to see into anoth­er dimension?
    What did Bananas say that got on Krunch’s nerves?

    This is a home run!

    Reply
    1. Mark Post author

      Very glad you like my shot at the Ding­bats (and if you don’t have it, as men­tioned above, you real­ly should pick up a copy of Ding­bat Love from TwoM­or­rows, so you can see the oth­er two issues DC wrote off, along with oth­er mate­r­i­al Jack did for DC then that was nev­er published).
      Yeah, I always thought just from how Non-Fat was drawn that Jack had intend­ed for him to be Black, even before I saw the char­ac­ter line-up draw­ing where he spelled that out. So it’s always been a bit of a mys­tery to me why he was­n’t col­ored accordingly.
      The fact my draw­ing here has you think­ing in terms of a sto­ry is exact­ly what I was hop­ing for. I’ve been try­ing to get some sense of nar­ra­tive into all these shots I’m doing this year.

      Reply

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