Little Lulu

Little Lulu
The first Little Lulu from the February 23, 1935 issue of The Saturday Evening Post
Author(s)	Marge
Current status / schedule	Ended
Launch date	1935-02-23
End date	1944-12-30
Publisher(s)	The Saturday Evening Post
Genre(s)	Humor

Little Lulu is a comic strip character created by Marjorie Henderson Buell, who debuted in The Saturday Evening Post on February 23, 1935 in a single panel, appearing as a flower girl at a wedding and strewing the aisle with banana peels. Little Lulu replaced Carl Anderson's Henry, which had been picked up for distribution by King Features Syndicate. The Little Lulu panel continued to run weekly in The Saturday Evening Post until December 30, 1944.

Little Lulu was created as a result of Anderson's success. Schlesinger Library curator Kathryn Allamong Jacob wrote, "Lulu was born in 1935, when The Saturday Evening Post asked Buell to create a successor to the magazine’s Henry – Carl Anderson’s stout, mute little boy – who was moving on to national syndication. The result was Little Lulu, the resourceful, equally silent (at first) little girl whose loopy curls were reminiscent of the artist’s own as a girl. Buell explained to a reporter, 'I wanted a girl because a girl could get away with more fresh stunts that in a small boy would seem boorish.'"^[1]

Contents 1 Characters and story 2 Comic strips and comic books 3 John Stanley 4 Advertising and merchandising 5 Theatrical shorts 6 Television and films 7 Anime 8 Japanese-Brazilian comic-manga 9 Dark Horse reprints 10 Famous Studios Little Lulu filmography 11 See also 12 References 12.1 Notes 12.2 Bibliography 13 External links

Characters and story

Marge's Little Lulu
Publication information
Publisher	Dell/Gold Key(Western)
Schedule	bi-monthly
Format	Ongoing series
Publication date	Jan/Feb 1948–March 1984
Number of issues	268
Creative team
Writer(s)	John Stanley
Artist(s)	Irving Tripp, John Stanley
Collected editions
In the Doghouse	ISBN 1-59307-345-3
Lulu Takes a Trip	ISBN 1-59307-317-8
Letters to Santa	ISBN 1-59307-386-0
Lulu's Umbrella Service	ISBN 1-59307-399-2

Her full name is Lulu Moppet. Supporting characters include her friends Tubby Tompkins (who later got his own short-lived comic book series—49 issues plus two specials), Annie, Iggy, Gloria, Wilbur Van Snobbe, Alvin, Ol' Witch Hazel and Little Itch.

• Lulu Moppet. Lulu is the title character and is often the ringleader of the girls. As such, she is their leader of their less formal club. Her best friend is Annie. Lulu is a kind and sincere little girl who, though prone to mischief, usually ends up saving the day.
• Tubby Tompkins. Tubby, whose real name is Thomas, is Lulu's friend and occasional foe. He has helped Lulu many times and has tormented her just as much. His closest friends are Eddie, Willy and Iggy, who happens to be Annie's younger brother. When they are together, they can be as mean to Lulu as any boy would. His parents, Jim and Ellie Tompkins, have less patience with his antics than Lulu's parents had with hers. In fact, Tubby was spanked with more frequency than Lulu. As the junior detective, later nicknamed "the Spider", he has helped Lulu get out of hot water when she is punished for something that her father has done. He has a couple of cousins that he doesn't like. His cousin Jefferson is outright mean, and Chubby is almost a mirror image, excepting his height.
• Alvin Jones. The little neighbor boy who is younger than Lulu and is often vexing towards her and her family. To placate the extremely troublesome Alvin, Lulu usually tells him stories, often starring Lulu and her mother, as a poor family who usually tries to make ends meet with little. Later on, even though Lulu as a poor girl is still used, the wicked Witch Hazel and her equally evil niece, Little Itch, became the antagonists of the stories. Alvin has a younger brother named Cedric, who torments him, just as he torments Lulu.
• George and Martha Moppet. Lulu's mother and father. Martha (Mildred in FC 146, 1947) was more patient with Lulu than her husband tended to be. George and Martha also co-starred with Lulu in some of the stories that she tells Alvin. Sometimes, Martha would spank Lulu for crimes she did not do, and thanks to Tubby's later investigation, would end up finding out that George had done something (like borrowing, misplacing, or breaking an object) that Lulu had wrongly been punished for.
• Annie. Lulu's best friend and occasional co-conspirator in her schemes to best the boys. She is the sister of Iggy and the two were often at each other's throats. They have a grandfather named Grandpa Feeb. Like most of the characters, their last names were variable with the stories, mainly her name was either Inch or McGee.
• Gertie Greenbean. Gertie is a friend of Lulu's and is spoken of often. Her first appearance showed her sticking up for Lulu against snobby Wilbur, who became her chief nemesis. In an attempt to get even with her, he shamelessly used his father's influence in the community to have her mother (Gertie and her mother lived in a trailer house) moved outside of town, but Gertie didn't realize this. She thought her mother had run off (her mother allowed her to sleep over at Lulu's house, and didn't know her address); and had begun to cry. When Wilbur taunted her about this, the two got into a fight (she was a tomboy) and beat him up. She sent him off crying, and she and her mother reunited. She was also featured in another story when Lulu planned to give her dog, Rover, a T-Bone, but, thanks to the snotty Wilbur, accidentally gave him a strand of pearls.
• Wilbur Van Snobbe. The typical and very snobby rich kid who antagonizes not just Lulu, but everyone else, as he thinks he is more superior than his peers. One of his least endearing traits is the patronizing and extremely rude way that he treats his servants, which cause him to be referred to as "brat!" (At first, his name was "Van Snobble", but was later accepted as Van Snobbe.) Wilbur's main nemesis was Gertie Greenbean, who fought him numerous times. He has also clashed with Tubby on many occasions, but in the end, is vanquished, bested and humiliated because he so often underestimates his opponents.
• Willy Wilkins; Eddie Stimson and Iggy. Tubby's friends and co-horts, in their (more formal than the girls) club, whose meetings are held in a one-room homemade "clubhouse". They are the ones who usually torment Lulu and the other girls. Sometimes, they turn the tables on Tubby, who seems to not pay his club dues on a frequent basis. Willy is the president and Eddie is usually the treasurer. At times, they usually end up needing Lulu to help them out, most especially against their cross-town rivals, the West Side Boys. During these occasions, they usually end up victorious and are happy Lulu is there to help them out.
• Gloria. Her last name varied with the stories (ie. Good; or Sweet), as was not unusual with some of the characters but was often connected with Wilbur, as she was more in the same economic stratum as he was. She would use Tubby in order to make Wilbur jealous and vice versa. At times, she and Lulu would be antagonistic, due to Lulu's jealousy and that Gloria was too "girly" for Lulu's liking, but when united against the common enemy (boys), they could be friendly.
• Miss Feeny. The kids' Fourth grade teacher. She is popular and the kids love her. She appreciates Lulu, as she is one of the top students in her class. A spinster, who lives with her mother, she has a pet parrot she loves. Tubby took the parrot at one time to make sure Miss Feeny would promote him, but nasty Wilbur outsmarted him, or so he thought. Tubby switched the parrot for one of Wilbur's pet ducks. When Miss Feeny saw what Wilbur tried to do, she threatened him with demotion; and Tubby returned the parrot to Miss Feeny with no harm.
• Mr. Ernest. The school's principal. He is usually seen yelling at Mr. McNabbem and Mr. Googins for their failure to catch hooky players. He replaced the more stern Mr. Gruffly.
• Mr. Clarence McNabbem and Mr. Timothy Googins. The school district's highly incompetent truant officers. Mr. Googins was married with children, and was never able to catch a hooky player. His replacement, Mr. McNabbem, wasn't constrained by marriage, but was even worse than his predecessor. He (as well as Googins) always framed Lulu for hooky playing when she was clearly given a legitimate reason to leave the school. For this, both often earned the wrath of Mr. Ernest. Eventually, McNabbem lost his job as a truant officer, after he once more framed Lulu for hooky when she had been sent on an errand by Mr. Ernest himself, he had forgotten his pipe at home, and sent Lulu to bring it to him. McNabbem thought that she was going to smoke it, and broke the pipe angering Principal Ernest. After being chased by him and most of the students, he hid in a box with two real hooky players. The students locked McNabbem in the box and delivered it to Mr. Ernest. He discovered McNabbem and thought that he had been playing hooky. After Mr. Ernest yelled at him, he was demoted to janitor.
• Snobbly. Wilbur's Butler, created by Arnold Drake.

Comic strips and comic books

A daily comic strip, entitled Little Lulu, was syndicated from June 5, 1950 through May, of 1969. Artists included Woody Kimbrell (1950–1964), Roger Armstrong (1964–1966) and Ed Nofziger (1966–1969).

Little Lulu appeared in ten issues of Dell Comics' Four Color comic book series (#74, 97, 110, 115, 120, 131, 139, 146, 158, 165), before graduating to her own title: Marge's Little Lulu. With the Dell Comics/Western Publishing split that created Gold Key Comics, Little Lulu went to Gold Key with issue #165. Tubby got his own comic series from 1952 to 1961, first appearing in Four Color #381, 430, 444, and #461; then his own title Marge's Tubby from #5 thru 49. In this series, Tubby had his own adventures without Lulu, especially with the Little Men from Mars. Upon retirement, Marge sold Little Lulu to Western Publishing. The comic was re–named Little Lulu with #207 (September, 1972). Publication of the comics ceased in 1984 (with issue #268, the last few under the Whitman Comics name), when Western discontinued publishing comics. Artist Hy Eisman retained stories intended for #269–270 (scripted by Paul Kuhn) because the artwork was returned to him after the comic was cancelled. Three of these are to be reprinted in the Lulu fanzine The HoLLywood Eclectern (HE). "The Case of the Disappearing Tutu", slated to be the lead story in Little Lulu #270, appears in HE #47 (2008).

There were also two giant-sized annuals (#1–2, 1953–1954), fourteen Dell Giants (with seasonal and other themes), a regular-sized un-numbered special on visiting Japan and three Gold Key specials (two with Lulu on Halloween and summer camp, and one with Tubby and the Litte Men from Mars). Lulu also appeared in 20 issues of March of Comics and was reprinted in several Golden Comics Digest.

Between 1985 and 1992 Another Rainbow Publishing published a hardbound 18-volume set, the Little Lulu Library, collecting the stories in the Four Color issues, plus the regular series through #87.

John Stanley

Writer/artist John Stanley's work on the Little Lulu comic book is highly regarded. He did the initial Lulu comics, later working with artist Irving Tripp, writing and laying out the stories. He continued working on the comic until c. 1961. Stanley is responsible for the many additional characters in the stories. After Stanley, other writers produced the Lulu stories for Gold Key, including Arnold Drake.

Advertising and merchandising

Little Lulu was featured on numerous licensed products, and she was the centerpiece of an extensive advertising campaign for Kleenex tissues during the 1940s-50s, and she was also seen in Pepsi-Cola magazine ads during that period.^[2] Kleenex commercials featuring Little Lulu were regularly seen in the 1950s on Perry Como's television show.^[3]

Theatrical shorts

In the mid-1940s, Lulu appeared in a series of theatrical animated shorts produced by Famous Studios for Paramount Pictures from 1943 to 1948, which replaced the Superman shorts of the 1940s. In all, 26 Little Lulu cartoons were released in a period of less than five years. A similar character, Little Audrey, was then created after Paramount failed to renew the Lulu license (and therefore avoided the payment of royalty fees). ^[4] The voice of Little Lulu was performed by Cecil Roy.^[5]

The theme song for the shorts was written by Buddy Kaye, Fred Wise, and Sidney Lippman, and featured this refrain:

Little Lulu, Little Lulu, with freckles on your chin,
Always in and out of trouble, but mostly always in.
Using Daddy's necktie for the tail on your kite,
Using Mommy's lipstick for the letters you write.

Though the clock says 7:30, it's really after 10;
Looks like Lulu's been repairing it again.
Though you're wild as any Zulu,
And you're just as hard to tame,
Little Lulu, I love you-Lu just the same, just the same,
Little Lulu, I love you-Lu just the same.^[6]

Television and films

The Paramount Little Lulu cartoons were sold to U.M.&M. T.V. Corp. in 1956, along with many other Paramount shorts. National Telefilm Associates purchased U.M.&M. not long afterward, and syndicated them to television. These cartoons were released by NTA on home video in the 1980s. Today, theatrical rights are once again held by Paramount (via NTA successor, Republic Pictures), while Republic licensee Lions Gate Home Entertainment holds video rights, although any sort of official DVD reissue has yet to be announced. CBS Paramount Television holds TV rights. Many of the Little Lulu cartoons have fallen into the public domain, and are available on low-quality public domain DVDs and videos.

Little Lulu has starred in several TV animated cartoon series. She appeared in two cartoons included in the TV series King Features Trilogy. These cartoons were, ironically, produced by Paramount Cartoon Studios – the former Famous Studios – and were released theatrically before their television debut in 1963.

ABC aired two half-hour Little Lulu live-action specials on Saturday morning as part of the ABC Weekend Special series in the late 1970s. In both Little Lulu and The Big Hex of Little Lulu, Lulu was played by Lauri Hendler. The cast also included Robbie Rist and Annrae Walterhouse. A Little Lulu cameo was planned for the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit, but rights to the character could not be obtained in time. In 1995, Lulu appeared in The Little Lulu Show on HBO, voiced by Tracey Ullman. The series was produced by Canada's Cinar Films.

Lulu fans hold an annual gathering at the San Diego Comic Con in which they perform a play adapted from a classic Lulu story.^[7]

Anime

Little Lulu also starred in her own Japanese anime TV series, Little Lulu to Chicchai Nakama (Little Lulu and Her Little Friends), made by Nippon Animation Company. The 26-episode series, directed by Fumio Kurokawa and featuring famed seiyuu Eiko Masuyama and Minori Matsushima as the voice of Lulu, aired originally in Japan from October 1976 to April 1977. An English-dubbed version of the anime was made for the American market by Ziv International in 1978, and the series was also released in Italian, Hebrew, Arabic and Spanish. The Little Lulu anime is extremely rare and has been out of print in the United States for years. Although some full-length English-language episodes were posted on YouTube, they have since been removed.

Japanese-Brazilian comic-manga

As of 2009 a new revival of Lulu and her friends for the Brazilian market has them as now being teenagers and depicted in a manga style. ^[8]

Dark Horse reprints

In 2004, Dark Horse Comics obtained the rights to reprint Little Lulu comics. Eighteen black and white volumes plus an un-numbered color special were published through early 2008. After a short hiatus the series resumed in mid-2009, this time in full color. Volumes 4 and 5 were originally published before the first three volumes, as it was felt that their content was more accessible.

1. My Dinner with Lulu ISBN 1-59307-318-6 (reprints Four Color Comics #74, 97, 110, 115, 120)
2. Sunday Afternoon ISBN 1-59307-345-3 (reprints Four Color Comics #131, 139, 146, 158)
3. In the Doghouse ISBN 1-59307-345-3 (reprints Four Color Comics #165 and Little Lulu #1–5)
4. Lulu Goes Shopping ISBN 1-59307-270-8 (reprints Little Lulu #6–12)
5. Lulu Takes a Trip ISBN 1-59307-317-8 (reprints Little Lulu #13–17)
6. Letters to Santa ISBN 1-59307-386-0 (reprints Little Lulu #18–22)
7. Lulu's Umbrella Service ISBN 1-59307-399-2 (reprints Little Lulu #23–27)
8. Late for School ISBN 1-59307-453-0 (reprints Little Lulu #28–32)
9. Lucky Lulu ISBN 1-59307-471-9 (reprints Little Lulu #33–37)
10. All Dressed Up ISBN 1-59307-534-0 (reprints Little Lulu #38–42)
11. April Fools ISBN 1-59307-557-X (reprints Little Lulu #43–48)
12. Leave It to Lulu ISBN 1-59307-620-7 (reprints Little Lulu #49–53)
13. Too Much Fun ISBN 1-59307-621-5 (reprints Little Lulu #54–58)
14. Queen Lulu ISBN 1-59307-683-5 (reprints Little Lulu #59–63)
15. The Explorers ISBN 1-59307-684-3 (reprints Little Lulu #64–68)
16. A Handy Kid ISBN 1-59307-685-1 (reprints Little Lulu #69–74)
17. The Valentine ISBN 1-59307-686-X (reprints Little Lulu #75–81)
18. The Expert ISBN 1-59307-687-8 (reprints Little Lulu #82–87)
19. The Alamo and Other Stories ISBN 1-59582-293-3 (reprints Little Lulu #88-93 in full color)
20. The Bawlplayers and Other Stories ISBN 1-59582-364-6 (reprints Little Lulu #94-99 in full color)
21. Miss Feeny's Follies and Other Stories ISBN 1-59582-365-4 (reprints Little Lulu #100-105 in full color)
22. The Big Dipper Club and Other Stories ISBN 1-59582-420-0 (February 2010, reprints Little Lulu #106-111 in full color)
23. The Bogey Snowman and Other Stories ISBN 1-59582-474-X (May 2010, reprints Little Lulu #112-117 in full color)

• Little Lulu Color Special ISBN 1-59307-613-4

1. Giant Size Little Lulu ISBN 1-59582-502-9 (May 2010, reprints Four Color Comics #74, 97, 110, 115, 120, 131, 139, 146, 158, 165 and Little Lulu #1-4)

Famous Studios Little Lulu filmography

Eggs Don't Bounce (1943) Hullaba-Lulu (1944) Lulu Gets the Birdie (1944) Lulu in Hollywood (1944) Lucky Lulu (1944) It's Nifty to Be Thrifty (1944) I'm Just Curious (1944) Lulu's Indoor Outing (1944) Lulu at the Zoo (1944) Lulu's Birthday Party (1944) Magica-Lulu (1945) Beau Ties (1945) Daffydilly Daddy (1945) Snap Happy (1945) Man's Pest Friend (1945) Bargain Counter Attack (1946)            Bored of Education (1946) Chick and Double Chick (1946) Recorded on December 9, 1993 Musica-Lulu (1947) A Scout with the Gout (1947) Loose in a Caboose (1947) Cad and Caddy (1947) A Bout with a Trout (1947) Super Lulu (1947) The Baby Sitter (1947) The Dog Show-Off (1948) Alvin's Solo Flight (1961) Frog's Legs (1962)

See also

• The Little Lulu Show

References

Notes

Bibliography

• Strickler, Dave. Syndicated Comic Strips and Artists, 1924–1995: The Complete Index. Cambria, CA: Comics Access, 1995. ISBN 0-9700077-0-1.
• Taylhardat, Karim. The little lulu (La grumete huérfana; ensayo, Ediciones Sinsentido, Madrid, 2007)

External links

• Shaenon K. Garrity muses on the The Little Lulu reprint project
• Toonopedia: Little Lulu
• HBO: The Little Lulu Show
• San Diego Union Tribune: "Little Lulu still frolics with pals at age 70"
• HoLLywood Eclectern--Little Lulu fanzine
• Michele's Little Lulu Page
• Friends of Lulu
• Little Lulu Theme
• Mark Evanier on Little Lulu being replaced by Little Audrey by Famous Studios, pt.1
• Mark Evanier on Little Lulu being replaced by Little Audrey by Famous Studios, pt.2
• Little Lulu (1940s)--model sheets