Four Color #1241

This 1961 Dell offering stars Sweetie Pie, the freckle-faced little girl with the jaunty purple bow in her hair, caught in a wonderfully mischievous moment — she's busily polishing a bright red apple with a cloth, while a can of floor wax sits conspicuously nearby alongside a stack of tied-up schoolbooks. The gag sets up perfectly the kind of cheerful, everyday mischief that made this NEA newspaper-strip character such a natural fit for the comics page. At just 15 cents, Four Color #1241 is a charming snapshot of early-'60s all-ages humor done with real warmth.