Four Color #430
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeFour Color #430 — full indicia title 'Marge's Tubby, The Shadow of a Man-Eater' — is the second of four Dell one-shot try-out issues that collectively launched Tubby Tompkins's decade-long solo career, a career that proved a supporting character from another title could carry his own franchise entirely on personality alone. The four Four Color try-outs were counted by Dell itself as the first four issues of the eventual ongoing Marge's Tubby series, making #430 a structural brick in that run's numbering. Within the broader Little Lulu ecosystem, these trial issues demonstrated that writer John Stanley's expanded cast — developed well beyond Marjorie Henderson Buell's original pantomime panels — had genuine standalone depth, paving the way for 49 total issues of solo Tubby adventures through 1961–62. As a Golden Age children's humor comic rooted in suburban domestic life, it represents Dell's deliberate use of the Four Color anthology as an incubator for spin-off titles, a publishing strategy that shaped how humor properties were developed throughout the 1950s.
In "Watching Baseball on TV," John Stanley delivers a delightfully absurd tale where Tubby’s wild imagination spirals after a stolen jewels scandal leaves the Van Snobbes in turmoil. When Tubby spots a lion on his fence and later learns Gloria’s gone missing while picking flowers, he grabs a chair and charges into the woods with all the bravery of a circus act. With Stanley’s sharp wit and expressive art on full display, this 1952 Four Color comic blends suburban paranoia and cartoonish suspense in a way only he could pull off.
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The character of Tubby Tompkins was originally an unnamed, plump, silent figure in Marjorie Henderson Buell's Saturday Evening Post Little Lulu panel; writer-artist John Stanley fully named and developed him as Thomas 'Tubby' Tompkins when scripting the Dell comic book series beginning with Four Color #74 in 1945. Stanley — who by the early 1950s was handling scripts, layouts, and sometimes finished art largely unsupervised — drew the second through ninth issues of the Tubby spin-off, including this Four Color entry. Copyright for the issue is held by Marjorie H. Buell (1952), and the GCD records it as going on sale August 26, 1952 with an October 1952 cover date, produced through Dell Publishing Co. Inc. The specific interior story and cover art credits for this issue are not confirmed in available databases, consistent with the general pattern of uncredited Dell humor work of the era.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Full indicia title: 'Marge's Tubby, The Shadow of a Man-Eater, No. 430'; published by Dell Publishing Co., Inc.; cover-dated October 1952; on-sale date August 26, 1952.
- Second of four Tubby try-out issues published under the Four Color umbrella (#381, #430, #444, #461); Dell counted all four as part of the Marge's Tubby series numbering.
- Copyright 1952 by Marjorie H. Buell, the original creator of the Little Lulu/Tubby characters.
- Main story: Tubby investigates a jewel theft at the Van Snobbe mansion in disguise, is punished and confined to his room, then spots a lion on his fence — leading to a mystery adventure in the woods where he rescues Gloria from criminals who had also been using escaped circus lions as cover.
- Supporting cast appearing in this issue includes Mrs. Tompkins (Tubby's mother), Mr. Tompkins (his father), Wilbur, Gloria, Mr. Van Snobbe, Willy, Eddie, and Iggy — the core ensemble of the Tubby/Little Lulu world.
- Secondary and back-cover content includes a story in which Tubby watches baseball on TV and finds something missing, a pet-shop job gag, and a pantomime back-cover strip about Tubby's model plane annoying a passerby.
- John Stanley, who wrote and drew the early solo Tubby issues, is the key creative force behind the character's development from Buell's unnamed background figure into the multi-layered, ego-driven protagonist of the solo series.
- Dark Horse Comics reprinted this issue in full color in 'Little Lulu's Pal Tubby: The Castaway and Other Stories' (2010), collecting all four Four Color Tubby try-outs (#381, #430, #444, #461) plus Tubby #5–6; Drawn & Quarterly also published a John Stanley Library Tubby volume in 2010.
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After the Van Snobbes have $50,000 in jewels stolen from their mansion, Tubby goes there in disguise to investigate. After causing a commotion there, he is ordered home and is punished by having to stay in his room. Late at night he awakens to see a lion apparently walking across his back fence. The next morning he sees Gloria going to pick wildflowers in the woods and warns her that there are lions in the area. She disregards him, but that evening comes the report that she is missing. Tubby grabs a chair, in the best lion-tamer tradition, and goes to the woods to find her.
Plot details indexed by the Grand Comics Database (CC BY-SA).
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