Funny Stuff #18
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeFunny Stuff #18 (cover date February 1947, published by National Comics Publications) marks the first appearance of Dunbar Dodo and Fennimore Frog — the duo who would ultimately grow so popular that DC renamed the entire Funny Stuff title after them with issue #80. The pairing introduced a comic-animal dynamic built on a slow-witted dodo being perpetually out-schemed by an opportunistic frog, a formula elastic enough to sustain over a decade of stories and even earn a Silver Age revival in 1982's Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew. The issue also carries a Captain Tootsie advertisement strip — one of the earliest examples of a branded superhero advertisement running inside a DC comic — illustrating how Golden Age publishers blurred the line between editorial content and commercial promotion in ways that would become a template for decades of in-comic ad strips.
In Funny Stuff #18 (1947), a small child’s accident sends a glider hurtling into the sky—only Captain Tootsie’s incredible strength saves the day by lunging to catch the tow rope and bring the craft back down. With art by C. C. Beck and inks by Pete Costanza, this lighthearted adventure features the whimsical hero in a moment of heroic flair, all captured in a vibrant cover by Saul Kessler.
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The Dodo and the Frog feature was co-created by writer and layout artist Woody Gelman and finished artist Otto Feuer, two veterans of the Fleischer/Famous animation studios who had migrated into comic books after their departure from the animation industry. Gelman handled scripts and page layouts while Feuer supplied finished pencils and inks, a division of labor the two maintained throughout the feature's long run. The Captain Tootsie advertisement strip appearing in this issue was produced by the C.C. Beck studio — the same operation responsible for Fawcett's Captain Marvel line — and written originally by Rod Reed, with art duties later shared by Beck and his inker Pete Costanza; the strip had been running across numerous publishers' titles since 1943.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Cover date: February 1947; published by National Comics Publications (DC Comics) as part of the ongoing Funny Stuff anthology series (Volume 1, issue #18).
- First appearance of Dunbar Dodo and Fennimore Frog, the duo collectively known as 'The Dodo and the Frog,' created by writer Woody Gelman and artist Otto Feuer.
- The Dodo and the Frog feature ran in Funny Stuff for years and became so central to the title that DC renamed the series Dodo and the Frog beginning with issue #80 in 1954, giving the characters their own dedicated title through 1957.
- Dunbar Dodo and Fennimore Frog were later revived in DC's 1982 series Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew #3, where Fennimore reappeared as the giant monster Frogzilla.
- The Captain Tootsie advertisement strip in this issue featured the C.C. Beck studio's candy-sponsored superhero alongside his young sidekick Rollo (one of three Secret Legion kids, along with Fatso and Fisty).
- Captain Tootsie was created in 1943 by C.C. Beck and writer Rod Reed as a one-page adventure advertisement for Tootsie Roll candies; the character ran in ad pages across dozens of publishers' comic books through the mid-1950s.
- Woody Gelman went on to become a major figure beyond comics, co-creating Bazooka Joe for Topps and later founding Nostalgia Press, which pioneered quality reprints of vintage comic strips in hardcover format.
- Otto Feuer, co-creator of the Dodo and Frog feature, was a Germany-born artist trained at Cooper Union who worked at Fleischer Studios before transitioning to comic books and later founded his own animation studio, Animotion Associates, in 1955.
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