Little Lulu #261
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeLittle Lulu #261 (October 1980) is a document of the very end of an era for one of American comics' most enduring humor titles. By this point Western Publishing had withdrawn entirely from the newsstand, and issues like this one reached readers only through sealed Whitman multi-packs sold at toy stores, department stores, and drug stores — a radically different retail model that sharply curtailed the run's visibility and survivorship. The issue therefore sits at the intersection of two significant publishing histories: the long arc of Little Lulu herself, a character who first appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in 1935 and spent more than three decades as one of the best-selling humor comics in the country, and the twilight of Western/Gold Key's comic-publishing operation, which would cease entirely by 1984. Its scarcity is a direct artifact of that collapsing distribution infrastructure, making it a concrete piece of evidence about how the Bronze Age funnybook market contracted in real time.
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After creator Marjorie Henderson Buell sold the rights to Western Publishing upon her retirement in the early 1970s, the title was rechristened simply Little Lulu with issue #207 (September 1972). When Mattel acquired Western in 1979, the merged company abandoned the returnable newsstand market — where losses from unsold copies had become unsustainable — and funneled its remaining comic output exclusively through non-returnable Whitman-branded multi-packs. Issue #261, published in October 1980, was produced under precisely those conditions: a Whitman-logo edition sold in a sealed bag alongside two other comics, with story and art credits that remain unverified in the Grand Comics Database. Irving Tripp, the artist most closely associated with the franchise since 1949, retired from Dell/Western in 1982, meaning this issue falls within the final years of his long tenure on the property.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published October 1980 by Western Publishing under the Whitman imprint (cover identifier: 90028-011); 36 pages, full color.
- Contains five stories: 'Annie's Car Wash,' 'Snobby's Secret,' 'All in Pun,' and 'The Cute Recruit' featuring Little Lulu, plus 'Tall Story' starring Witch Hazel & the Little Scarecrow Boy.
- Distributed exclusively in sealed three-comic Whitman multi-packs sold through non-traditional retail outlets (toy stores, department stores, drug stores) — not available on the traditional newsstand.
- This pre-pack-only distribution model, adopted after Mattel's 1979 purchase of Western Publishing, applies to all Little Lulu issues from roughly mid-1980 onward.
- Story and art credits for this specific issue are listed as unknown in the Grand Comics Database — a common documentation gap for late-period Whitman titles.
- Little Lulu as a character debuted in the Saturday Evening Post on February 23, 1935, created by Marjorie Henderson Buell; the comic book series traced back to Dell's Four Color anthology before graduating to a dedicated title in 1948.
- The series ran through issue #268 before Western discontinued its entire comics line in 1984, making #261 one of the final two dozen issues ever published.
- Irving Tripp, the principal artist on Little Lulu comics from 1949 onward, remained on staff at Dell/Western until 1982 — he was still active at the time this issue was produced.
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