Washable Jones and the Shmoos

Art Helfant’s Washable Jones and the Shmoos, launched by Toby Press in 1953, is a single-issue oddity that blends the era’s fascination with cute, merchandisable characters (the Shmoos, from Al Capp’s Li’l Abner) into a standalone comic. Helfant both wrote and illustrated this brief, self-contained story, making it a tidy snapshot of 1950s licensed-comedy comics. Though it only ran for one issue, it stands as a curious artifact of how popular cartoon icons were spun off into their own short-lived titles.