Jack Benny comics?

[IronHeadRat]

Hey there, I've seen the Three Stooges and Jackie Gleason comics here on the site. Does anyone know if there were any Jack Benny comics? I've become a fan of his from watching his late-night repeats, and he was in show business for decades so there should probably have been something. I didn't see his name in the main page's listing but maybe someone more familiar with the entire archive remembers seeing him somewhere here?

[Yoc]

No such animal IHR.
The best place to find such info is on the GCD site here -
http://www.comics.org/

Searching for character and you will see Jack Benny made very few appearances in GA comics.
http://www.comics.org/character/name/Jack%20Benny/sort/alpha/
True Comics #69 is the only story with him.  Sadly it's one of the few we are missing.

[crashryan]

That's interesting. It never occurred to me that I hadn't ever seen Jack Benny in a comic book. I'm sure someone must have pitched a comic to Benny's handlers. Maybe they figured comics wouldn't add to Benny's stature (he was after all one of the top comedians of his time). Or maybe they thought comics were beneath him. It's all pure speculation. I'd like to have seen how artists would have treated Jack, his supporting players, and his universe.

[JonTheScanner]

A jack Benny comic probably wold have made more sense than a Jerry Lewis or Bob Hope comic. IIRC Benny had a pretty established persona and regular supporting characters, such as Rochester, that could have been used in stories.

[Yoc]

The WB cartoon with Benny and gang as mice showed it could easily have been done.  I was surprised I liked the Bob Hope comics as much as I did when I finally read one.  I'm not a big fan of his but the art looked not bad and they do work.

-Yoc

[crashryan]

This thread started me fantasizing about what a Jack Benny comic would have looked like. Can you imagine a DC version by Bob Oksner? Or by Neal Adams during his "Jerry Lewis" days? Though by then few comics-age kids would have known who Benny was. Benny had appeared with his cast on TV, so readers would have known what Mary, Don, Rochester, et al. looked like. For that reason I figure the comic would have been drawn in a crossover cartoony/straight style. Dell might have published a Jack Benny comic during its L. B. Cole era, when they produced a lot of anachronistic titles. But it probably would have been drawn by Bill Fraccio and Tony Tallarico. *sigh*

[Geo (RIP)]

True Comics #69 has a story about Jack Benny, the only other I could find is a Doc Savage #15 has something about Jack Benny. Does that help?

Geo

[IronHeadRat]

Thanks guys! I was just thinking about how tailor-made his characters and situations would have been for comics, and it's surprising that it seems there weren't any. I did look up that True Comics 69, I was able to find four of the five pages. It's interesting and really sounds like stuff he'd say but Rochester looks pretty weird. The Batman/Benny crossover at comics.org is great, a little digging revealed that it was part of a seven-week storyline in the Batman newspaper comic. Looks like IDW is publishing a HC edition of those in July, may have to get a copy!

[Geo (RIP)]

Glad we could help you out on this, good luck.

Geo

[darkmark (RIP)]

A Jack Benny comic?

(pause)

That's the most riDICulous thing I ever heard of! ;-)

[Yoc]

Hehehe

[paw broon]

For some weird reason, I thought there had been a Jack Benny strip in either Film Fun or Radio Fun.  But no.  Wrong again.   However, thanks to comic expert, Phil Rushton on comicsuk, the only place he appeared was in the reprint of the Batman newspaper strip which appeared in Smash (British weekly comic) and if you click this link and scroll down a bit more than half way, you'll find the panel where the editor had to explain to British kids just who Mr. Benny was, plus the front page of the comic:-
http://comicsuk.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=148&t=3321&start=165#p77015
Not a lot of help but it perhaps adds some perspective.