Halloween Plop!

I hit ya with a little bit of Plop! for our first (Weird) Sunday funnies edition (you can view it here) and promised you more info on that far-out fearsome funnybook. Ol' Groove keeps his promises (when he remembers 'em), so here's the skinny plus some cool covers and another spooky strip, to boot!

In early 1973, DC was running ads warning us that Plop! was coming. We didn't know what Plop! was, but we were definitely on the lookout. Plop! turned out to be the weirdest, wildest mag of twisted black gross-out humor we could imagine. Wanna hear the story about how it all began? Come closer, kiddies, and try not to get the furniture sticky with your candy-coated little fingers, okay?

In House of Mystery #202 (February, 1972), editor Joe Orlando (renowned as part of the E.C. gang back in the Fifties) ran a strange little strip by writer Steve Skeates and artist Sergio Aragones. With talent of that caliber, you knew it was going to be something special. "The Poster Plague" warned folks in a small town that Klop! was coming; and in the end it did--spelling disaster for the town. Darkly humorous disaster. The kind that makes you giggle in spite of yourself.

From there, Orlando pow-wowed with Skeates, Aragones, and then-DC publisher Carmine Infantino about doing an entire comic mag filled with gross-out, black humor. They kicked around several names and settled with Plop! Infantino had high hopes for the mag, publishing it as a full-length 36 page anthology with no ads for the same price as all the other comics on the rack (twenty cents at the time). He even hired humor/horror legend Basil Wolverton to do the covers (the back cover printed the image from the front cover larger and without copy). They decided to have their regular mystery mag hosts, Cain, Abel, and Eve host Plop!, and hired the best writers and artists around (including a few from the then-popular underground comix).

Plop! arrived on the stands in July of 73, fandom flipped out, man! It was a beautiful package, funny and gross as the comics code would allow, and unlike anything else out there at the time.
Plop! ran for twenty-four issues, ending August, 1976 as a much tamer mag, fifty-two pages (with ads) for fifty cents (regular sized comics were 25/30 cents at the time). Like many great ideas back in the Groovy Age, I suppose it was just a bit ahead of its time. But what fun we had while it was around!

Take, for instance, this gem from Plop! #4 (December, 1974) by Steve Skeates and artist (and legend) Frank Robbins..."The Last Laugh!"

How'd ya like that, Groove-ophiles? There's no way we could have a Halloween celebration without at least one axe-murderer, right? Right? Two more Halloween posts to go!