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| Judge Hallick is the weirdest courtroom program currently in syndication. |
Among the many entertaining interstitial features in old Lev A.Gleason comics was Famous Eccentrics, a recurring one-pager which documented the weirdest weirdos in history, although it somehow left out comic book publishers. Probably because the feature wasn't called "Fucking Lunatics In Charge Of These Books."
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| It seems thematically unusual to call a cannibal with a body count in the multiple-thousands "eccentric"... |
What constituted "eccentric," particularly in a medium which consistently dealt with costumed creeps and masked nutcases of all varieties? Everything from wealthy weirdos to horrible murderers. Gwenddoleu, described in the strip above as a Scottish cannibal, was very likely referring to a Welsh king with an incidental connection to the myth of King Arthur, but it worked out better to make him a crazy Scot in some kind of vaudeville Italian immigrant costume. So what I'm suggesting is
these may not have been very well-researched.
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| Cleopatra is a real rich vein of material for this strip ... |
Comments
"Believe It or Not" still runs today, and it lists goofy but believable things. My aunt and uncle back in the day had a book collecting old Ripley strips. He would just make it all up. The only one I remember was about Chinese guys who would light your way home with a candle. That they put in the HOLE they'd drilled in their FOREHEAD. I was "Eww, gross!" and then thought "That makes no sense." The candle was shown pointing straight up (and the guy was smiling). Wouldn't the candle drip hot wax into his eyes? Shouldn't it come out at an angle instead? Shouldn't the guy be dead? How is this better than just HOLDING THE DANG CANDLE?
Yeah, let me get a Maglite trepanned into my head, what could be the downside.