| "Mice
Business," MELVIN MONSTER Number 3 (December 1965) story, layouts, finished artwork: John Stanley MELVIN MONSTER marked John Stanley's long-overdue return to writing and drawing comics. And, for the first time since a 1951 issue of LITTLE LULU, Stanley was also allowed to sign his work. Freed from decades of anonymity, Stanley created a series in touch with the popular "monster comedy" of TV's THE MUNSTERS and THE ADDAMS FAMILY. There, however, all similarities cease. The TV sitcoms wedded macabre characters and settings with standard (and harmless) sitcom fare. MELVIN is a brooding, dark and often disturbing series. With Dell's comics free of the censorship that strangled other publishers, a dark sensibility such as Stanley's could run rampant without fear or restraint. There's enough in this six-page story to keep an army of psycho- analysts busy for a week. Melvin's childhood is indeed monstrous. His parents are textbook examples of negative archetypes. The abusive, violent personality of Melvin's "Baddy" is countered by his completely passive-aggressive (and symbolically faceless) "Mummy," making the sweet-natured boy monster's world a dangerous, uncertain one. As with PETERKIN POTTLE, this series has a lion's share of clever situations, belly-laughs, playful language and genre parody, but its joys come with a price. Both series reflect the fact that John Stanley was a lifelong suffer- er of depression -- "ever since I was 17," as he noted in a late letter to a fan. His depressive personality may account for both the manic nature of his comedy and the growing bleakness in his work after 1955. Yet Stanley was skeptical of possible cures for his ailment. In a 1993 letter he wrote: I don't believe in psychiatrists or pills--nobody can tell you what to do, or how to conduct your life. Like any physical sickness, you just have to let depression run its course until its goes away. Stanley's
stubbornness, or his refusal to accept therapeutic help, must have made
his life an often unhappy one. But perhaps writing and drawing comics was
Stanley's version of therapy. These innocent little "kiddie
comics" house a plethora of emotional and psychological shadings,
scenes of trauma, repression, frustration, loss of self--issues that his
young readers faced daily in the classroom, on the playground, and in
their neighborhood. |