There Are Dingbats On Danger Street!

This week at the Dojo we'll be taking a long lingering look at one of the absolute finest comic book publications in as long as I can remember -- Dingbat Love. John Morrow and his minions at Twomorrows Publishing have been working diligently to tell the history of the comic book world, taking the lore, the first hand accounts and more to develop a detailed look at one of the 20th Century's most cherished pop culture venues. And especially the work of Jack "King" Kirby has been the focus since that's where Morrow started on The Jack Kirby Collector, a mag I've been getting regularly since around issue six or thereabouts. Morrow and I seem to adore the same period of the King's work, his time at DC and in that spirit Morrow has done us all a great service by bringing out the last of the Kirby work tucked away for a time in the files at DC and now spread across the world in collections here and yon.

Of interest today is the kid gang dubbed "The Dingbats of Danger Street", a quartet of comic book cliches quickened by Kirby's innate energy and blithe spirit. Racial stereotypes can be maddening, but truth told in earlier times they were clicked on with aplomb for shortcut storytelling reasons and the Dingbats are are a prime example. "Good Looks" is just that, the nominal leader of the gang and presumed primary setting against which the the more peculiar members are measured. His right hand seems to be "Krunch" a youngster who knows his own strength and is not afraid to use it. A third member is "Non-Fat", a young African-American who likes food though his slight frame suggest otherwise. The fourth and final member is "Bananas", an Asian-American who comes frighteningly close to those vintage stereotypes from days of the "Greatest Generation".

The team was created when DC wanted Kirby and Joe Simon to partner up again and create a kid gang like they did in the Golden Age with The Newsboy Legion and The Boy Commandos. The guys were interested, time having passed and so they agreed to each create his own team. Kirby gave us Dingbats and Simon gave us The Green Team. The glaring differences in the two concepts make you see at once what the wonderful sauce was when they worked together, one guy with a sense of a larger world and positive outlook and the other a man of great feeling for little guy and those in the out of the way places.

In 1st Issue Special #6 we meet the Dingbats for the first time. (Non-Fat looking a little off model since despite being clearly an African-American character is given white flesh tones. DC what was wrong with you?) They are minding their own business when suddenly a villain all dressed in red dashes through the street. "Jumping Jack" as he's called is  quickly subdued by the cops and one cop in particular named Mullins who seems to "grok" the Dingbats. But as they haul him away the Dingbats find a cylinder with film and suspect it's the motivation for the ruckus. They are right as Jack's partner "The Gasser" appears and takes it from them. We get to see all the Dingbats in action more or less in this wild introductory tale, but it's suggested that each of them might have serious reasons to be a "Dingbat".

In the first of two more issues of the comic not published we find out what makes "Good Looks" tick. Turns out he's an orphan, made so when the hit man Snake-Meat shot both is parents before his eyes and tried unsuccessfully to do the same for him. He's spent the intervening years look for the killer and in this story he finds him and is seconds from shooting him when Mullins talks him out of it. We read his tragic story and we get to see justice served, at least in part.

 The third issue produced by Kirby gives us the "origin" of  "Krunch". Turns out he's the heir to a fortune and his uncle a bird-nosed Dickensian baddie named "Birdly Mudd" wants to keep control of him. The authorities wrongly allow Mudd to take charge of Krunch (whose real name is "Wilfrid Mudd" who using his strongman driver to enforce things, throws the boy into a cellar room infested with rats and haunted by an odd robotic arm. Clearly the intent is to do away with the youngster to get the cash. Mullins breaks in and saves the day, but not before Krunch takes a punch or ten at the driver who abused him.

Presumably the next two issues would've told us the backstories for "Non-Fat" and "Bananas",  but they don't appear to exist. The Dingbats fell into the vast well of undeveloped comics from the Bronze Age and have been hiding out ever since in the collections of fans across the world. It's neat to finally have them in my hands under two sturdy covers. Reading new Jack Kirby stories is not something a comic book fan should ever take lightly. 

Thanks John for doing this for all of us. More from this tome later this week. 

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