Comic book fanboys get all pervy over Boody Rogers (1904-1996). Surely his name is an alternative spelling for "booty," or "women's sex organs," they claim. And his signature character, the hillbilly baseball player Babe, was a prime example of "Good Girl Art," the boob-heavy, double entendre laden lascivious might-as-well-be-porn comics of the 1940s. In one issue, she gets literally saddled and ridden like a horse, a blatant S&M scene.
But let's take a closer look.
Gordon Rogers never explained why he adopted the name "Boody," but probably not because of the sexual connotation/ The slang meaning of the term, originally "buttocks," comes from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s (earliest print example is from 1926). Boody probably wasn't aware of it until later. Besides, he also published under the pen names Charles McGraw, Cliff Perill, and Tody Turnovah.
Babe was hardly his signature character. She appeared in an eleven-issue series in 1949-1950, just before Rogers retired. While she didn't wear a bra, her breasts were not the main appeal of the character: she was super-strong, an athlete who excelled at the male-dominated sports of baseball, football, and even wrestling. Plus she was the hero in humorous adventure stories: "Babe and the Dying King"; "Babe and the Magic Lamp"; "The Midnight Mystery."
Maybe she was even a role model to young girls; some of the ads suggest that the intended readership was female.
Just as Li'l Abner is uninterested in girls, Babe doesn't need or want a man in her life. One story features the sophisticated, effeminate Max Van Glamor, who is so attractive to girls that he can't even eat in a restaurant -- the waitresses keep trying to kiss him. When he discovers that Babe isn't interested, he immediately falls for her. Lots of gay subtexts there.
Rogers' signature character was Sparky Watts, who appeared in over 100 issues of Big Shot comics between 1940 and 1949 (although Joe Palooka clone Brass Knuckles usually got the cover).
A college student zapped with a super-power ray, Sparky sometimes fought Nazis, but more often had humorous fantasy adventures, such as shrinking to bug-size and almost being forced to marry the bug-queen.
He lived with the punch-drunk ex-boxer Slap Happy and the oddly effeminate scientist Doc. Probably some homoerotic subtexts there, but I've only read two stories, so it's hard to tell.
Other Boody chararters include Jasper Fudd, a hayseed who turns out to be a superb runner (with a superb physique); and the the teenage Dudley
Quite a lot of beefcake for "Good Girl Art."
Looking at issues of Big Shot, and the cover itself, Brass Knuckles wasn't a Palooka clone: he was an improbable middleweight boxer who was very skinny. Big Shot also included reprints of comic strips like Joe Palooka and Dixie Dugan, and the cover you show mixes Palooka with Knuckles (the guy on the right).
ReplyDeleteSparky Watts had his own title as well as appearing in Big Shot.
Sorry, I read the cover wrong. I thought the guy on the left was Brass Knuckles, and the line "You've got Joe Palooka worried" meant "You're so good, Joe Palooka is worried that you will surpass him as the world's greatest boxer."
DeleteBeefcake was actually pretty common in the Golden Age. Following Weissmuller's Tarzan, the urban male was more comfortable without a shirt. (Fairly common with country boys already, at least when working.)
ReplyDeleteEvery effeminate character was gay-coded. In the popular mind, if you were "not the marrying kind", you were that or a predator. (The latter one is why people interpret DC Comics sidekicks as romantically involved, even when they're explicitly family.)
The cool thing is, there were already so many ways to show a man without a shirt that were socially acceptable. Boxing being a biggie.