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Editorial Review Product Description
THE LATEST TITLE IN THE JOHN STANLEY LIBRARY DESIGNED BY THE CARTOONIST SETH
In the early to mid-1960s, John Stanley turned his attention to drawing and writing his own series rather than working with the already established licensed characters he is most well known for, such as Little Lulu.D+Qhas embarked on an archival series of Stanley’s comics, including Melvin Monster, Around the Block with Dunc and Loo, Kookie, and Thirteen Going on Eighteen.
Thirteen Going on Eighteen focuses on the friendship and rivalry of two teenage girls, Val and Judy. Each comic is a darkly hilarious look at the socialmaneuverings and betrayals of the teen set.Stanley’s strippeddown approach perfectly captures the fever pitch of the teenage years. He creates a teenage sitcom and turns it into an anguished character study. Customer Reviews (5) 
Stanley's teen comic -- a real revelation!
Drawn & Quarterly has already done well enough by John Stanley with its collections of the creator's work on Dell's NANCY and MELVIN MONSTER. What those earlier volumes (especially the latter) lacked was a sense of perspective for those of us who are still catching up with Stanley's LITTLE LULU work and want to know how, exactly, these lesser-known efforts compare with that justly celebrated series. For its third (and thickest) STANLEY LIBRARY offering, D&Q makes up for past omissions by fronting the first nine issues of THIRTEEN "GOING ON EIGHTEEN" -- by far, Stanley's most successful original creation -- with an essay by cartoonist and graphic designer Seth, who ranks this 1960s series among the best "mainstream" comics ever produced. As things turned out, I would have liked the collection under any circumstances, but I appreciate Seth's pointing out how THIRTEEN ties in with themes inherent in Stanley's earlier work.
I've never been a big fan of "teenage" comics, but THIRTEEN already ranks as one of my two favorites of that genre, along with Harvey's BUNNY. Those familiar with both will probably laugh, but I'm serious. I like BUNNY, that well-meaning and completely addle-pated Valentine to the groovy, ginchy late 60s, precisely because it's so truly bizarre. (That, plus the fact that uncredited artist Hy Eisman, bless him, didn't fall into the trap of ripping off ARCHIE character designs, as Tower, Marvel, and DC so conspicuously did during that same period.) THIRTEEN, by contrast, is much more down-to-earth and believable, tracing as it does the lives and loves of a pair of occasionally lovable, occasionally aggravating teenage girls. Stereotyping of the ARCHIE variety is nowhere to be seen, though I'm sure Stanley must have received some pressure from the folks at Dell to compete directly with the Riverdale behemoth.
Stanley takes a while to get into a groove with Val and Judy, his teen stars. Issues #1-#2 of THIRTEEN, drawn by Tony Tallarico, are easily the weakest of the nine reproduced here. The gags aren't great, and Tallarico -- an artist about whom I've literally never heard a kind word -- draws petite blond Val and chunky brunette Judy as though they're somewhere around 11 or 12. Stanley himself takes over the drawing chores with #3, and the extra burden, oddly enough, appears to have liberated him a bit. Funny supporting characters begin to appear -- Judy's annoying boyfriend-for-lack-of-a-better-alternative Wilbur, an equally slothful loser named Charlie -- and Val's next-door neighbor Billy, who rotates between the roles of "good friend" and fallback date option, develops a wickedly impish sense of humor. Frenetic action and controlled hysteria of the LULU variety become a standard ingredient of most plots. Reminiscent of LULU, as well, is the book's decidedly distaff-friendly perspective (no big surprise, given that teenage girls were the target audience). Val may be a "drama queen" -- her occasional bouts of weeping and wailing on her bed are hilarious -- and Judy a bit mean-spirited, but they shine in contrast to the totem-like Paul Vayne (a "dreamboat" who becomes Val's first semi-serious steady), the calculatedly "kooky" Billy, and the utterly hopeless Wilbur and Charlie. To be sure, everyone has good and bad moments in these pages, but the girls -- including Val's older sister Evie, who sometimes functions as goad, sometimes as sounding-board, for her flightier younger sister -- come off better most of the time. Sometimes too much better, as I'll explain below.
THIRTEEN is very much a work powered by the "gas fumes" of the 1950s, those pleasant (for the most part) "happy days" of yore.That in itself is a reason for me to enjoy the series; though the title's first issue appeared in 1961, it radiates that 50s sense of cultural contentment that drives the Left so crazy about any era over which it does not hold hegemony. Don't be fooled by the well-groomed setting, though. In this title, Stanley has some rather raw things to say about the quest for love, suggesting that, while unrequited love may be painful, requited love may be just as harsh. Val's relationship with Paul Vayne ends up causing no small amount of stress; she worries about losing him and is not a little nervous about what her relationship with Paul might do to her tie with Billy. Judy, less attractive than Val even after she suddenly drops a few dozen pounds, is desperate for the "right guy" but winds up settling for Wilbur, an oaf who refuses to pay for Judy on dates and insists on wearing a filthy hat everywhere he goes. Even Evie gets the fuzzy end of the lollipop when her steady throws her over (and we don't even get to see it "live"). Sure, some may carp that Val and Judy care more about impressing boys than they do about maximizing their career options or "finding their voices," but the former is where the "funny" is, no matter what era you're living in.
As with most Stanley collections I've read, the collective effect of reading Stanley stories is more significant than the impact of any one story. I do have some favorites in this collection, though. "A Maiden's Prayer" finds Val trying to enjoy a picnic with Paul Vayne even as she desperately tries to steer him away from trees, walls, and any other places where "Val and [fill in the blank]" carvings are present. We do get an odd moment when lightning strikes a shelter where Paul and Val are hiding from the rain. The way Stanley depicts the accident, the duo are lucky to have survived unscathed! Next thing you know, turkeys will start flying (yes, Mr. Stanley, I remember well that goof from a LULU story). The stories in which Val tries to dodge the unwanted attentions of a bespectacled "admirer" named "Sticky Stu" bring back wistful memories of a time when I, myself, was enamored with a high-school classmate and always had to be around her. I'd like to think that I was better company than the poker-faced Stu, however.
THIRTEEN does have one feature that I don't care for at all. Thanks to those strange postal regulations that gifted us with GYRO GEARLOOSE backup features in UNCLE $CROOGE and GOOFY quickies in DONALD DUCK, the title concludes every issue with a brief story starring Judy Junior (who looks like a younger, shorter, and even chunkier Judy) and a little boy, Jimmy Fuzzi. I've read those GYRO and GOOFY stories, however, and Judy Junior is no Gyro or Goofy. What she is is a painfully pushy, overbearing brat whose apparent sole purpose in life is to make Jimmy miserable. Sure, Stanley wanted to make the girls the star characters of the title, but this is going too far. Seth claims that he could read a "whole book" of these supposedly hilarious tales. They may work for him, but, for me, they simply seem cruel -- like an endless string of Lucy-pulls-the-football-away-from-Charlie-Brown gags without the pathos (and infrequency) that made those PEANUTS gags memorable (and tolerable). At least in LULU stories, put-upon characters generally get a chance for revenge; Jimmy almost never does. To make matters worse, the characters constantly refer to one another by name, a gambit which gets to be like Chinese water torture after a while. Stanley's LULU stories had an edge to them; the JUDY JUNIOR tales hone that edge down to razor-sharpness and then ask you to perch on same. I'll pass.
In his Introduction, Seth comments that Stanley wasn't greatly affected by the oncoming post-Camelot cultural tsunami in later issues of THIRTEEN, apart from an occasional Beatles reference. But then, Stanley's comics always seem to take place at a certain remove from the topical concerns of the real world -- all the better for Stanley to concentrate on his plots and characterizations. The fact that he can make this approach work in a quasi-realistic comic like this one is a considerable tribute to his talents. I'm definitely on board for future collections of this title -- and, if Dark Horse or someone else would only agree to publish the collected BUNNY, my "teen comics dream," such as it is, would be complete.
"Thirteen Going on Eighteen" adds up to a thousand laughs
One of the truisms of comic book publishing history has also become something of a running joke: romance and teen romance comics were usually the work of middle-aged men. But that didn't have to be such a bad attribute, as John Stanley proved with his "Thirteen Going on Eighteen" series for Dell, the first third of which is reprinted in this chunky volume from Drawn & Quarterly.
Dell needed strong series after their break from Western Publishing, and John Stanley was among their most reliable talents, if not one of their quirkiest. Anybody who could turn Little Lulu from a pleasant magazine panel strip into a long-running masterpiece was certainly a good candidate to breathe new life into the teen humor genre. Stanley started with a small ensemble of teenaged girls: the eighteen-year-old Evie and her precocious, boy-crazy kid sister Val, who constantly teased one another about their respective romances and needled one another as siblings will. Val's confidante was her best friend Judy, who starts out as a rotund boy-chaser but eventually shrinks into a slimmer, athletic boy-chaser.
The first two issues don't work since Stanley's scripts are illustrated by Tony Tallarico, whose semi-realistic renderings make Stanley's humor seem sadistic and mean-spirited. Once Stanley took over the art chores, in a style that recalls his "Tubby" stories, the imagery and humor gibe with each other. The characters and their relationships with one another become more sophisticated, much warmer, and increasingly funnier. As designer "Seth" notes in his introduction, each issue became dominated by a story arc that was broken into several short stories, each complete by themselves yet part of longer storyline that comprised most of each magazine. "Sideline humor" was provided via gag strips with Val and Judy or the peculiar "Judy Jr." "Judy Jr." was a miniature version of the earlier Judy, but her personality was domineering and nearly monstrous as she repeatedly exploited and terrorized her nominal best friend, Jimmy Fuzzi. "Judy Jr." has all the resourcefulness of Little Lulu, but none of her charm, and a little of her goes a long way.
This series has been begging for revival for many decades, and for that reason alone, this volume (presumably the first of three) is commendable. I have no problem with the reproduction of the art (remembering the hideous quality of the color scans in the "Spirit" magazines from the early '80s). I wish the publishers could have at least included a table of contents or numbered the pages for reference purposes, and I still hope that some future volume will include at least miniature reproductions of all the covers. The back cover sticker may be well-intentioned, but like most stickers, it eventually peels away and leaves a sticky mess behind.
The contents of this volume, however, are pure gold. If Val and Judy lack the instant recognition factor of the Archie gang, they compensate with their humanity and amusing repartee. This is classic American comic book humor, and it's wonderful to have it back on the store shelves.
Funny, smart, literate, this one has it all!
John Stanley may have been the finest writer ever to work in comic books, and his drawing style has a boldness and simplicity that stamps it as unique. A few of these stories don't work as well as the others, but the general level is extremely high and raises the question of whether the short-short form (5-8 pages) isn't hugely underrated in today's world of sprawling multi-part series and graphic novels. Seth has done a gorgeous job of art design on this book (and the other projected volumes in this series from Drawn and Quarterly, the Canadian publisher which always does a beautiful job of book production). Seth's introduction is astute and judicious and not to be missed. Treat yourself to this one!
Big volume in the JSL reprinting his "teen comic"
Well, here we are with the third in Drawn & Quarterly's "John Stanley Library".This is the first volume reprinting Stanley's teen comic "Thirteen Going on Eighteen", about 2 teen girls, Val & Judy.
Unlike the prior 2 volumes in the Library, Melvin Monster & Nancy, this volume is BIG, as it reprints *9* comics from that series, #1-9.This, as compared to the 3 for the Melvin volume and 5 for Nancy.If they stay this way with the rest of their reprint of Thirteen, then we will see a total of 3 volumes reprinting that comic.
Another change from the previous volumes is a several page intro by Seth (actually a reprint of an edited article published in "The Comics Journal"), the series designer, on the comic.I guess since they figured the main audience for this volume would most likely be adults and not kids, they figured an intro would work.Sadly, the 'bio' on Stanley at the end is no better then the previous volumes.
UNFORTUNATELY, D&Q AGAIN, did not reprint the covers from the original comics.I (and others) continue to feel this is a mistake, especially as the covers for Thirteen were in many ways 'one page' comics in their own right.I really with D&Q wouldn't do this.
As to the comics.Most focus on the 2 main characters, teen girls Val and Judy.Judy actually changed, being more pudgy at first, then becoming as slime as Val.Also, her hair color and style changed from comic to comic, until it settled down to a set style around the 4th issue or so.This may have been due to Dell wishing them to be more of a "Betty & Veronica" vipe.Strangely, there are not that many other characters.We occasionally see Val older sister, Evie, and even rarer her mom.We met Val & Judy's 'boyfriends'.But as compared to "Archie", we don't see the large number of secondary characters.
Another standalone character in these comics is "Judy, Jr.", who has her own, standalone stories in the comics.Its not clear the connection between Judy Jr and Val & Judy.Is she Judy at a younger age?Or a little sister?Her hair color changes from blonde to brown to black, matching Judy's hair, and also settles into the same style.Because of that I have to think she is a younger Judy (like "Little Archie" is "Archie" as a kid).In many ways she is similiar to other Stanley kid characters like Tubby, but its a little more obnoxious and self-centered then others he's done.
Artwork seems to change over the issues.I assume this is due to change in artist.The first issues are more 'tight', being done by Tony Tallarico over Stanley's layouts, but later issues seem more loose and less finished.Personally, I have never carred for Tallarico's work, and I find some of what he does in the first issue annoying.As Stanley worked out his scrips in a loose comic style, is this due to Dell using his outlined work as the final artwork?Don't know.I actually don't care for his later brush style work.I guess I just prefer the tight, finished work of Lulu et al.
If you a fan of Stanley's work, you should enjoy this.It's a different pace from his prior work with younger characters (Lulu and Nancy).I look forward to further volumes.D&Q has already announced the 2nd volumes of Melvin & Nancy.Hopefully we'll see the 2nd Thirteen volume later this year as well.Also planned are his contemporary series on "Dunc & Loo" (two teen boys) and the hippie "Kookie".Be interesting to see those as well.
Virtuoso writing and art
John Stanley, like Carl Barks, labored in near anonymity for DELL Comics throughout the fifties and sxities, but his work stands the test of time. His Little Lulu and Tubby comics are immortal, but this obscure teen comic deserves wider circulation. These are almost zen-like in their simplicity, but perfect examples of comics that are almost easier to read than not to. The story of two qurky, boy crazy (well, sort of) teenage girls, these characters are long on personality and drawn with utmost (if ever changing) precision. Recommended to anyone who'd like to introduce a young girl to to comics that are far better than Betty and Veronica!
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