I'm not going to detail these titles individually...you folks who collect paperback books by publisher numbers can look them up, but why should you? I'll sell you mine! While moralist authorities were hounding serious and genuine erotica publishers with obscenity laws, this is the sexist sludge you were served.
All above, as far as I am prepared to check, were published between 1948 and 1955, though most of them went into repeated printings. You simply can NOT over estimate the lacking brain power of the American public. They sold like hot pizza slices at the corner of St. Marks Place and Third Avenue at 1:00 AM. Consequently, you can not enter a thrift store today without finding one or two with shot bindings down on the bottom shelf...usually crammed behind piles of "man of destiny" books by the last cycle of Presidential candidates.
I suppose in the industry they were called "gag" books and you will. Poorly printed, poorly executed and shipped by the crate to bus stations, rest stops and dimestores. The "authors" were cartoonists all working "aboveground" in legitimate popular general circulation magazines. Some gained considerable recognition, though I hesitate to say any gained fame. They are all over 100 pages and each contains almost the same 100 jokes, all rewritten and redrawn by the cartoonists. I guess this is the junk adults were reading when they were trying to stop Bill Gaines from publishing Mad Magazine.
Some are anthologies. Once in a while a good cartoonist will slip in by mistake. Bill Wenzel appears, and in fact he had a dozen or so of his own published. Nearly all claim to be NEW or the YEAR'S BEST but they seldom are. They couldn't just say "collection of recycled cartoons" or you might go buy a real book. I have one here titled "Pardon my Blooper" and in small print reads "Former Title Your Slip is Showing!" I especially like the "beef on the hoof" book on top. Seems to me the women against porn ladies should have been outside the door of Avon, not Larry Flynt.
The ones here are purely representative. There are hundreds. Wherever you will find a beat-up Mickey Spillane or an Earl Stanley Gardner or one of John D. Macdonald's colors, you will find bad gag jokes for mass consumption. Allow me to name a few guilty parties: Penguin, Dell, Avon, Gold Medal, Crest, Pocket...you know. Your basic liberal media conglomerates.
Set of crappy joke books, circa 1955.
NOTE: A formerly loyal follower has written to tear me a new one, as follows: "Seriously?!? Stan and Jan Berenstain?!? Maybe not good as cartoonists go, but certainly more famous than Bill Wenzel. He never had a theme song written and sung by Leeanne Womack. Okay, maybe they can't draw bears, but I don't think you can argue that they aren't successful."
"BTW, if you want to get rid of that Marital Blitz book, I'll take it. Really!"
Dull Tool Dim Bulb Books HERE
