These are the last of the fake Gold Key TV comics I whipped up back in 2004. These two ran here April 15 and as you can see, by now I was making them as silly as possible. I don't recall if anyone wrote in to ask where they could secure a copy of the Ed Sullivan Show comic but someone may have. Believe nothing you read below — especially the part about writing in to tell me which other ones you'd like to read about…
I still have no idea what possessed Western Publishing to put out comic books based on The Ed Sullivan Show and 60 Minutes. A variety show and a news show?
I can almost see the Sullivan comic as they seem to have been interested in Topo Gigio, the little Italian mouse that appeared routinely on Ed's Sunday night variety show. But why did they think the comic book buying public would be interested in a strip about, as the cover says, "Jew Comedian Myron Cohen"? It's six very boring pages of Mr. Cohen just standing there, telling jokes about his relatives. Even at that, it's more entertaining than the three-page story about the plate spinner, the four-page trained seal act or the attempt to re-create in comic book form, a musical number by "British pop singing star Shani Wallis." The Beatles, who are advertised on the cover, appear in only a single-page gag that is really only about Ringo. (His drum set gets lost just before showtime so he winds up playing on the stomach of a tortoise.) Each strip is "introduced" by Ed Sullivan and either the letterer kept screwing up or someone thought it would capture Ed's personality to misspell the names of the acts he's introducing. The art for the comic was produced by the studio of Alberto Giolitti, who was best known for his work on Gold Key's Star Trek comic and Turok, Son of Stone. Giolitti worked in Italy so perhaps they felt he could best capture the essence of Topo Gigio…but he makes Myron Cohen look like a pterodactyl and in the one panel where Ed introduces "sports legend Billie Jean King" in the audience, she looks like George Takei. A very weird comic, indeed.
Even odder is the 60 Minutes comic, the interior of which resembles Gold Key comic books like Twilight Zone, Ripley's Believe It or Not and Boris Karloff's Tales of Mystery but with Mike Wallace and Morley Safer acting as hosts. They narrate allegedly-true crime tales which in the one issue were all written by Leo Dorfman. The three stories were illustrated by Jack Sparling, Jose Delbo and John Celardo. The most interesting (and least believable) is the first one in which Mike Wallace takes a film crew into an old mansion that is supposedly haunted. The other two are equally difficult to believe and the only redeeming feature of the comic is the one-pager in the back in which Andy Rooney (drawn by Winslow Mortimer) editorializes on how annoying it is to see TV shows turned into comic books. The comic that precedes his page proves that pretty conclusively.
That's all I have now. There are other great Gold Key adaptations and maybe I'll get to some of them one of these days. If I've missed your favorite, please write and tell me.