Tubby: The John Stanley Library
Drawing from a different run of Stanley’s comic book devoted to Little Lulu’s foremost foil than Dark Horse did for The Castaway and Other Stories (2010), D&Q offers one issue’s worth of Stanley’s unaided drawing of his creation and three more done by a third artist involved in the Lulu universe. White’s style is neither as zippy and loose as Stanley’s nor as rounded and comfy as Irving Tripp’s on Little Lulu. But it suits these stories, which, though shorter than the issue-filling adventures in Castaway, continue to showcase Stanley’s determination to indulge the sf, high fantasy, and harder mischief that his boy character allowed. (Note that Lulu never appears in Tubby. She always aces him, after all, and you can’t have the star outshone in his own vehicle.) Telepathic little guys from outer space show up thrice in this volume, and Wilbur Van Snobbe and the tough West Side Boys again join forces to crush Tubby (fat chance!). As delightful as any other part of the Lulu continuum. --Ray Olson