EH! #5 (JULY 1954)

 Once upon a time there was a comic book called MAD and upon that particular time it was pretty funny and popular and made money.  So then upon that time a lot of publishers wanted to get in on the action and, Lo! there was a plethora of humor comic books and magazines and God looked down upon them and said, "Eh!"  (This was in the days when the word "meh" had not been invented.)

Some of MAD's imitators were not too bad, a very few were good, and a lot of them were just scraping the bottom of the barrel.  Down there close to the barrel's bottom was Eh!, Charleton Comics attempt to join the party.  To be fair, Eh!'s idea of satire and humor was at a fourth-grade level, which could have been their target audience.  It's main news stand competitor, however, had a more sophisticated (that's not really the right word, but you know what I mean) approach to satire -- which is why MAD lasted until this year and Eh! lies forgotten in the dust of yesteryear.

So let's tke a look at Eh! #5, shall we?

In a riff on This Is Your Life, the show's host is desperate to find a subject for that week's show.  With no else to choose from, he eventually settles on Crazy Mike Schultz, a mass murderer who had escaped from Death Row.  The show ends with Crazy Mike in the electric chair.  Funny, huh?

An advertising company's researcher has come up with a new product by mixing dirt with earth -- DIRTH!  The demand for Dirth goes sky high and unscrupulous business men try to corner the market on the ingredients.

The Rhineghoul Pretzel Company decides to do something different for their Miss Rhineghoul 1954 beauty contest -- the winner will be the ugliest girl in the country!  The concept was unfunny back then and even more so in today's Me Too era.

An ad for a book titled How to Avoid the Draft comes up with such hints as a) enlist and b) close the window.

As you may tell, there's little in this issue I found worthwhile, from the strained "humor" to the second-rate artwork.  Even the little lagniappes placed throughout the comic book (such as the word "Milk" written on a cow's udder) fall flat.  On the plus (?) side, some of the girls are drawn with healthy mammaries.

Am I being too harsh?  Judge for yourself:


https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=74429&b=i