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VARIANT BACK COVERS ON LITTLE LULU COMIC BOOKS

The OVERSTREET GUIDE provides only scanty documentation of these variant back covers. At FOUR COLOR it says "Issues beginning with #710? were printed with and without ads on back cover." (Issue #710 of the one-shots probably came out in mid-1956.) At DELL GIANT the GUIDE says "All issues printed with & without ad on back cover." It seems that the GUIDE means this to apply only to comics which actually bear the title DELL GIANT, and not to the other giant-format Dell comics which OVERSTREET exasperatingly groups in with the truly-titled DELL GIANTs--but in any case there definitely are some giant-format Dell comics, not in the actual "DELL GIANT"-titled series, which do possess variant back covers.

A phenomenon like this is particularly difficult for individual comics fans to research, since it requires comparison of two or more copies of each issue involved. As a "baby step" toward someone perhaps eventually studying variant back covers across the entire Dell Comics realm, several years ago a number of us Little Lulu fans undertook a comparison of the back covers of our Lulu books, admittedly a small microcosm within Delldom. We also solicited this same information from other Lulu fans via the fanzines The Stanley Steamer and The HoLLywood Eclectern.

As a result, we have the list below. Since all of the LITTLE LULU and TUBBY one-shot issues appeared well before 1956, the only Lulu-related books possibly involved with the variant back cover phenomenon were probably among the "giant" issues. Accordingly, this list shows the Lulu giants from the earliest through 1963, in chronological order. Following each issue is a description of its known back cover(s). Gag strips are denoted by "g-" with the number of panels in the strip(s), so, for example, "g-1" is one big panel (like a typical front cover). The issues now known to have variant back covers are preceded by "#".

(It was discovered that for DELL GIANTs #42 and #50, the variety with the back cover ad also had another ad somewhere else in the book replacing some other item. This is noted in the list.)

(Some conventional abbreviations have been used for titles; e.g., "LL&WH" is (MARGE'S) LITTLE LULU AND WITCH HAZEL, "LLT" is (MARGE'S) LITTLE LULU TUBBY, etc.)

   LLT ANNUAL #1 (1953)  (g-1) 
   LLT ANNUAL #2 (1954)  (g-1) 
   LL ON VACATION #1 (1954)  (g-1) 
   LL& HER SPECIAL FRIENDS #3 (1955)  (g-1) 
   LL& HER FRIENDS #4 (1956)  (g-1) 
#  T& HIS CLUBHOUSE PALS #1 (1956)  (g-1/ad for Trix Cereal) 
#  LL&T AT SUMMER CAMP #5 (1957)  (g-1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1/ad for Wrigley's gum) 
#  LL&T HALLOWEEN FUN #6 (1957)  (homemade mask/ad for Wrigley's gum) 
#  LL&T AT SUMMER CAMP #2 (1958)  (g-1/ad for Wrigley's gum) 
#  L&T HALLOWEEN FUN #2 (1958)  (g-4/ad for Wrigley's gum) 
   L&A STORYTELLING TIME #1 (1959)  (g-8 = a page reprinted from LL #28) 
   L&T IN ALASKA #1 (1959)  (g-1,1,1,1,1,1) 
   LL&T HALLOWEEN FUN  DELL GIANT #23 (1959)  ("find the mistakes" picture) 
#  LL&T IN HAWAII  DELL GIANT #29 (1960)  (g-1,1,1,1,1,1/"Visit Hawaii" ad*) 
#  LL&WH HALLOWEEN FUN  DELL GIANT #36 (1960)  (g-6/ad for Schwinn bicycles) 
#  L&T IN AUSTRALIA  DELL GIANT #42 (1961)  (g-1,1,4/ad for Twinkles cereal) 
         (bottom half of last internal page: picture to color/ad for Jumping Jacks shoes) 
#  LL&WH TRICK 'N' TREAT  DELL GIANT #50 (1961)  (g-7/ad for Schwinn bicycles) 
         (inside front cover: maze/ad for OK's cereal) 
   LL #165 (IN PARIS) (Oct. 1962)  (g-1 = LL pin-up = front cover) 
   LL #166 (CHRISTMAS DIARY) (Jan. 1963)  (LL pin-up = front cover) 

*Interestingly, this ad fits the theme of the issue, though I have seen this same ad on other comic books, unrelated to Hawaii.

Thus there are nine confirmed instances of Little Lulu-related books possessing dual back covers. Five of these are giants from 1956 through 1958, and are apparently not noted at all in OVERSTREET as having variant back covers. The other four are in the "DELL GIANT" series and are from either 1960 or 1961. Among the books having variant back covers, the true proportion of the two varieties seems to vary greatly from issue to issue. Based on this admittedly unscientific survey, the overall proportion (for what it may be worth) seems to be roughly 30% non-ad to 70% with ad.

Certainly much remains to be learned about the Dell variant back covers in terms of the extent of the phenomenon in the larger realm of all Dell comics, and also regarding the motivation for it. I am indebted to Wallace Green, executive editor at Dell at the time, for writing to me when I began the survey, in response to the question of why the print runs were split. The cause, he said, was differing postal regulations of the U. S. and Canada! This most likely involved books without regular frequencies--which indeed includes the giants and the one-shots! On the basis of the smaller percentage of copies without ads, an educated quess is that those were the ones produced to accommodate the Canadian requirements. Of course, some copies intended for Canada, once printed, could have ended up being sold in the U. S.

Still, there could have been further reasons at the corporate level, such as market experimentation or advertisers only contracting for an ad to appear in a limited number of copies, which might not have been known at the editorial level. And there remains the question of why this phenomenon occurred during those particular years, with a hiatus which intriguingly spans precisely the year 1959.

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