Laffin' Gas Or Just Plain Gas?

Great Comics Publications had two different anthology titles during its three-month stint from 1941-1942 just before Pearl Harbor, Great Comics and Choice Comics. Aside from its unconventional line up of heroes like Zarro the Great or Kangaroo Man, they also dedicated a percentage of each anthology to generic humor, although not with satisfying results. Laffin’ Gas was a portion of Choice Comics that was composed entirely of comedic bits. This included generic one-page gags like Romeo Rutt, Petey And His Pals, Suzy And Sam, Gilda Gray, Private Wire, Haff Nelson, and Little Terror. There was also a section called Choice Classroom Boners which were a single-page showcase of cheap gags, some of which were considerably racist. Great Comics itself had its own humor hub called the Barrel Of Fun Section much of which spotlight lengthier comics strips that continue to several issues. Knight And Dye were a pair of bungling knights, Snarzan The Ape shows how pop culture influences jungle wildlife, The Ghost Of Snaggle Castle starring detective Foreclosure Holmes, Moe M. Down by the ironically named “Haye Maker” about a boxing carbon copy of Kid Palooka, Will O’Wisp is about a hayseed farmer who accidently becomes a private detective, Dreamy Daisy looks into a small child’s nightmare about furniture coming to life, Junior Wizard has a scientist’s son using size-changing pills to stop an evil scientist from turning people into animals, and pulp artist Pagsilang Isip ventured outside his normal genre with mirthful military comic of The Khaki Kid. There were also single-pag shorts like Montmorency Twerp, Ollie, Frank And Meek, Speedy, Soup-Or-Man, Willing Willie, Smoothie, plus Milty And His Ma. Great Comics also had various collages of one-panel funnies like Life In The Roar by none other than Batman creator Bob Kane, also Barberania cluttered with bad hair jokes. Another reoccurring segment was presented as a short theatrical cartoon from studios like Warmer Bros. Several of both Choice and Great Comics featured an activity page for children, some that taught magic tricks, with the occasional original song about bats thrown in.