Little Lulu: The Fuzzythingus Poopi

by John Stanley

For the collectors, one of the best comic books of all time!

Lulu Moppet is back with even more outlandish adventures and misadventures, as cartoonist John Stanley settles into kooky and entertaining suburban storylines starring Lulu, Tubby, Alvin, and the rest of the gang.

Lulu is a strong, assertive young girl who is both entertaining and empowering to girls and women of all ages―even if she sometimes finds herself in hot water. In Little The Fuzzythingus Poopi, she outsmarts criminals, sabotages the boys in a masterful snowball fight, and solves the crime of the missing piggy bank! Over the course of these stories, Stanley excels at visual gags, from Lulu winning the soap box derby by turning her frock into a sail, to a lonely cloud almost getting sucked up by a vacuum.

This is the second installment in Drawn & Quarterly’s landmark reprint series of the classic John Stanley comic strip that was first published by Dell Comics in the 1940s and ’50s. Little The Fuzzythingus Poopi will delight longtime fans of the series and new readers alike.

Genres: Comics, Childrens, Humor, Graphic Novels

272 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2020

About the author

John Stanley was a comic book creator, best known for his scripting of Little Lulu's comic book exploits from 1945 to approximately 1959. While mostly known for his scripting, Stanley also was an accomplished artist who drew many of his stories, including the earliest issues of Lulu. His specialty was humorous stories, both with licensed characters and those of his own creation. His writing style has been described as employing "colorful, S. J. Perelman-ish language and a decidedly bizarre, macabre wit (reminiscent of writer Roald Dahl)" with storylines that "were cohesive and tightly constructed, with nary a loose thread in the plot". Cartoonist Fred Hembeck has dubbed him "for my money, the most consistently funny cartoonist to work in the comic book medium".

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hadn't read any Little Lulu comics since I was a kid, so this handsomely-produced book was a real treat. Lulu really was a remarkably progressive, even feminist character for the late 40s/early 50s, always a self-starter and generally always one-step ahead of the boys in the neighborhood (there's a reason that Eileen Myles wrote the intro). Plus her pal Tubby is wonderfully funny. There were panels here that made me laugh out loud; these are my kind of all-ages comics.

[Ashley Lambert-Maberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I do not know what it is about the Little Lulu comics that I enjoy so much. If you described them to me, I would probably assume they'd be slightly dull, and opt for something about wizards or talking animals instead ... and yet, they're nearly ideal. Not quite 5-star ideal (e.g. Pogo); occasionally the pay-offs are cringingly obvious, or conversely so abstruse (especially after so much time has passed) as to be meaningless.

So what a treat to see that this (now) immortal tale of an imaginative, headstrong young girl and her friends, negotiating their way through what seems to be a fairly large city, peppered with the occasional depiction of her creative story-telling to little Alvin has now made its way into shelfworthy hardback form!

I gobbled it up like popcorn. And ordered a second bag—I mean book.

Note: I have written a novel (not yet published), so now I will suffer pangs of guilt every time I offer less than five stars. In my subjective opinion, the stars suggest:

(5* = one of my all-time favourites, 4* = really enjoyed it, 3* = readable but not thrilling, 2* = actually disappointing, and 1* = hated it. As a statistician I know most books are 3s, but I am biased in my selection and end up mostly with 4s, thank goodness.)

[Drew Canole · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the first volume of John Stanley's Little Lulu. This ended up being too much of a good thing for me. Together, there's nearly 600 pages of Little Lulu comics. Apparently this is a going to be a five-volume series! It's insane how many Little Lulu comics John Stanley did.

Like all the Stanley comic strips I've read, this is a master-class on laugh-out-loud sitcom strips. The characters are strong and the humour is on point. It's wild how relevant comics from the 40s can be.

Lulu is a strong willed young girl who makes for a very entertaining lead character. I suppose you could call her "empowering". There's a strong Boys vs Girls dynamic to these stories, with Lulu typically outwitting the boys.

John Stanley needs to be in everyone's comic collection, and The Fuzzythingus Poopi is as great as the rest of them. That said, I could have stopped at the first volume as this one is more of the same for good or bad.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great read for those who want to see how the history of comics have evolved over the years. Little Lulu is tough, she's naughty, and she's constantly getting into mischief. There's a lot of feminist commentary in this, especially given Lulu was popular in the late 50's to the early 70's!

[Mateen Mahboubi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lulu is the best! What more needs to be said?!

[Riddhish Bhalodia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly charming!!