LBJ: SUPER-HERO!

There's been a lot of off-the-wall comics published over the years and I've shared a few of them this week. But the one I'm showing today has got to be one of the strangest. Think of President Lyndon Baines Johnson as a super-hero. That's right, it's not a typo. You'll have to read it to believe it.

Published in 1966 by Parallax Comic Books, Inc. THE GREAT SOCIETY was a parody of LBJ's domestic policies and featured various other political figures of the day, including Robert and Edward Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey and Robert McNamara. The villains were contemporaneous global bad guys such as Nikita Kruschev, Fidel Castro and Mao Zedong, with George Wallace adde for good measure. Even Lady Bird Johnson was tossed into the mix as "Wonderbird", a take-off on Wonder Woman. It was a follow-on title after BOBMAN AND TEDDY, also published in 1966.

Edited by Ann Weingarden, the book was written by -- wait for it -- D.J. Arneson with pencils by Bill Fraccio and inks by Tony Tallarico (!) and sold for a buck.

Parallax published two more parody titles, KOSHER COMICS (1966) which, like MAD, spoofed popular characters such as Tarzan, The Lone Ranger, Dick Tracy and Superman (with all stories but one penned by novelist, playwright and screenwriter Henry Slesar) and THE MAN FROM M.O.T.H.E.R. (1967), a spy spoof, sometimes considered an early graphic novel.

In case you've forgotten about some of these people (or have never heard of some of them before), here's the cast of crazy characters found in THE GREAT SOCIETY:

• Super LBJ [President Lyndon B. Johnson]
• Bobman and Teddy [Robert and Edward Kennedy]
• Shadower [Vice President Hubert Humphrey]
• Captain Marvelous [Robert McNamara]
• Disagreein' Hornet [Everett Dirksen]
• The Phantasm [Secretary of State Dean Rusk]
• Gaullefinger (villain) [Charles de Gaulle]
• Fu Man Lai (villain) [Mao Zedong]
• Dr. Nyet (villain) [Nikita Kruschev]
• Sicko Kid (villain) [Fidel Castro]
• U.N. Man [Arthur Goldberg - US Ambassador to UN]
• Wonderbird [Lady Bird Johnson]
• Chefman (villain); Colonel America [Barry Goldwater]
• Along Ranger [Richard Nixon]
• Whiteman [George Wallace] (villain)