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Issue #6
Again anticipating a storyline from the TV show, the sixth issue of the Dick Van Dyke Show comic book found Laura having to choose between a career in show business and a career as a homemaker. In this case, a world famous and very handsome actor (Lance Hart, drawn to look like John Barrymore in his prime) guest stars on The Alan Brady Show but is distracted from rehearsals because he is engaged in searching for a leading lady for his next movie. All the top actresses are offered to him but they all, he insists, are phony and spoiled. Then he literally runs into Laura in the hallway as she drops by to bring Rob the sack lunch he accidentally left at home. Hart gets one look at the woman who ran into him and yells, "That's my new leading lady!" She is so unspoiled and innocent, he says, that she must take the job and fly off with him to Hollywood. Rob and Laura are both torn: Rob doesn't want her to go but can't stand in his wife's way. Laura is afraid to leave Rob and Ritchie but of course it's always been her dream to be a movie star. Buddy and Sally are no help (Buddy tells Rob he'll never taste another home-cooked meal once Laura gets a taste of stardom; Sally tells Laura to go for the glamour and money) but Laura finally decides to do it despite Rob's discomfort. Hart insists they start rehearsing immediately, even while he's in New York doing the Brady show, and Laura finds herself going to his hotel to rehearse at night. That's when she discovers two things. One is that Lance Hart isn't so handsome: With his girdle and hairpiece off, he's not a dashing movie star but an old, fat guy. Secondly, his intentions towards Laura are not honorable. Since this is a Gold Key comic book, we aren't told just how dishonorable but even the few hints are enough to make this one of the raciest things ever produced by Western Publishing. At the end, Rob drops by the hotel to tell Laura he hopes she gets the part and gets swept up in a chase scene through the hotel as Laura attempts to flee from Lance Hart. Eventually, the chase winds up in a ballroom where the Society of Celebrity Press Photographers are having a dinner. Laura gets away and Lance gets photographed by dozens of cameramen without his hair or girdle, thereby destroying his career as a suave leading man. Rob and Laura go home together and, in an end-line that one suspects would never be written today, she says, "Being a movie star would be nice but being a housewife and a mother is a much more rewarding role." This was probably my least favorite issue of the comic book. The "mystery artist" is back and it's the wrong issue for him since he's especially weak in drawing Laura. Unfortunately, Dan Spiegle would draw no more issues, perhaps because Gold Key was just launching the Space Family Robinson comic book which he would draw, along with a sudden flurry of Disney movie adaptations, including Big Red and Son of Flubber. This issue also features another short episode of "Buddy Sorrell, the Human Joke Machine." The cover design, presumably by Walter Zwart, is rather nice if a bit sexy for a comic book. It wasn't until issue #9 that the problems would start. |
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© 2011 Mark Evanier Hosted by Dreamhost |
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