Before the film star hosted his first Labor Day telethons for charity, and became a national treasure to the French, all around comedian Jerry Lewis was already a comics veteran. Bursting with all the energy and zany madcap humor of his movies, you can almost hear Jerry screaming "HEY LAY-DEE" on every page of his long lasting DC comic, The Adventures of Jerry Lewis. Starting out for National Comics in 1952 under the title The Adventures of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, the series ran forty fun-filled fast paced full-length adventures with lots of comidic misunderstandings and pretty girls before the teams eventual break up and Jerry receiving the comic in their settlement. Starting with issue #41 Lewis set off on his own new adventures targeted for a younger audience with its goofy gags, wild stories, many fads, and even more beautiful side-kicks. Some of the highlights of the Jerry solo stories could be when he acquired a Doctor Dolittle-like ability to talk with animals,that lead to many a wild and wooly story line for a handful of issues. Then meeting a genie called Mister Yes in issue #79, brought the reader even more zany off the wall fun.
About this time on three occasions DC Comics adapted Jerry Lewis films, using photos covers from the features, The Ladies Man, The Errand Boy, and It's Only Money, rather than running the usual book length tales. These film adaptations were probably a reaction to Dell Comics acquisition of the rights to adapt Jerry Lewis's film, Don't Give Up the Ship, for its Four Color series, drawn by comic veteran, Dan Spiegle. This prompted DC to now acquire the license to not only Jerry's likeness, but to adaptations of his numerous films as well. When Arnold Drake took over the writing in the early 1960s, he borrowed what was selling formula at the time, namely, monsters and superheroes. Starting off with a superhero take off of Spider-Man (The Trantula) #84, Drake later decided to add more characters to the title to pull more kids into the book. With this move Jerry's rotten nephew, Renfew, was introduced in issue #85, and a few books later the broomstick riding witch/housekeeper, Witch Kraft, in issue #88. Many of us can fondly remember as a kid every summer when Renfew would go to Camp-Wack-a-Boy where he was tormented by a bald Neo-Nazi, the infamous Coach Hal who debuted in issue #94. Jerry was usually left in the dark in most of these tall tales, with a witch running his household and his weird nephew always knowing what's going on behind the scenes, which was a big key to the humor.
With a large licensing fee paid to Lewis, the comic was always losing money with every issue. Drake later stated one reason to introduce his new characters was to popularize them before starting their own series, once DC lost the license with Lewis. When you look at the sales figures for the Lewis title though, Drake's contributions coupled with Oskner's fantastic comedic artwork made them perform better then some might have expected. Even with a slow sales, The Adventures of Jerry Lewis was outselling such standard DC titles as Green Lantern, Aquaman, House of Mystery, and Wonder Woman. Unfortunately, as Drake stated, with the cancellation of the most successful comic in the their comics titles, it looks like DC just didn't understand what they really had. I always enjoyed the over the top artwork by National Cartoonist Society winner for "Best Comic Book" for 1960 and 1961, Bob Oksner. The series is also know for some very early DC cover and interior work from their most popular artist, Neal Adams in his unique but versatile style. Also before I forget for our wisecracking, bumbling funnyman, Lewis really got around the DC Universe meeting many of it super heroes including Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin, Lex Luthor, The Flash, many a Universal monster, and even the Beatles. Jerry though finally ran out of steam as the series ended in May of 1971 with issue #124, but is not soon to be forgotten!
