Tell It to the Marines (1952, Toby)

Tell It to the Marines ran for 15 issues (1952–1955). Publishing format: was ongoing series. "Tell It to the Marines" was one of several United States Marine Corps-themed comic books published by Toby Press in the early 1950s. The first six issues of the series starred brawny Pfc. James "Spike" Dowdy, and suave Pfc. Battingsley "Bat" Bentley in stories that took them from the battlefields of Korea to the oil fields of the Middle East to the beaches of Hawaii to the bistros of Paris. The artwork was crude and the humor unsophisticated. Transvestite scenes (especially for Spike) were common. Problems were solved with fists, and both men found frequent opportunity to display the exaggerated muscularity of their torsos. Though best buds on the battlefield, Spike and Bat often competed for the same "dames" with one gyrene usually left in the dust nursing his wounds while the other walked away with a trophy gal on his arm. With their emphasis on male camaraderie, inflated battlefield derring-do, muscular physiques, and sex-suffused womanizing, the Spike and Bat stories gave young men an idealized vision of the Corps. A 4-page supplemental feature of the series, "Lover O'Leary and His Liberty Belles", starred USMC "gal hound" Lover O'Leary in frame stories that were nothing more than an excuse for exhibiting four or five vertical panels of Good Girls with alliterative names such as Jivin' Judy and Railroad Rhoda.