Treasure Chest comics

[Cartoonist]

One of the few joys of going to Catholic school was in subscribing to the bi-weekly comic book called Treasure Chest.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Chest_%28comics%29

These comics were not at all like those Jack Chick leaflets. They had jokes, puzzles, stories of kids, biographies of the Saints and other humans, bible stories and lots more. They weren't as much fun as Batman or Hot Stuff, but to a kid like me they were comic books, what else do you need to know?

Beginning with the November 23, 1961 issue, they began running a serial called This Godless Communism. It was drawn by the legendary comic book artist Reed Crandall. My guess is that this was just journeyman work by Reed and not something he had a passion for, though he might have agreed with some of the sentiment. His work on the series was not up to his usual high standard, but even bad Crandall has its merits. The series itself takes every opportunity to decry the godlessness of Communism, nothing else really mattered.

The complete run of the comic can be found here:
http://archives.lib.cua.edu/findingaid/treasurechest.cfm

The series begins in volume 17 issue 6. Here's a taste:

[cbayer]

1. Not familiar with it, but here is a page I like:

[Cartoonist]

7. How did you do that?

I posted this thread at 8:35. You replied at 8:39. Surely it took more than 4 minutes to read my post, dig around for your image, compose your post, link to your image, and upload it to DU. Do you lie in wait for posts by me? Do you love me?

[cbayer]

8. I'm really good….

or I have magical powers.

No, I do not lie in wait for your posts and I do not love you.

[rug]

2. I remember them. IIRC, the nuns would hand them out on Fridays.

[John1956PA]

3. I remember them from Catholic elementary school days in the mid 1960s.

I recall a segment which paid tribute to a particular European ethnic group which migrated to the U. S. in the nineteenth century.

Thanks for your post.

[mikehiggins]

4. No hate

I remember the Treasure Chest since I went to parochial school during the 50s. Not exactly awe-inspiring but only a step below Boy's Life, the Scouting magazine. Somehow they managed to put out years of stuff without telling us to hate anyone (well, maybe the Godless Commies (tm)) but even that was pretty mild stuff. A lot of fun.

[TlalocW]

5. We got anti-drug Teen Titans comics in the 80s

In 4th and 5th grade.

I also remember getting a carton of comics at a garage sale as a teenager and finding some Archie comics - or comics that had licensed the Archie characters to promote Christianity. The story I remember had the characters not just promoting the Christian viewpoints of the company who licensed Archie, Jughead, and Betty, but they had them doing it in the old west with Archie as a sheriff and Betty as the local school marm. I remember this because during a page of Archie and Betty talking about how school was going, and amongst the things Betty was lamenting was not only the Bible being thrown out of school and evolution being taught, but there was a dig at desegregation.

And I've found it.

http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/3919910.html

TlalocW

[No Vested Interest]

6. Wow! Memories of something that hasn't come to mind for 60+ yrs.

The CUA archives link mentions the publisher, George Pflaum, as well as the Junior Catholic Messenger, we received on a regular basis for years.

I don't know if any of these were still around in the 70's when my kids were mostly still in grade school.
Junior Catholic Messenger was our early link to the adult world outside.

My family received a subscription from my father's aunt to Life magazine, which was an early window to the world.
By high school in the early 50's I had added Time magazine, which I read thoroughly and faithfully.

Gave up Time late in adulthood, when it became a shadow of its former self.

[edhopper]

9. Crandall was in decline by then

but still a fantastic artist.

From Wki:

In 1960, he went under contract[citation needed] with the publisher of Treasure Chest, a comic book distributed exclusively through parochial schools. Crandall illustrated many covers and countless stories for Treasure Chest through 1972. In 1964, he illustrated books by Edgar Rice Burroughs for Canaveral Press.[citation needed] The following year, he began contributing to Warren Publishing's black-and-white war-comics magazine Blazing Combat, and soon went on to contribute to the company's line of black-and-white horror publications, including Creepy and Eerie. In the mid-to-late 1960s, he illustrated superhero-espionage stories for Tower Comics,[18] and space opera science fiction in King Features Syndicate's King Comics comic-book version of the syndicate's long-running hero Flash Gordon.[19]