Dell Comics’ Porky Pig #61 (November-December 1958) offered a different kind of a strange Northern with a Science Fiction twist. “Porky Pig and the Trading Post Ghosts” was written by Don R. Christensen and drawn by Phil de Lara. This was predates his last adventure.
Porky and his nephew Cicero are prospecting in the Far North. They have run out of food and are looking for a trading post. Tiny’s Trading Post is near by. A strange occurrence happens there. All the cans come flying off the shelves. Tiny believes it is ghosts. Nobody will enter the store because it is haunted.
When Porky and Cicero arrive, Tiny puts on different disguises to trick them into believing the place is doing well. A fake offer to buy the place for twenty thousand gets the boys to trade their gold for the goods. Only after Tiny has absconded with their gold do they see his tracks and know they have been conned.
Porky gets a customer. A strange looking fellow who wants to buy all wood clothes pins. When Porky opens the cash register he finds it full of washers. He pockets his ninety cents.
The boys decide to make the best of it. There is a Native American village near by. Perhaps they can find customers there. They go to bed but the ghosts come and pile all the metal objects in a big heap. Cicero notices that the wooden snow shoes have not moved. Porky puts a sign on the pile that says: “Rummage Sale-Serve yourself if possible!”
The next day the pigs go to the village. The locals are hiding in their huts, terrified of the ghosts. They can’t trap because the ghosts pull on their traps. They have no furs to trade with Porky.
The ghost strike again and Porky palms some of the washers and coins he found in the cash register. He watches the washers fly off in the direction of the mountain. The silver coins do not move. They investigate and find a giant magnetic station inside the extinct volcano.
There is the man who bought the clothes pins, and a scientist captive. Sneerly Zero tells the Professor he has taken over his magnetic research to locate a large ship filled with gold. He will pull the vessel against the rocks then his crew of pirates in a blimp will sweep in and take the gold. He plans future crimes that include derailing trains, pull the nails out of houses and stopping roller skaters dead in their tracks.
Porky and Cicero charge down to stop Sneerly. Zero grabs a machine gun and shoots at the pigs. He captures them. He isn’t quite so bad a guy as to kill them, but ties them up with the Professor and kicks them down the hill. They form a giant snowball and end up in an eagle’s nest.
They formulate a desperate plan. Cicero will go to the native village for help while the Professor distracts Zero. Porky sneaks in behind and turns on his machine after the villain shoots his machine gun. Zero is pulled back, the bullets flying back into his hat. (Bad science, lead is not affected by magnets!) This wrecks the machine.
The gold ship is saved, the Blimp pirates caught. Porky and Cicero give their trading post to the locals and head home. But not without a souvenir.
This strange Northern reminds me so much of Ed Earl Repp’s “Under the North Pole”. The odd happenings are Science Fictional not supernatural. The answer is usually a mad scientist. The whole Blimp Pirate thing made me think I was reading a G8 and His Battle Aces pulp. This was a very Pulpy adventure. Though when I think about it, it also reminds me of James Bond films, with its secret base and desperate plan. “Pig–Porky Pig.” Now we just need Petunia to show up in some skimpy outfit and we are set.
On the negative side, the portrayal of the First Nations in this comic is typical. They speak like Hollywood stereotypes, live in a fashion many centuries out of date, and worst of all, are easily fooled by the “ghosts”. In typical Pulp tradition, a white savior (in this case pink) is needed to rescue them. This type of racism was everywhere in the Pulps, but it is sad to see it in children’s comics too.
