AB NORMAL
“Ab Normal” seems to be not only the name of a character but the pseudonym of a 1940’s cartoonist who remains unknown to this day. His work appeared in the Bell Features line in the short period at the end of the war just before the company collapsed. Inhabiting the world of “Ab Normal” and his son “Ab Normal Junior” were “Wacky Willie”, “Casey The Cop”, “Patrick The Plumber” and “Ab Normal’s” cat “Tabby”. The setting was a rundown neighbourhood, and the cartoonist at times mixed reality with fiction, as in the case that “Ab Normal”, the character, drew cartoons for Bell Features and Publishing Ltd. One can find one of his stories in Triumph Comics 29.
Ivan Kocmarek described the feature as follows:
“From today’s perspective, his panels and pages look like anachronistic silvers in wartime comic books and seem to belong better in the pages of the underground comix, alongside the work of Gilbert Shelton and Robert Crumb. His characters and illustrations have that rebellious ethereal quality that often permeated the early iterations of underground commix.”
SOURCE:
Article book:
“Alternatives Within An Alternative Form.” Writ., Ivan Kocmarek. The Canadian Alternative: Cartoonists, Comics, and Graphic Novels. Ed., Dominick Grace & Eric Hoffman University Press of Mississippi. 2018: 3-15.