"Gabby Gob"

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Gabby Gob was a Navy-centric military comic in the vein of Sad Sack, Beetle Bailey or Gomer Pile. The humor is derived from Gabby Gob's ineptness. It was actually a spin-off from Sad Sack Navy, Gobs 'n' Gals with the supporting character of Gabby Gob.

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After World War II, the Sad Sack comic strip was syndicated from 1946 to 1958 by Consolidated News Features and he was the subject of a long-running Harvey comic book, The New Sad Sack. In 1957 that title was joined by two more; Sad Sack’s Funny Friends and Little Sad Sack. Also in 1957 Paramount Pictures released a George Marshall directed comedy, The Sad Sack, starring Jerry Lewis, David Wayne and Phyllis Kirk.

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The Harvey comics covers were done by Army Cartoonist, George Baker but the interiors were passed on to cartoonist Fred Rhoads. Rhoads got his start in cartooning while serving in the Marine Corps in WWII. He originated a pantomime comic “Gismo and Eightball” for the Marine magazine Leatherneck. In 1954 he got a call from Harvey Features asking him to take over the Sad Sack comic book.

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Rhoads had long experience in comic strips as an artist and gag-writer. He had assisted Mort Walker for a year on “Beetle Bailey,” Fred Lasswell on “Snuffy Smith” for three years, and helped out Jimmy Hatlo on “They’ll Do It Every Time” for a year.

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Rhoads drew over 9500 pages of Sad Sack compared to Baker’s 800 pages. He was paid at the rate of $35 per page. On August 9 1964 Rhoads announced that he had created a new character for Harvey Comics featuring a Navy man named Gabby Gob. Rhoads had conceived the idea of Gabby during a five day tour of the USS Forrestal on October 27-31 of 1963.  Harvey Comics pressed him for a new Sad Sack type character after discovering that over 450,000 of its Sad Sack comics were being sold in the Navy Exchange.  Rhoads decided Gob would not be a “dozer” like the Sad Sack, “but would be kind of cute.”

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In April 1983 Fred Rhoads, then 61, was awarded an astounding $2.58 million by a jury who said Rhoads publisher, Harvey, fraudulently represented the value of his work. The Sad Sack comic book was no longer in publication at the time. In October 1984 the judgment, to the dismay of Rhoads, was overturned on appeal. The judge ruled there was no evidence of fraud on the company’s part and Rhoads’s complaint was barred by Arizona’s three year statute of limitations.Fred Rhoads died in Greenwood South Carolina, February 20, 2000 of Alzheimer’s disease. He was 78 years old.