Perky is a little-known comic book character created by Quality Comics, who ran in Feature Comics (debuting in issue #75), briefly appeared as a secondary feature in Doll Man, and had a single, one-off appearance in Crack Comics.
Perky was an ordinary young boy whose story began when, one day, he decided to volunteer to help an amateur stage magician with a Disappearing Box trick. However, when the lever on the box was pulled, Perky really did disappear… and, to make matters worse, the amateur magician (actually the assistant of a magician who’d been drafted into the War) can’t bring him back. Now, Perky roams various magical and extraordinary lands, being sent off to a new one whenever the amateur magician pulls the vanishing box’s lever. Perky seems oddly unperturbed by his situation, however.
This comic series contains examples of:
- Amusing Injuries: Perky always has a rough landing whenever he enters a new magical realm, although thankfully the travel effect seems to protect him from suffering permanent damage.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Perky stumbles over these in his travels a lot, from the sentient rocks of Rock Land, to multiple cases of Living Toys, to the humanoid playing cards of the Land of Poker, to the living musical instruments that inhabit the Land of Music, to the animate medicine bottles of Medicine Isle, to the living soaps in “World Of Soap”, to the sentient tools in Carpenter Land, to some other living tools in “On The Moon”…
- The inhabitants of Robot Land are an unusual example- while they’re supposedly robots (as you may guess), in practice most of them are more like anthropomorphic household appliances.
- Art Initiates Life: In one story, Perky visits the eccentric artist Linseed Smear, who has this as a power. Unfortunately, he can’t turn it off.
- Artistic License – Space: “On The Moon” doesn’t even attempt to follow any sort of physics.
- Balkanize Me: The Land Of Lug ends up being split into two parts when Perky’s plan to resolve the Succession Crisis fails, although the two princes-now-kings still have a good relationship with each other.
- Band Land: The Land Of Music, which Perky visits in Feature Comics #110.
- Bizarre Instrument: The Sandman plays a “Snorgan”- that is, a pipe organ that makes snoring sounds.
- Deus Exit Machina: The magician Professor Zomby is drafted into the war effort, making it so that (when the manager of the theater Zomby performs at insists that The Show Must Go On) his incompetent assistant accidentally sends Perky “hurtling into worlds beyond”.
- Dimensional Traveler: Perky is an involuntary example, being sent to a new magical realm whenever the lever on the magician’s vanishing box is pulled.
- Disappearing Box: One of these, operated by a magician’s incompetent assistant, sent Perky to the Land of Lug, and continues to send him to a new magical realm every time the assistant pulls the box’s lever.
- Down the Rabbit Hole: The panel of Perky’s first transportation by the magic vanishing box is drawn to resemble Alice’s iconic plummet into Wonderland.
- Elemental Embodiment:
- Sentient rocks inhibit Rock Land, and the embodiment of the Wind makes an appearance later in the same story.
- In a later issue, Perky visits the Home Of The Winds, inhabited by Mrs. Wind and her four sons (the winds of the four cardinal directions.)
- And a different Mr. Wind appears in “The Weather Man”, as one of the titular Weather Man’s subordinates. The same issue also involves Lightning as an electricity embodiment (with Thunder tagging along for the ride).
- Evil Twin: Everyone in Double Land has an identical evil duplicate of themself.
- Father Time: Perky visits the man himself in “Father Time’s House”.
- Forced Transformation: One story has Perky visit the island of Circe, where the witch briefly transforms him into an elephant, a skunk, and then a mouse. The last one proves to be her undoing.
- Formula-Breaking Episode: “The Sinns Of The Past”, where instead of running around in some fantasy world Perky returns to Earth and gets caught up in a time-travel adventure instead.
- Fountain of Youth: Perky visits one in “Perky Visits The Fountain Of Youth”.
- Fractured Fairy Tale: “Garbled Nursery Rhymes” has Perky visit Nursery Rhyme Land and try to find out why various nursery rhyme characters perform the bizarre actions described in their rhymes, with most of the reasons falling squarely into this trope.
- Gossipy Hens: In his journey to Bird Land, Perky meets a group of literal hens that gossip among each other.
- Hair Color Dissonance: Perky’s hair is supposed to be black, but it’s colored a sort of shiny dark blue.
- Henpecked Husband: Father Neptune in “The Bottom Of The Sea” turns out to be one, to the extent that he arranged getting swallowed by a whale as a complicated ploy to get away from Mrs. Neptune.
- Hurricane of Puns: Starting with “The Land Of Poker”, each story began to feature an absolute torrent of puns.
- Impractical Musical Instrument Skills: The genius Perky visits in “The Chamber Of Genius” can play piano with his feet (while wearing shoes!) and simultaneously play the violin with his hands.
- Incessant Music Madness: When Perky arrives, the Land Of Music is being plagued with this courtesy of the Drum.
- Inconsistent Coloring: In exactly one storynote , Perky’s hair is colored brown instead of its normal black-blue shade.
- Insect Queen: The Queen Bee, ruler of Insectville.
- Jack Frost: He appears in “The Weather Man” as one of the titular Weather Man’s subordinates; hibernating through the summer in a refrigerator.
- Level Ate: In one issue, Perky visits Sweetoothia, a land made of various sweet treats. The inhabitants, however, are absolutely sick of candy, and dream of eating “normal” foods like plain bread.
- Literal Bookworm: One of these shows up as the Queen Bee’s advisor in “Insectville”.
- Literal Cliffhanger: When in Follywood, the cowboy movie Perky got talked into participating ends like this, with Perky left floating in midair above the cliff.
- Magicians Are Wizards: The vaudeville magician Professor Zomby has a magic vanishing box which actually vanishes people, by teleporting them to other worlds.
- Monster Mash: A vampire, a werewolf, and Frankenstein’s Monster all make an appearance in “Horror House”.
- Music Is Eighth Notes: In Perky’s visit to the Land Of Music, the various instruments’ music is represented as a mix of eighth notes and onomatopoeia.
- No Indoor Voice: The Drum in “Land Of Music” talks like this, and plays music like this too.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Perky. At least, we hope it’s a nickname.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: The ones in “Worlds Beyond” look like bedsheets, are scared of living people, and inhabit a world explicitly stated to not be the afterlife; while the inhabitants of Ghostonia look like normal people, and are implied to be actual dead humans from Earth instead of merely ghost-like beings.
- Poisonous Person: One of the inhabitants of Botania is a sentient piece of poison ivy, who can unleash a more dramatic version of the plant’s effects. Despite this, he’s actually a nice guy.
- Planet of Hats: Perky visits a decent amount of lands like this from “Hypo-Kondira” (land of quack doctors), to the style-obsessed Fashionville, to Gangland which has More Criminals Than Targets, to the boxing-themed Fisticuffia, to the strength-obsessed Muscle Land…
- Playing Card Motifs: The Land Of Poker is themed around the eponymous game, and inhabited by living playing cards.
- Pun-Based Creature:
- One of Perky’s adventures has him trying to deal with the Jitterbugsnote , musical-themed insects whose bite causes musical obsession and Totally Radical behavior.
- All of the sentient flowers in Botania are puns of some sort- there’s a lion-like dandelion, a black-eyed Susan with a literal black eye, a draconic snapdragon… the list goes on.
- Robot Republic: Robot Land, visited by Perky in the story of the same name. Unusually for the trope, it was founded by the humannote Dr. Clank.
- Seen-It-All Suicide: “The Chamber Of Genius” has Perky interrupt a (nameless) genius who’s about to commit a variant- being a genius, he has no challenges in life, and having done everything and finding it all too easy to bother doing any more he thinks he has no reason left to live.
Perky convinces him otherwise. - Shrink Ray: A shrink pill allows Perky to become small enough to enter Insectville.
- Sneaky Spider: One of these serves as the villain in “Insectville”, having trapped an innocent fly. Perky defeats it by being even sneakier and pointing out to the Queen Bee that spiders are arachnids, not insects, causing her to evict the spider from Insectville.
- Space Episode: “On The Moon”
- Status Quo Is God: After being brought back to Earth in “The Sinns Of The Past”, Perky is inexplicably back to zooming around in fantasy worlds in the very next story.
- Succession Crisis: The Land Of Lug is suffering from a particularly unusual one when Perky arrives: The king’s will stated that the twin princes would race horses for the crown- except the winner would be whichever prince’s horse came in last. Needless to say, the attempted “race” never happens since the princes, both trying to stay behind each other, don’t move from the starting line. Perky attempts to resolve this by telling the princes to race riding each others’ horses, so that the winner would have “their” horse come in last, although the Prime Minister’s meddling prevents this plan from properly working.
- Swallowed Whole: Father Neptune is swallowed by a whale in “The Bottom Of The Sea”.
- The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: In Animal Land, animals hunt humans!
- The Gay '90s: An Anthropomorphic Personification of the decade manifests (and drives his horseless wagon through Father Time’s wall) when Perky turns back time in “Father Time’s House”
- The Man in the Moon: Perky visits him (and his wife) in “On The Moon”.
- The Old North Wind: Makes an appearance as a horrifically racist Eskimo stereotype in “The House Of The Winds”.
- The Sandman: Perky visits him in “Land Of Dreams”.
- Time Travel Episode: “Father Time’s House”, “The Sinns Of The Past”
- To Serve Man: Shorty the giant’s “People Of New York” book turns out to explain how best to cook humans. Note that this story was run in 1944, long before the trope-naming Twilight Zone episode.
- Totally Radical: Whenever someone in the Kingdom Of Moar is bitten by a Jitterbug, they start to talk in outdated slang, though since the series was made in the 1940s the word “radical” is never uttered, and the characters use bad “jazz lingo” or “jive talk” instead.
- Treants: The forest next to Rock Land is made up of sentient trees who were at war with Rock Land until Perky resolved the conflict.
- Turned Against Their Masters: The tools of Carpenter Land decide to revolt against their human masters in “Rebellion Of The Tools”. Unusually for this trope, rather than revealing their nature as Animate Inanimate Objects and directly fighting their human users, the tools instead covertly prevent the carpenters from being able to construct anything properly with them.
- Unfortunate Names: The inhabitants of the Kingdom Of Moar are called… “Moarons”.
- Unwilling Roboticisation: Perky is almost subjected to this in “Robot Land”, although complicated circumstances allow him to escape.
- Wackyland: Most of the places Perky visits are like this, especially later in the series.
- Water Is Air: Perky doesn’t seem to have any trouble breathing whenever his adventures take him underwater.
- Wicked Witch: One of these started the war between the rocks of Rock Land and the sentient trees as part of a convoluted plan to lure in children for her to eat.
- World of Funny Animals: A few of the places Perky has visited have been like this, from Insectville to Bird Land. Zoo Island is an unusual example, as the animals there are anthropomorphic because they’re all former humans.
- Not to mention Botania, the world of funny plants.
- World of Pun: One of the worlds Perky visits is the aptly-titled “Pun Land”, although given how much of a Hurricane of Puns the series is, one could argue that every world Perky ends up in is its own World Of Pun.
