Ribtickler #1

When Alex Kafoski hears a flute player named Icky performing with Roy Gumbardo's swing band at the Park Storia Hotel, the classical music maestro becomes obsessed with acquiring him for his symphony orchestra—and when polite negotiation fails, he's willing to resort to more questionable methods. Icky finds himself kidnapped and locked away in Kafoski's soundproof studio, but this clever musician has a few tricks of his own up his sleeve. It's a comedic battle of wills between classical ambition and swing-loving ingenuity that'll keep you grinning throughout.

Flash Lyte, the Daily Bungle's star photographer, is sent by his editor to a supposedly haunted house with infrared film to capture photographic proof of a ghost—or face the consequences of printing a story that'll make the professor who owns the place the city's laughingstock. Armed with his camera, Flash ventures into the spooky mansion, where things take an unexpected turn when he actually gets his shot.

When a rival dance instructor across the street threatens to steal all her customers, Pussy Katnip finds her first lesson sabotaged by bumbling troublemakers who've waxed the floor and hidden a mooing intruder in the room. Armed with her secret family recipe of Katnip Fizz—a potion that transforms her from shy to unstoppable—Pussy turns the tables on her saboteurs with wit and a well-timed plan.

When pearls go missing from her Katnip Kafe, Pussy Katnip suspects two scoundrels of the theft—and after a dose of her secret family formula, she's strong enough and clever enough to prove it. Using ventriloquism and a fire truck ladder, Pussy sets a trap that turns the stolen pearls themselves into her unlikely allies, with hilariously supernatural results that send the crooks scrambling to return what they took.

A young inventor discovers a broken-down bicycle in the junk yard and decides to fix it up—but when she concocts her own rubberizing solution to create tires from garden hose, the results prove far more powerful than expected. What starts as a scrappy DIY project quickly spirals into chaos when the makeshift bicycle becomes permanently stuck to the road, drawing the attention of both neighbors and a mysterious businessman. This 1945 tale from *Ribtickler* #1, illustrated by Toby, is a delightfully goofy reminder that sometimes the best inventions come with hilariously unexpected consequences.