I love stumbling across obscure and forgotten comic book characters. Little Eva ran for 31 issues during the early and mid-1950s. Two issues of reprints by another publisher appeared in 1957, titled Eva the Imp. I kind of like the latter title better.
Little Eva #7 (April 1953) includes the story "Watch Dog"--writer and artist both unknown. Eva has done what she sees as a favor for the boys of the neighborhood, but they are busy playing war and won't listen to her.
Well, the boys soon find out what she's done. She's fixed up their playhouse with curtains and flowers! She's even cleaned the floor! And, well... THIS ABOMINATION WILL NOT STAND!
Boys will be boys and they've soon declared the curtains to be bandages for their "war wounds" and the flowers become medals. Then a really big stray dog wanders in and they make him a watch dog to keep Eva out while they go back on patrol.
Eva brings some more flowers into the clubhouse while they are gone. When she sees the curtains and flowers she brought earlier are gone, she assumes the big dog ate them and, therefore, must be hungry. So she gets some bones from the local butcher. When the boys come back, she sneaks out a window, but leaves the bones behind.
The boys think the bones belong to Eva. Obviously, the girl has been eaten by the dog!
They begin to cry, but Eva soon appears at the window. Their grief turns to anger and they chase the poor girl. But it turns out that the big dog LIKES girls:
The story is sincerely funny--especially the gag about the dog having supposedly eaten Little Eva. The art is clean, effective in both telling the story well and adding to the humor. Little Eva's superpower may have been nothing more than being adorable,but, by golly, that's not a bad superpower at all.
You can read this one online HERE.
Next week, we return to the Lonely War of Willy Schultz.
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