Burp the Twerp
Written by Rich Meyer
Burp the Twerp (the Super Son of
a Gun) was a man to watch out for...when last seen, he had Plastic
Man shaking in his boots!
Well, kinda anyway. Burp the Twerp
was a one-page humor feature that ran in several Quality Comics publications
in the forties, including BLACKHAWK and POLICE COMICS. His shtick was
that he had every power of every super-hero...but unfortunately he
was a considerable klutz and things didn't quite go the right way for
him most of the time.
The strip was "signed" by
Ralph Johns, but this was just another pseudonym for the legendary
Jack Cole, creator of Firebrand, Midnight, Woozy Winks and, of course,
Plastic Man. Burp premiered in the second issue of POLICE COMICS, co-inciding
with the second adventures of Plastic Man, Midnight, Firebrand and
several other popular Quality features.
Naturally for a humor strip, there
wasn't a whole lot of continuity to be concerned with. The strips that
I have read are all fairly funny, in a Basil Wolverton-Powerhouse Pepper
way. I think the one episode of any real noteworthiness is the page
in POLICE COMICS #23 (December, 1943), in which Jack Cole's star, Plastic
Man, makes a brief cameo appearance (which was reprinted in Ron Goulart's Focus
on Jack Cole).
After the demise of Quality Comics,
Burp the Twerp made only one more appearance. DC Comics' SECRET ORIGINS
#30 (Volume 2), featured the secret origin of Plastic Man. Roy Thomas,
Stephen DeStefano and Paul Fricke. Thomas and DeStefano put Burp the
Twerp in the background, and had the little guy meet Woozy Winks and
Plas at the end of the story. After Burp left, Plas told Woozy who
it was, and warned "If you ever get him mad at us, he'll come
back and take over, and then we're all out of business!"
Well, that hasn't exactly happened
yet...but there are still those of us who are waiting...
