In the episode "Patty, the Practical Joker," one of the said jokes involved Patty finding a stash of comic books in her schoolwork, and she related to her parents how mortified she was as the teacher made her read one of them in front of the classroom. The comic she holds up and cites was a "Melvin Monster" comic. Usually in these situations, tv-shows concoct fake comic characters and generic mock-ups of covers, but this "Melvin Monster" one is quite genuine. It's a Dell comic, the first issue of that title, which had just come out at the time the episode would have been filmed in early 1965. The title didn't last too long, but it's apparently fairly popular with collectors, due to it being the work of clever artist/writer John Stanley, who is most well-known for his long run on the "Little Lulu" comic. Of course, any inherent wit residing in Melvin Monster's exploits was probably not enough to assuage poor Patty Lane's embarrassment that day!

Thanks for the info. I couldn't believe that Martin would do such a thing to Patty. :lol:

This reminds me, I wonder why they never made a Patty Duke Show comic book? They would have been a neat collector's item to have.

It would be neat if there had been a Patty Duke comic.

For a while, practically every tv-series (western, sitcom, adventure) had a corresponding comic book back in the 1960s. Two that most surprisingly didn't were "The Patty Duke Show" and "Gilligan's Island." Yet, apparently TPDS did do its share of liscensing, as there were things like those Whitman storybooks, coloring books, paper-dolls and such. But no comic. I'm sure a comic would have sold well. It would have been a natural. These things can be a mystery. For example, "Gilligan" had no comic, but producer Sherwood Schwartz's short-lived follow-up series, "It's About Time," did manage to get a (single issue) release. Odd.

Even a show as unlikely as "The Defenders" had a comic-book offspring back then, and that was hardly a kid-friendly series. And lots of short-lived shows like "Camp Runamuck," "McKeever and the Colonel," and "T.H.E. Cat" had comics of their own. True, there were also a handful of long-running 'family' centric sitcoms that didn't, like "My Three Sons," "Donna Reed," and "Father Knows Best." Maybe they were thought to be a little too staid for wacky comic-book translation? I don't know. But it's still rather annoying that there's no TPDS comic series out there, serving up a few additional Patty/Cathy shenanigans. There must have been some kind of roadblock, because I truly don't think the comic companies would have just passed on a sure-fire property like that.

I collect the Dell and Gold Key live-action TV adaptations. Here are some of the titles in my collection:

The Governor and J.J.
Twilight Zone
The Outer Limits
Star Trek
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
The Rifleman
The Real McCoys
Lancer
Dark Shadows

The Patty Duke Show may have gotten lost in the shuffle when Western Publishing broke away from Dell and went on its own. At that point, some properties began appearing in the Gold Key line while others were produced by Dell (earlier on, all of Western's TV comics were done by Dell). All of these changes began around 1963 and the dust hadn't settled at the time TPDS was airing a little later on.

Considering how similar The Patty Duke Show's storylines could be to the Archie comics, it is perhaps a bit peculiar that Patty and Cathy never got their own comic book series. Perhaps United Artists TV or Patty Duke's manager were against the idea, or the folks at Western Publishing figured that while girls liked coloring books, board games and paper dolls, they wouldn't have been interested in a comic book.