2 | dmarks
February 10, 2009 at 7:09 pm

Well, back in his vaudeville days they called him The Punner, actually. That was all he did, tell jokes. His real name was Harvey Smeltikop, really. Every night he told jokes at Frank’s Comedy Castle.

Then one night they were short-staffed, so Harvey ended up working as an usher. From then on, they started to call him The Pun-Usher. This worked pretty good until the end of vaudeville. Frank’s Castle was burnt down due to arson in the infamous anti-vaudeville riots. Harvey then took the name of the place that started his career as his own.

He also salvaged a black-cloth painted-on skeleton costume from the wreckage of the theatre. This was leftover from the days of the “Reaper Review Strip Tease”. Not all of it remained, but there was enough so he could make a shirt out of it, with the part of the costume’s skull mask as part of the shirt.

4 | Manuel
February 11, 2009 at 10:11 pm

I used to have that card. Series 1 of Marvel cards..around 1990 maybe?