A Scoutmaster's Blog

I am sure I am not the only long time Scouter that has accumulated a fair amount of Scouting memorabilia over the years. I think it is inevitable. But when you actively collect anything you come across the collection grows a lot faster, and you develop a lot of subcategories within the collection. Handbooks, novels, coffee mugs and patches are probably the most common Scouting related collections.

Last year I discovered that there was a short comic book series that featured a comical look at Boy Scouting. This series, printed in 1951, was named The Little Scouts. According to the Comic Vine website, there were five issues printed in this series, but a few more stories were printed in Dell Four Color comic series that featured the same characters. Each comic book featured a few short stories of a group of Boy Scouts.

I was able to pick up one of these comic books. It is shown above. According to the information on Comic Vine this is #5 in the series. I have looked through it and found it to be entertaining and fun to read. It may not be quite “socially correct” by today’s standards but it was published over 60 years ago. It like reading the humor found in the books back then. I think I need to begin the hunt to see if I can find the rest of them.

Do you know of any other Scouting related comic book series? Leave a comment and let us know about it.

I have just finished my second year as the cubmaster for Melrose Pack 68. It was fun and I enjoyed it. The Cubs have such a different view of life then Boy Scouts. I am still getting used to working with them. I must be doing a decent job because the committee wants me to stick around for another year.

As the cubmaster, I try to talk to, and listen to, each of the boys when they come to me during a meeting. I try to give each of them at least a couple minutes of my time, which I fell is quite important. A year ago, I caught a quick comment by one Cub Scout who mentioned that he has never had a comic book. I collect comic books so the next time I went to the nearest comic book store I asked the owner if he could give me a good deal on some comic books I could give to the Cubs at the next pack meeting. He gave me enough for the pack free of charge, of a few varieties. The Cub Scouts thought they were great.

I decided to do it again this year at the end of the May pack meeting and graduations. The first Saturday in May is free comic book day. I went back to the store a few days later and talked to the owner about doing the same thing again this year with the Cub Scouts. He still hand some comic books left over from Saturday. We went through which ones would be appropriate for the age group, and once again he gave me enough to hand out to the Cub Scouts. The Cub Scouts were quite excited to pick out their choice of five different books I had brought to the meeting, which included SpongeBob, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Captain America.

What kind of extra little things have you done in your pack to make things more fun and special for your Cub Scouts? Leave a comment and let us know about them.

You know me, I love a good comic strip that includes a Scouting theme to it. I recently came across one in Pinterest (yeah, what can I say?) that made me chuckle a bit. It was a panel from the The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee comic, probably from July. That Edison is one smart kid, but I think his friend gets a little annoyed with him occasionally, as this comic about tying a square knot demonstrates.

Click or tap on the strip to see a larger version of it.

Can anyone tell me if this was a one strip Scouting theme, or did it last for a week?

If you follow The Buckets comic strip you know that the youngest member of the household, Eddie, is a Cub Scout, and his father is a Pack leader. A few times a year Greg Cravens, the creator of the strip, uses his comic to share a humorous look at the world of Cub Scouting. Mr. Cravens obvious knows a little about the Scouting program because his comics can hit very close to home. I am sure many Pack Leaders and families can identify with the situations he shares with us. ( I sometimes wonder if Mr. Cravens is not a Cub Scout leader in his community.)

Mr. Cravens recently featured a weeklong series in which the Cub Scout Pack goes on a camping trip. If you have ever taken Scouts on a camping trip I am sure you will find these hitting the mark. Here is a quick rundown of the comic strips and the links:

A trip is announced / A pocket knife is needed: Click HERE.
The first rule of camping: Click HERE.
My last dry clothes: Click HERE.
How to gather the Scouts: Click HERE.
Texting while hiking: Click HERE.
A tick is on me! : Click HERE.

While these comic strips feature Cub Scout age boys, many of them could also apply to Boy Scout age youth. Enjoy.

Yes, I realize that it is still July, but it is time to go toward your nearest Hallmark store and buy this year’s Snoopy, the Beagle Scout, Christmas ornament. It features Beagle Scout Snoopy along with a couple of his bird Scouts as they try to sell Christmas trees. Hallmark has named it “Holiday En-tree-preneurs”.  How long will they be in the stores? Keep in mind that these ornaments are available only in the stores, not through online sales.

I have been collecting these ornaments for several years now and always buy two of them, one for the tree and one to store away. Too bad the BSA does not list these in the Scout Stuff store during the holiday shopping season.

Every so often I get a note from someone asking me about the Peanuts comic strip in which Snoopy appears as a Beagle Scout or as the scoutmaster of a troop of Woodstock’s friends. I never had a collection of all the comic strips, but today I found a couple of sources that will help you to find them all.

The first is http://peanuts.wikia.com, a site that answers all your questions about Charlie Brown and his gang. It is where I started looking for the comics featuring Snoopy, the Beagle Scout. (Who, by the way, started his Scouting as a Tenderpaw.)

The second site you will need is comics.com.

Between these two sites I was able to find over 35 strips dealing with the Beagle Scout and his troop. In one of the last strips he attends a wedding of a couple of the troop members and becomes the groom’s First Beagle. Have fun reading through them all.

I could not pass up sharing this comic with you. It is a Family Circus comic and asks a very important question about the Boy Scout Slogan, Do A Good Turn Daily. I actually saw it in a newspaper over a year ago, but only recently found an online version of it, and it is in color!

In the last blog post I wrote about Snoopy, the Beagle Scout. I think it is great to see Scouting in this type of media. Innocent, yet very entertaining. Charles Schulz did a great job of touching our funny bone with this favorite Peanuts character. But it was not the only time Scouting has been a part of a major comic strip.

There was once a young boy named Calvin. His best friend was a tiger by the name of Hobbes. For a short time Calvin decided to join a Cub Scout pack and go out for an overnight hike. Calvin quickly discovered that Scouting was not his favorite type of activity. Why, there was no place to plug in the microwave he had brought along. Nope, Calvin and Hobbes would rather spend their days exploring strange new worlds, or playing a rough and tumble game of Calvinball. You can see some of the Calvin the Cub Scout comics here!

The picture I used for this post is Mickey Mouse dressed in a Boy Scout-like uniform. I do not remember where I collected this picture from. I do not know the story behind it. I did a quick search in Google for “boy scout mickey mouse” and did not come up with much. Drop me a line if you know the story behind the picture.

Then, of course, there is Garfield. In 2000-2001 Garfield’s creator allowed the fat cat to be used to help promote Cub Scouting. I have not heard anything about how well the promotion went, but I do have my patches of Garfield the Cub Scout that I received at the 2001 National Jamboree.

Well, that wraps up what I currently know about Scouting showing up in popular comic strips here in the USA. I am sure there are other cases of this occurring, but I can not think of any other at the moment.

**Drawing update – So far only two people have entered the drawing for the dvd of Scouting promotional films. If you wish to qualify for the drawing then look back for a previous post about the rules.