Dover and Clover ponder the mysteries of their existence. Artist: Henry Boltinoff.

DOVER AND CLOVER

Medium: Comic books
Published by: DC Comics
First Appeared: 1943
Creator: Henry Boltinoff
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Considering the comedic possibilities of identical twins, it's surprising there haven't been more of them in cartoons. In animation, only Heckle & Jeckle achieved any great prominence with …

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… that schtick (Chip & Dale and Mac & Tosh weren't quite identical), and in comics only a few obscuros like Rube Goldberg's Mike & Ike ever used it. Dover & Clover are pretty obscure, but they still ranked as the most prominent characters cartoonist Henry Boltinoff ever created for DC Comics.

Most of Boltinoff's DC work consisted of simple gags, usually a single page tho they could run from half to twice that, about such characters as Moolah the Mystic, Casey the Cop and Jerry the Jitterbug. These gags appeared as fillers in practically everything DC published from the early 1940s to the late '60s. He also did a few full-fledged stories for DC's Archie-style line, including Sheldon Mayer's Leave It to Binky and George Storm's Buzzy. And then there's this one — the only Boltinoff creation ever to appear regularly on a DC cover.

Dover & Clover were private detectives, whose subtitle claimed they were twice as good as one detective because they were twins. But being twice as good as one of them still left plenty of room for ineptitude. In fact, they often had difficulty detecting which of them was which! Still, they usually managed to bumble and fumble their way to the solution of whatever case they were working on, tho as often as not they did so by accident.

They made their debut in DC's More Fun Comics #94 (November, 1943). Like the other DC anthology titles of the time, More Fun mostly ran superheroes — in this case, the main one was Green Arrow, with several others, including former cover features Doctor Fate and The Spectre, rounding out the magazine. Only four pages were allotted for the funny guys, but that was four pages more than the genre had gotten since the superheroes took over.

But superheroes were on the wane in American comic books, and four issues later, Dover & Clover joined Green Arrow on the cover. They got a cover to themselves four issues after that, and made several more cover appearances over the next couple of years. In the 108th issue (March, 1946), the title's remaining superheroes (including Superboy, Aquaman and Johnny Quick) transferred to Adventure Comics, ousting The Sandman, Starman et al., and More Fun converted to an all-humor format. Thereafter, Dover & Clover alternated cover appearances with Genius Jones. They also had a regular slot in DC's All Funny Comics, launched in 1943 as an anthology of DC's humorous back-up series such as Penniless Palmer and Hayfoot Henry.

The format of More Fun Comics was revised again with #121 (April, 1947), when a new feature, Jimminy & the Magic Book, by Jack Mendelsohn (Super Duck) and Howard Post (Anthro) took over most of the comic. Dover & Clover were the only ones to remain in it until the end — which came in #127 (December, 1947).

All Funny Comics folded six months later, and Dover & Clover were left homeless. A few years later, DC used up what were apparently just a couple of left-over stories, printing one in Star Spangled Comics #96 (September, 1949), where Tomahawk was the lead feature, and another in World'sFinest Comics #67 (December, 1953), where Superman and Batman were the stars. Despite DC's hundreds of character revivals over the following half-century, they were never seen again.

— DDM

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Text ©2004-10 Donald D. Markstein. Art © DC Comics.