Hmmm... Anything unusual about that?
Let's see, with a little more closeup...
Here's the TOP HALF of the ad, with all the Disney characters pictured.
Here's the BOTTOM HALF of the ad, with all the necessary copy, telling you about Walt Disney Comics Digest, all the wonderful characters found therein, where to find your copy, and what a bargain it is for 160 pages at a mere fifty cents.
And cast your eyes on all of those classic Walt Disney characters...
Why, (going clockwise) there's Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Donald and Daisy Duck (...no relation), Huey, Dewey, and Louie Duck (...relation to Donald, but not Daisy), those rascally chipmunks Chip 'n' Dale, Pinocchio, and, and... WHUP! ...Waitaminnit!
...Can we move in just a little more, please?
...Chip 'n' Dale, Pinocchio, and, and... BUGS BUNNY?!
Man oh, man! Does that rabbit ever get into the darnedest places!
I guess Golden Comics Digest was not enough to contain him...
...And, so he might be lurking somewhere inside one of these as well!
Since he's already infiltrated the INSIDE FRONT COVER AD of Golden Comics Digest # 10...
...He might also make a play for the BACK COVER AD of this magazine as well...
...I'd watch my back, if I were THUMPER THE RABBIT (from Bambi) in the lower-left-middle of the illustration. We might blink and suddenly find this in his place!
Perhaps Bugs may not content himself with the infiltration of Walt Disney Comics Digest, and next move on to insinuate himself into the flagship title - Walt Disney's Comics and Stories...
I understand he may be targeting this cover...
...Just so he can say (...All together now) "What's Up Doc?"
Ain't he a stinker!
42 comments:
Maybe the original intent was to draw Brer Rabbit or Max Hare and the artist only had samples of Bugs as reference.
I seem to recall a story that
Michael Eisner thought Mighty Mouse was a Disney character..
Donald Duck, Scrooge McDuck, Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Roger Rabbit, Pluto, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Kermit the Frog, Yoda, Jar-Jar Binks, Indiana Jones, Darth Vader, Tinker Bell, Hoawrd the Duck..but not Mighty Mouse. I'm not sure WHO owns Mighty Mouse, frankly.
Yes, I remember that ad and being stunned at the anomaly of Bugs among the Disney characters. At the time, my thinking probably ran to the awareness that Gold Key published all of those characters, so if they wanted to include Bugs along with his Disney counterparts, they doubtless had the legal right to do so (although thinking about it now, I'm wondering if the Disney lawyers might not have something to say about that--or the Warners lawyers). It might have been a layout error that never got corrected--many adults at the time considered all cartoons to be Disney, or just for kids, and some unobservant editor might have just passed it on without a real serious look...or, heaven forbid, might not have been AWARE that Bugs Bunny was NOT a Disney character! Or it might have been one of those errors that someone looked at and said, "leave it in, I doubt anyone will notice." But still, how could several pairs of editorial eyes examine that ad and not catch something so egregious? Certainly legions of faithful young readers were not taken in by this attempt to put something past them! Any one of my friends would have caught it and remarked on it.
It may have been that, as Bugs was appearing in the hosting magazine for the ad, maybe he was serving as an unofficial ambassador toward the Disney Kingdom. But in that case, wouldn't there have been a caption that read in effect "Hey, kids--if you like reading my adventures in GOLDEN COMICS DIGEST, wouldn't you love to check out the WALT DISNEY COMICS DIGEST?" The absence of such a caption sends that theory down the drain.
Or how about this--some sneaky layout artist threw Bugs into the mix to see if anybody would notice, and nobody DID! So layout error? Oversight? Deliberate prank? Editorial ignorance? Planned advertising crossover? Condescending attitude toward young readers?
I guess your explanation is best, Joe--"ain't Bugs a stink-ah?"
There's more! Look at the ad copy. "Dumbo with Tinker Bell"? I don't recall any pairing up of Tinker Bell and Dumbo in those digests, although they teamed her up with Super Goof and Mowgli and other unlikely pairings. There may have been a Dumbo and Tinker Bell story buried in there somewhere, but I sure don't remember it. And who, pray, is "Madam Min"? "Madam MIN"? Some relative of Minnie Mouse--or does Minnie have a side business we're not aware of? (For shame, for shame!)
Whoever wrote the copy and did the layout must have been equal partners in Cartoon Ignorance!
And judging from Bugs' expression, he's more enthusiastic about appearing in a magazine he's not in than the regulars who do appear in it are! He almost looks like he's doing a Jimmy Durante impression--"Ev'ry body wants ta get inta de act!" I guess in this case, Jimmy and Bugs are both right.
OK, OK, one more and I'll get off the soap box! This juxtaposition, planned or not, predates Bugs and Mickey's joint appearance in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" by about 18 years. Whoever DID allow this ad to go into print was quite prescient! And I believe when Bugs handed Eddie Valiant the spare tire instead of a spare parachute, he did utter the timeless quote "Ain't I a stink-ah?"
Don’t ever “…get off the soapbox”, Scarecrow, this Blog would be all the poorer if you did!
I had hoped this post would elicit reactions similar to my own, from folks who both feel as passionately as I do about this wonderful era (and wonderful publisher) of comics, and who could see the great humor in this advertising / editorial error – and offer additional observations on it. Both you and Comicbookrehab have certainly delivered!
Do recall, back in those simpler days, Disney and Warner Bros. were not (…or, at least, SEEMED not to be) armed to the teeth with lawyers, spoiling for any fight, real or contrived, to come their way. Indeed, save for Gold Key Comics and a few other merchandising trinkets, Disney animated characters were almost completely absent from the scene and, save for an hour or so on CBS TV on Saturday mornings and sporadic scatterings in local syndication, it was pretty much the same for the Warner characters.
In other words, I doubt anyone on either side noticed. And, even if they did, they likely didn’t care. Maybe even laughed at it over drinks! Contrast that with now, where every word of the present-day IDW scripts is finely poked, prodded, and analyzed.
Western Publishing, in those good old days, was simply not nearly as deeply scrutinized as would happen later – and in increasing intensity, with subsequent publishers. If such a mistake would occur, as they inevitably do, my guess is that it was just “no big deal” – except to us readers and fans, who I suspect were either tickled and amused, or shocked and horrified, depending on their outlook. For the record, I was “tickled and amused” – and STILL AM, hence this Blog post!
While preparing this post, I, too, caught the “Madam MIN” misnomer, and flashed back (…or would that be FORWARD) to the paring of Mickey and Bugs in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”, and figured we’d somehow get to those items somewhere in the comments, so thanks for doing so! It also shows how often you and I tend to be on the same (in this case, “digest sized”) page!
Three final bits of business…
1: Just because I wouldn’t sleep tonight if I didn’t look it up, "Dumbo with Tinker Bell" (…and, yes, they were BILLED that way atop the first panel) were teamed-up in WALT DISNEY COMICS DIGEST # 22 (Cover Date: June, 1970) which, per their respective cover dates, would have appeared ONE MONTH after GOLDEN COMICS DIGEST # 10 (Cover Date: May, 1970). This was the issue that first reprinted the “Gold Key Classic”, as it was cover-billed, “The Money Champ” - the second battle between Uncle Scrooge and Flintheart Glomgold, by the great Carl Barks – if that better helps readers place it.
“The Pirate Plot” (as if you couldn’t tell by the title) was written by Vic Lockman, drawn by Pete Alvarado, and ran for TEN pages, albeit in that “two-vertical-but-not-quite-rectangular-panel-per-page” (for lack of a better descriptive term) format that Western Pub. created specifically for its digest comics. Anyone who’s read a Gold Key Digest very likely knows what I mean.
2: “Or how about this--some sneaky layout artist threw Bugs into the mix to see if anybody would notice…” Or, maybe the ARTIST was Bugs HIMSELF, a la the ending of the classic Chuck Jones cartoon “Duck Amuck”! “Ain’t I a stinker”, indeed!
3: And if, as “Madam MIN”, “Minnie has a side business we're not aware of”, it could ONLY be as a FORTUNE TELLER (…strictly for humor and entertainment purposes and with all proceeds going to charity, of course)! What else could it possibly be? …Um, get the feeling I’ve “written my way out of A LOT of things like this for the modern-day comics”? If so, yer right!
‘Rehab:
I believe we will see the day when Mighty Mouse IS actually owned by Disney! What WON’T be?! Indeed, it will finally be only Disney and Warners standing atop the puny planet Earth, not unlike the ending of the great Tex Avery cartoon “King Size Canary”, before one media giant finally devours the other!
And, like Bugs Bunny here, a “Warner Bros. Wrong Rabbit” (not Bugs) was also mistakenly placed on a DVD box cover. If anyone cares to sift through this long Blog post of mine from 2013 to find out where, you can do so HERE.
And imagine the team-up potential among all the Disney-Created and Disney-Acquired characters you list: “Donald Duck, Scrooge McDuck, Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Roger Rabbit, Pluto, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Kermit the Frog, Yoda, Jar-Jar Binks, Indiana Jones, Darth Vader, Tinker Bell, Howard the Duck…”
Donald and Howard can finally decide FOR THEMSELVES whether or not they look too much like each other, and leave the lawyers out of it! Indiana Jones can settle down and buy a house on an ordinarily quiet Duckburg street and find he lives next to NEIGHBOR JONES – backyard feud hilarity will surely ensue. …And Dumbo and Tinker Bell can team up and… oh, wait… they already did that back in 1970! Never mind!
And, what the heck… as long as I’m at it, let’s examine the SOURCES of some of those character illustrations that appear in that WALT DISNEY COMICS DIGEST ad that appeared in GOLDEN COMICS DIGEST # 10 (going clockwise again):
Goofy is from the cover of WALT DISNEY COMICS DIGEST # 14 (Cover Date: August, 1969), drawn by Tony Strobl.
Donald and Daisy are from the inside front cover of WALT DISNEY COMICS DIGEST # 7 (Cover Date: January, 1969), drawn by Vic Lockman.
Huey, Dewey, and Louie are from the cover of WALT DISNEY COMICS DIGEST # 15 (Cover Date: September, 1969), drawn by Tony Strobl.
Pinocchio is from the cover of WALT DISNEY COMICS DIGEST # 6 (Cover Date: December, 1968 – and pictured in this post), presumably drawn by Tony Strobl who drew the other cover elements.
Some of these were reprinted from previous Dell and Gold Key covers, others were done for issues of WALT DISNEY COMICS DIGEST.
A total digression, WALT DISNEY COMICS DIGEST # 6 also contains “Cape Caper Cod Map Mystery”, a team-up of Ludwig Von Drake and Moby Duck vs. Emil Eagle (!!!) by Lockman and Strobl, the first US reprinting of Carl Barks’ Uncle Scrooge epic “The Twenty-Four Carat Moon” one of my favorite stories of all time (not to mention the source of my little avatar seen on all my Blog comments), a Paul Murry Super Goof, a Mickey Mouse reprint also by Murry, and a Pluto reprint by Harvey Eisenberg! Could they possibly have drawn-up a BETTER issue for me?!
Who’da thunk you could have SO MUCH FUN, just browsing an old stack of comics! …Ain’t life grand?
Wow! Bugs "photobombs" Disney! Well, if Disney characters can have ads in a Warners magazine, then I guess Bugs's prank is fair play. This takes the cartoon saying "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" to a whole new level!
Thanks, Joe. This post made my day.
~Sergio Goncalves (Now known in the blogosphere as Pelayo)
I'll track down that Digest as soon as possible.
Anyway, I wanted to chime in on congratulating you for this find. Interestingly, it reminds me of a scientific experiment about the reliability (or rather, lack thereof) of memories. Two groups of college students who had been to Disneyland before were rounded up and shown an advertisement for the parks. It was mostly your average "stock footage of a couple of rides, footage of parades, some footage of meet'n'greet characters" commercial… except one of the two groups was shown an edited version where footage of a meet'n'-greet with Bugs Bunny was inserted. Then, the scientists asked the students of both groups to tell them about their own experience at the parks, and sure enough, a non-negligible portion of those who had been shown the altered video told the scientists about how they met Bugs Bunny at Disneyland and shook his hand, one student even describing it as the highlight of gus visit.
I don't know whether to be fascinated by such tricks of human memory, or to simultaneously laugh and weep (waugh? leep?) at the test students' ignorance in cartoonology and phylacterology.
That is FASCINATING, Achille!
Who commissioned the study? Was it Disney or Warner, or was it a product of independent research? If the latter, my hat’s certainly off to the researchers who came up with that one!
…And, alas, it DOES show how little much of this stuff means outside of our circles!
I guess that's why we keep "fighting the good fight"!
Sergio/Pelayo:
Always glad to make your day!
Every now and then, I find that sort of oddball stuff while paging through older comics. It’s almost hard NOT to! I hope to do more of that, along with the regular review/discussions.
Some quick research found some reference to the study, which is apparently famous enough for this sort of trick-memory phenomenon to be nicknamed "the Bunny Effect". Here's a convenient link: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98195
(Though, shame on me, it appears I misremembered a detail, in that it was printed ads rather than cinematic ones. Which actually brings us closer to where we started with the subject of this post, now that I think about it!)
You know, all this is reminding of a few months ago, when you blogged about a cover of an old Tom and Jerry comic book: http://tiahblog.blogspot.com/2017/05/fun-with-comics-dis-armed-and-dangerous.html.
One version of that cover had a Warner Bros. copyright notice... over a decade before Time Warner acquired Turner Entertainment! So, that error turned out to be coincidentally prescient.
Could this ad someday also turn out to be similarly prescient? That is, could Disney acquire Warners someday? Heck, even if Warners were to acquire Disney, it would still make this ad prescient.
Of course, Disney or Warners will probably buy the rights to the Terrytoons library (and thus Mighty Mouse) long before one of the two classic animation giants swallows the other. For the record, Terrytoons is currently owned by CBS.
Achille:
That’s amazing – and all the more so because, as you note, it even MORE CLOSELY parallels the subject of this post than earlier indicated!
So, along with “ Bugs Bunny Invades Disneyland”, we also have “ Bugs Bunny Invades Walt Disney Comics Digest”.
What are the odds of such an astounding coincidence – an image of BUGS BUNNY placed within an example of DISNEY advertising! If the experiment were conducted sometime around 1970 (though I’d imagine that it was far more recent that that – even with no timeframe included in the article), you’d almost have to wonder if the two were somehow connected.
HERE is Achille’s link! It is a MUST read!
Pelayo:
It almost seems inevitably fated that only one “Mega-All-Encompassing-Unstoppable-Mammoth-Media-Corporation” will be left standing, presiding over some cold, dim future. And, unless someone or something rises up from completely out of nowhere, my bet is on either Disney or Warner Bros. With one consuming the other as its final act of conquest!
Then, having achieved total domination over the Earth’s entertainment properties, it can create and dispatch “Terminators” to quell any unfortunate intellectual property uprisings! And, not the “nice, later Arnold” type of Terminator from after the first film – but the really bad ones!
Heck, one of those outfits might even own “The Terminator” franchise now. If not, wait a few weeks.
And HERE’S that TOM AND JERRY link (…a WARNER property, let us not forget), for your “prescient reading pleasure”!
Well, DreamWorks/Universal owns all the Jay Ward characters (Bullwinkle, Mr. Peabody), Felix the Cat and Underdog..I had to check who owns Mighty Mouse: the ownership is actually divided between CBS (character and trademark) and Paramount Studios (Home Video rights) ever since Viacom got split up when it merged with FOX amd became part of a big conglomerate umbrella. Maybe Disney should acquire Atomic Mouse instead. Nobody's doing anything with him..except Neal Adams drawing him on his sketchbooks..
I think the only cartoon characters that haven't been acquired are the ones who appear in newspaper comic strips and are owned by separate syndicates. Jim Davis still owns Garfield. Heathcliff cat is owned by Tribune Media. Snoopy and Charlie Brown are owned by whatever United Feature Syndicate calls itself now. King Features still owns Popeye, though Sony owns film rights (but they don't like that character, so he's been saved from appearing in a cheesy CG cartoon movie featuring fart and poop jokes). Warren Beatty still owns the film rights to make more Dick Tracy movies, but he hasn't. Will Eisner's estate still owns The Spirit. The Shadow is still owned by Conde Nast, publisher of magazines you can find in office waiting areas...
The funny thing about Disney owning Marvel is that they could have Howard the Duck be revealed as Huey Dewey and Louie's father if they felt like it (and brother of Daisy Duck, which makes him paternal uncle to April, May and June..and the mystery of the third sibling in that family who is THEIR father could stay a mystery). He went out for a smoke..fell into a portal...hooked up with a human girlfriend when he got lonely...fought a weirdo with a bell for a head..then magically returned to Duckburg wearing pants & sneakers.
Joe:
The Terminator? Nah... Disney's secret weapon will be the Worminator: http://tiahblog.blogspot.com/2015/11/on-sale-november-04-2015-mickey-mouse-6.html :)
Pelayo:
I like the way you think! And HERE’S the link! …Say, that rhymes!
‘Rehab:
“ Maybe Disney should acquire Atomic Mouse instead. Nobody's doing anything with him…except Neal Adams drawing him on his sketchbooks…”
And if they do, please team him up with Super Goof… and please somehow involve ME in the creative process of THAT team-up
“ The funny thing about Disney owning Marvel is that they could have Howard the Duck be revealed as Huey Dewey and Louie's father if they felt like it (and brother of Daisy Duck, which makes him paternal uncle to April, May and June…and the mystery of the third sibling in that family who is THEIR father could stay a mystery). He went out for a smoke…fell into a portal...hooked up with a human girlfriend when he got lonely...fought a weirdo with a bell for a head…then magically returned to Duckburg wearing pants & sneakers.”
Now, THAT would surely upset Don Rosa’s Duck Family Tree! Maybe we could just use this wonderful scenario in “New DuckTales”!
It also appears that I may have inadvertently deleted another comment of yours that came along with this one – and cannot seem to retrieve it. Very sorry about that! If you resend it, I promise to have some coffee first before tending to it!
@Comicbookrehab: Only, April, May & June are Daisy's *sister's* daughters (established in their first appearance in Barks' "Flip Decision." In discussion on Feathery Society, we agreed that their last name has never been established, and we all sincerely hope it is NOT "Duck." It would, in any case, be cruel to name a girl "May Duck"!
Well..Don is just going to have to learn how to draw headshots of Hoawrd for fans at conventions in the way that he has to draw headshots of Fethry, whom he's gone on the record as finding irritating. He probably could've revealed the name of the father and nobody would've minded.
I recall 3 points in that deleted comment:
1) I wouldn't mind seeing Indiana Jones and Arizona Dipp team-up with Eurasia Toff to find the Lentils of Babylon or sacred bottle caps from Tralla La..
2) I wouldn't mind a Manufactured-On-Demand DVD from Warner Archive containing the Daffy & Speedy cartoons , Cool Cat, Rapid Rabbit & Bunny and Claude. The unfortunate thing is that it seemed like DePatie-Freling made all those cartoons look like Pink Panthers, as if that's all they know, whilst the best Pink Panther animation was always the intros for the live-action movies, particularly the ones by Richard Williams.
3) I wonder if you've seen the re-releases of the Hanna-Barbara DVD boxsets - re-branded "Diamond Collection", most of them don't have the special bonus features and they're packaged with the discs staked ontop of eachother to keep the retail price under 20 bucks, but it's there. It's not entirely clear if there will be a second volume of The Huckleberry Hound show, but the new re-release has preseved that illusion..and the really weird choice to try and mimic the way the cartoons were originally broadcast, in spite of the fact that Hanna-Barbera was mixing and matching old and new episodes, so you wind up with multiple reruns of "Huckleberry Hound Meets Wee Willie" on the same set..no wonder that box set didn't sell well the first time!
‘Rehab:
Well, BOTH “Bunny and Claude” cartoons did make it into the Looney Tunes Super Stars – “Porky and Friends: Hilarious Ham” DVD collection… and did so by the skin of their (buck) teeth, as they were the LAST TWO cartoons on the disc. I reviewed that set HERE. Looking that post over, I REALLY wrote A LOT about “Bunny and Claude”, for a series with only two cartoons. So, anyone who’s interested can check that out.
As for “Rapid Rabbit”, he was the Warner character who found his way onto the “The Best of Warner Bros.: Hanna-Barbera 25 Cartoon Collection”. You can see him there, (“nestled Quick”-ly?) between Yogi Bear and Quick Draw McGraw, at the link I provided in my first comment-response to you in this very thread.
Daffy/Speedy, Cool Cat, Merlin the Magic Mouse, etc., I don’t think we’ll ever see in anything resembling "complete", unless we somehow “jumpstart” Warner’s interest in releasing their own animated characters to DVD… by ALL OF US PURCHASING THE BIG NEW PORKY PIG SET FROM WARNER ARCHIVES that’s coming in September. I know *I’m* doing so!
Yes, I’ve seen those “Hanna-Barbara "Diamond Collection"” sets in Best Buy. Don’t need ‘em ‘cause I got the originals, of course. And, even without the “extra features”, they would still be worth it, especially as Warner never really put very many “good” features on the earliest H-B sets anyway.
Of course, and typically, Huckleberry Hound was not among them, leaving me no reason to believe that any success WHV has with these will lead to any future volumes of Huck – just more repackaged retreads of what they released 10 or more years ago. I still say our best shot at displaying ANY influence at all is that Big New Porky Pig Set!
Though you DO indicate that there IS a “Huck set” among these, even if I didn’t see it: “It's not entirely clear if there will be a second volume of The Huckleberry Hound show, but the new re-release has preserved that illusion… and the really weird choice to try and mimic the way the cartoons were originally broadcast, in spite of the fact that Hanna-Barbera was mixing and matching old and new episodes, so you wind up with multiple reruns of "Huckleberry Hound Meets Wee Willie" on the same set… no wonder that box set didn't sell well the first time!”
I’m of MIXED FEELING on that. Yes, the “repeats” were maddening, especially considering that we STILL are missing so many of those cartoons in 2017! BUT, I gotta admire their commitment to “authenticity” – something I complained about HERE, while also conceding that it may be nearly impossible to recreate a multi-element animated series from the ‘50s or ‘60s in its original form.
So, what do all these LINKS tell me? That I really should consider doing more of my “Looong DVD Reviews”, interspersed with the Comic Book posts! Maybe I’ll relaunch those with (all together now), the “Big New Porky Pig Set”! What say all of you?
Elaine:
You write: “It would, in any case, be cruel to name a girl ‘May Duck’!” …If so, it would also apply to naming any potential brother “Will Duck!”
Additionally, for April’s sake, we must hope the family name is not “Showers”!
In that vein, for May, the name “Flowers”!
And finally, for June, the name “Bugg”! …And, if “Bugg” is not a real name, then let’s consider “Moon”.
All three are “Real-Life Names” that produce unfortunate results.
They must also remember never to MARRY INTO those names, unless they retain their own last names, or elect to use a HYPHEN. Oh, wait… Disney characters DON’T MARRY – only their off-panel siblings do!
Extending this to a “Real-Life Example”, no one named “Olivia” would ever marry ME, unless she opted for one of the above options – and, even WITH the hyphen, it would still sound silly!
Golly, this thread has gone to some strange and wonderful places! Thank you all for that, and keep ‘em coming!
Oh, wait… Disney characters DON’T MARRY – only their off-panel siblings do!
Trying to look for counter-examples here (characters who were introduced single and later married)… Aha! I know: Miss Quackfaster. Going by DuckTales, she married a Mr Featherby for a while and then got a divorce.
Also from DuckTales is the suggestion that Webby Vanderquack and Doofus Drake will hook up and tie the knot in the future.
If we're being thorough, the "Whatever Happened to Uncle Scrooge?" illustration by Rosa shows Donald and Daisy conspicuously wearing rings, so they probably get married later on in Don's book. And at least one story I recall has Donald time-travelling to the future and meeting direct descendants of his, implying Donald and Daisy did get married eventually.
Achille:
Then, let’s not omit the difficult period of the Quackfaster / Featherby divorce, when she was forced to live under the assumed name of “Miss Typefast”. You see, she could TYPE and, if she HAD TO, exit FAST!
Everything else is just one of “many possible and shifting futures” which, as we can surmise, may change from one-thing-to-another, minute-by-minute.
Personally, I’m hoping we stop on that “possible future” where I become rich enough to buy both Disney AND Warner Bros.! Just imagine the great comics, TV series, and films we’ll have then!
…Oh, wait… The future just shifted again to where I retroactively re-edit Gold Key’s DONALD DUCK # 127 (1969) , eliminating ”Bird- Bothered Hero” from existence forever – replacing it with a new Paul Murry Super Goof!
Say, that wouldn’t be a bad future to live in, would it? …At least until it changes again? …Huh?
I found a Disney character who got married: Bucky Bug got married to June at the end of his run in the Silly Symphonies comic strip.
Deb:
Right you are, Deb! I guess Bucky was so SMALL he got away with it “BENEATH our notice”... or by acting “BELOW the radar”… or keeping a “LOW profile”!
Just imagine Bucky and June’s VOWS… “INSECT-ness or in health”, etc. etc.
…Okay, I’ll stop now!
"INSECTness or in health" gets my award for Pun of the Month! And hey, it's the last day of the month, so you can start working for the September award tomorrow!
Elaine:
I humbly accept the “Pun of the Month Award” for August! As short-lived as this reign may be.
But, as you note, with September comes a brand new month… I’ll try to not “fall” down on the job!
No matter, I’ll always be here to give readers like you the replies their comments deserve, because (…all together now) with great Blog power, comes great “response-ibility”!
Um… no winners yet, right?
"Leaf" it alone, Joe!
Adel:
“I’ll try to not ‘fall’ down on the job!”
"‘Leaf’ it alone, Joe!”
“Fall”… “Leaf”… That’s a JOKE, son… I say, that’s a JOKE!
...No “September Pun of the Month”, mind you… but it IS a joke, son!
Next thing you know, we’ll be reviving that old standard - “Bad Goat Jokes”!
A GOAT says to a CHEF… “Please whip me up a TASTY MEAL!”
The CHEF says to the GOAT… “CAN do!”
Not BAAAA-D, on the spur of the moment!
…Don’t we have great fun around here?!
Fun? That we moo, Bertram, that we moo.
Also, I seem to recall that in Pedrocchi's comics, Horace actually proposed to Clarabelle at the end of a story, and they were married by the beginning of the next one.
By the by, similar to Bugs's hijacking of the Disneyverse, and perhaps even greater in scale, was Vlastimir Belkić's run at bootleg Mickey Mouse comics in Yugoslavia from 1935 to 1939 (see here: https://inducks.org/creator.php?c=Vlastimir+Belkic&c1=date), wherein, since he wasn't tied down contractually to Disney, and there were no other channels for those characters in Yugoslavia at the time, Old Vlastimir gleefully inserted Popeye, Laurel & Hardy, and even Betty Boop as recurring characters. Because there were no other Yugoslavian Disney comics at the time, this oddity is considered 'official enough' to be indexed on INDUCKS… though, sadly, not to be translated in any other language.
And this also brings us back to the subject of marriage, because the first comic Belkić did was literally about the marriage of Mickey and Minnie, where the aformentioned Popeye & Co. were guests!
Achille:
If “INSECT-ness or in health” was the “Pun of the Month”, then “Fun? That we moo, Bertram, that we moo.” must be the “Comment-Opening-Line of the Month”!
I always felt that, not unlike Barks, and Gottfredson before him – and perhaps even Scarpa AFTER them, Pedrocchi was “making it up as he went along – in whatever was the best way to suit his purpose”, largely because there was no one to stop him. All the MORE SO in Pedrocchi’s case, because of the VERY EARLY period in which he worked – and, unlike Gottfredson who worked in an equally early period, because he worked in another country.
I only wish he’d had the opportunity to give us as sizable a body of work to rival Gottfredson, Barks, and Scarpa! I can’t tell you how AMAZED I was at seeing “Donald Duck and the Secret of Mars”, when Gladstone Series II ran it in the ‘90s. Imagine a few decades worth of stuff like THAT! Watching it “evolve” as it progressed, etc.
YEOW! I can’t imagine ANY licensed Disney publisher would be able to translate and run Belkić’s work! (...Though I'd sure like to TRY the translating!) Modern licensing is so complicated that there are even DISNEY characters IDW (and other recent US publishers) can’t use, no matter that they DID appear with Donald, Mickey, and the rest in the old Dell Comics – and (bringing this post’s comments full circle) Walt Disney Comics Digest!
And, bringing it even… um… “fuller circle”, Laurel and Hardy DID (…as YOU pointed out) appear in IDW’s UNCLE SCROOGE # 4 (Legacy Numbering # 408) – and that illustration actually appears near the end of my post on IDW’s UNCLE SCROOGE # 29! How ‘bout that!
Finally, now that you mention it, I’d sure like to see Mickey Mouse and Popeye meet! There could be a “Golden Age Team-Up” by Floyd Gottfredson and E.C. Segar, and a “Silver Age Team-Up” by Paul Murry and Bud Sagendorf… but the one I’d REALLY wanna see would be the “Modern Age Team-Up” by Casty and Bobby London! …Oh, the possibilities that could spring from THAT!
True, true. (I wonder — could one argue that the panel in Grand Canyon doesn't really depict the characters as we know them, but the actors Arthur Stanley Jefferson and Oliver Hardy? After all, the other patrons of that café aren't fictional characters, but Hollywood celebrities…)
So for what it's worth, here is a page with as many scans of Belkić as have been located on the Intenret: http://disneybooks.blogspot.fr/2010/04/i-released-two-of-those-seven-strips-4.html.
Picsou Wiki has a complete biography of Ol'Vlastimir; born in 1896 (the same year Scrooge got in the Klondike… there's a joke in there somewhere, surely), he started his career in the early 1930's with an autonomous comic strip, Detective Harry Vils, apparently inspired by the Sam Spade stories. It was the first-ever original comic produced in Yugoslavia, and quite a sensation at the time. Later, during the German occupation, he was forced to abandon the American characters (for obvious reasons) and created a second original series, Craftly Little Mouse. However, since people in WWII Yugoslavia had other things to think about than newspaper comics, it didn't catch on. Belkić died a pauper in 1944 — but we don't even know the exact date, nor is the location certan. Kinda sad really.
Achille:
If, as The Bard says (sayeth?), “All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players…, who’s to say if we’re seeing the ACTORS “Laurel (Jefferson) and Hardy”, or the CHARACTERS “Laurel and Hardy”!
Following-up:
“They have their exits and their entrances, And one man in his time plays many parts…”
And that would explain the MANY DIFFERENT DONALDS there are… from “The Wise Little Hen”, to “New DuckTales”! …With Carl Barks’ late-1940s-to-mid-1950s comics version being the “idealized” iteration.
Shakespeare, too? This is one darned amazing thread!
Those strips by Belkić’ are ASTONISHING! Thank you for bringing them to our attention!
EVERYONE (No Exceptions!) take THIS LINK and go see these once-in-a-lifetime curios! …And I mean NOW!
I’d like to say that the character shoveling coal in the first strip looks like something I’ve seen in the many silent-era cartoons that David Gerstein is such an expert on. Perhaps he can confirm, or deny, that!
As a matter of fact, how it is fitting that you would bring such a great poet as Shakespeare into this conversation, because I have just found out that to add to the general weirdness of the Great Belkić, all the dialogue and captions were in verse, ala Billy Bug. Would this not make translating them even more of a challenge?
He looks a little like a human version of (the dogfaced) Judge Rummy, but I'm pretty sure that's not who he's supposed to be. I'll ask around among my Euro-contacts when I have a chance.
Thanks, David!
Do let us know, if you find out!
Achille:
You write: “As a matter of fact, how it is fitting that you would bring such a great poet as Shakespeare into this conversation, because I have just found out that to add to the general weirdness of the Great Belkić, all the dialogue and captions were in verse, ala Billy Bug. Would this not make translating them even more of a challenge?”
THAT’S a challenge I would LOVE!
Funny thing… I always wanted to write the Dell and Gold Key Comics ROAD RUNNER. You know, the one that RHYMES!
That will never happen, of course, because no one is ever going to publish stories like that again… but THIS?
…Oh, YEAH! Bring it on!
It might be the death of me, but bring it on!
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