While we’re still rooting around the long box for WALTER
LANTZ NEW FUNNIES, let’s turn our attentions to Issue 165 (Cover Date:
November, 1950), home of the “Black and Red Woody Woodpecker Halloween Pumpkin
Gag” covered in THIS POST. But now, let’s
look in on Homer Pigeon!
To my knowledge, Homer Pigeon only appeared in three
cartoons but was, oddly, a mainstay of the Walter Lantz comic books – regularly
appearing from the 1940s thru ‘60s, and (via reprints in Gold Key’s Golden
Comics Digest) into the 1970s!
Unlike Woody Woodpecker and Andy Panda, Homer did not live
in a world largely populated by “human characters” with a side dish of other
funny animal characters like Wally Walrus or Charlie Chicken. Instead, Homer lived in a “world of birds” whose
structures were in the trees – with his town even named “Birdville”.
FUN FACT: Homer actually introduced Chilly Willy to comic books, as noted down somewhere in THIS POST.
Homer basically existed to win the affections of fickle “Carrie
Pigeon”, and thwart the schemes of his rival “Red Cardinal”. Or, so went the vast majority of his many
comic book stories.
Click to enlarge, for ease of reading!
 |
| ART BY LLOYD WHITE |
Most often, an underhanded competitor for Carrie’s
attentions, in this tale Red is more of a moocher – who sponges off Homer,
rather than work for his meals.
Fed up with, uh… keeping Red fed, Homer sends the sponging nuisance
off with just a cup of coffee… because Homer’s such a good, soft heated
guy.
But, here the story takes an odd
turn – even for a Walter Lantz comic (often more loosely plotted than the
concurrent Disney comics we’re all accustomed to) about a separate civilization
of anthropomorphic birds!
Hungry Red decides to STEAL AN EGG to eat! Let’s not even try to think about what that
could possibly mean in a civilization of BIRDS!
See what I mean?
Really?
Then, THIS happens!
Red apparently draws the line at cannibalism, and wisely decides
to return the chick to its mother’s nest (After all “Dell Comics are GOOD
Comics”, or so said their “Pledge to Parents”), when Homer gets the drop on
him!
Yeah, if ANY logic could be applied to this bizarre
situation, it WOULD be that THIS is a “Law”!
Red is sentenced for his crime, according to bird law!
And, sentence is carried-out by an unusually bird-like
version of Woody’s rival “Buzz Buzzard” (so named on-panel)
Gotta love that the blindfold doesn't work!
Also gotta love that Buzz can’t count! …Or, maybe he CAN, and just took some more
licks for the hell of it!
So, the next time you see the comic book Donald Duck in jail,
think how different it COULD have been for him, if Walter Lantz and Universal
got DONALD from Disney, instead of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit!
5 comments:
I was not expecting white-tongued raspberry-blowing Oswald. But then, does anyone?
I didn't know anything about Homer Pigeon, and that's quite fascinating stuff I learned from you. Few comics (as far as I know…!) were so devoted to worldbuilding their funny animals setting beyond the basic tropes. Also, this food-based relationship with Red reminds me a bit of Tashlin's delightful Fox and Crow, moreso in the comics than in the (also excellent) cartoons. Say, if blogger's search engine can be trusted, it would appear you have never mentioned the pair! This wrong must be righted!
Achille:
Nope! No one expects a hearty “THBBBBB!” From Oswald! That what makes it so much fun when it happens!
I should mention that the Oswald illustration is from the back cover of the wonderful hardcover book “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit The Search for the Lost Disney Cartoons” (2017) by David A. Bossert – and with our friend and esteemed colleague David Gerstein as (…you guessed it) “Archival Editor”.
To Homer Pigeon, a more “typical” Homer story would be about the eternal triangle of Homer, Carrie Pigeon (no relation), and Red Cardinal – not unlike Donald Duck, Daisy Duck (also no relation), and Gladstone Gander… or Popeye, Olive Oyl, and Bluto.
But, often enough to stave off any monotony that might creep in, they changed it up to something decidedly different like this. Normally, Red is usually more interested in Carrie than mooching food, but this really made for a noteworthy entry in a long-running series. Another such oddity that immediately comes to mind was Red trying to hide his SMOKING (!) from the coach of his baseball team!
There were two main artists on the Homer Pigeon feature. One was Lloyd White, who you see here with a rather loose style that still very nicely serves the characters. The other was Vivie Risto, another Hollywood animator who also worked for Western Publishing, as so many of them did in the 1940s thru ‘60s, and who did the illustration of Homer with Chilly Willy seen in this post. For some reason, Vivie Risto, as great an artist as he was, seemed to only work on short stories starring minor characters like Homer Pigeon, Chilly Willy, and Wuff the Prairie Dog (who appeared in the Dell TOM AND JERRY title).
Of all the Dell era comics that I’ve made a study of over the last 30 or so years, no one group has yielded as much information that was previously unknown to me as the Walter Lantz Dell comics of the 1940s thru ‘50s! I think more atypical stuff (…that is if you regard the classic Disney and Warner Bros. Dell comics as more “Typical”) occurred there, than in any other group of Dell comics. I’ve mentioned some of it already, like the gender-bending origin of Knothead (AKA “Nuthead”) and Splinter, and how Chilly Willy was introduced as part of the Homer Pigeon feature. You will definitely see more of it in the future. There’s one really unusual thing, I’m planning to post on eventually.
And, you are correct… I’ve never mentioned The Fox and Crow on this Blog - alas! Doesn’t mean I don’t want to!
In August 2018, this Blog will be TEN YEARS OLD, and I’ve hardly scratched the surface of the many, many (…oh, and did I say “many”?) things I’d like to share with you all! If only I could, I would post something every day…
Red looks like Wally Walrus cosplaying as Woody Woodpecker. And I love Lloyd White's art! It reminds me of Dave Alvarez' style, only Dave's seems more angular while Lloyd's is more rounder.
‘Rehab:
You write: “Red looks like Wally Walrus cosplaying as Woody Woodpecker”??!!
That’s GOTTA take some kind of award for originality! I’d have NEVER considered that… and I have considered some VERY STRANGE THINGS! …Congratulations!
I might say that Wally has more of a tummy but, wearing a girdle, he might very well pull it off! …The *costume* that is, not the girdle!
Yeah, now that you mention it, there IS a similarity to Dave Alvarez in Lloyd White’s art… especially when Alvarez goes for a more “exaggerated” look. Another thing I wouldn’t have thought of on my own! …This has been a very educational experience!
In addition to Homer Pigeon, Lloyd White also did many of the Oswald the (One-Time Lucky) Rabbit stories in WALTER LANTZ NEW FUNNIES. His work appears to have stopped somewhere in the early to middle 1950s and, to my knowledge, none of it was ever reprinted in the later Gold Key years.
However, unlike the more well-known artists like Carl Barks, Harvey Eisenberg, Paul Murry, Tony Strobl, etc., Lloyd White was part of something that very few experienced at Western Publishing. I hope to post on that in the near future. No spoilers, please, if any of you know what this might be!
Homer was in a few cartoons like one where he takes over for U.S Army Carrier Pigeon chased by a japanses vulture and delivers a most important Message
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