Above is the front cover of REAL SCREEN COMICS # 10 (1947). Look it over! ...Does anything seem unusual to you?
While you're examining it, I'll say that REAL SCREEN COMICS was one of DC Comics' funny-animal anthology answers to popular titles published by Dell, such as...
WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES...
LOONEY TUNES AND MERRIE MELODIES...
WALTER LANTZ NEW FUNNIES...
...And OUR GANG...
...But for THE FOX AND THE CROW and Columbia cartoons.
It regularly featured The Fox and the Crow...
Tito and His Burrito...
Flippity and Flop...
...In earlier issues "Polar Playmates", featuring a "Daffy Duck-like Penguin"...
...And in this particular issue a 2/3 page gag feature called "Snorky"!
The fact that "Snorky" was a PIG probably contributed to his lack of longevity!
REAL SCREEN COMICS ran for 128 issues, into the middle of 1959. What happened to it after that is to be the subject of another post that will come eventually.
OKAY, TIME'S UP! ...History lesson over!
What's unusual about the front cover of REAL SCREEN COMICS # 10? ...If I didn't already give it away in the TITLE of this post?
Have you ever seen "MARCH" abbreviated as "MCH."? As the "Cover Date" of a comic book, or anywhere else?
If "MARCH" wasn't spelled out completely, it was abbreviated as "MAR." as, for example, on the cover of the next such issue (# 16)...
...And the next (#22), and so on...
Though this continued up thru Issue # 49, I'll issue extra credit to anyone who also cited the FULL SPELLING-OUT OF THE COVER PRICE OF "TEN CENTS"!
Issue # 49 (1948) where the ten-cent cover price is no longer spelled out.
Pity, I actually liked it spelled-out, as it contributed to an overall look of "cartooning" that these books exhibited!
...Oh, the things we find, just looking through our comic boxes!
If you're wondering why the shades of blue are different in the two illustrations above, it's because the FULL COVER is an Internet image, and the close-up on the COVER DATE is a scan from my own copy.
16 comments:
Glad to finally see Fox and the Crow given their due on TIAH! The Columbia comics were regularly translated into French back in the day in pocket format, in a monthly comic simply called Foxie. My father collected those, and I later did the same! Here's an amusing tidbit: in our translations, the Fox and the Crow were known as "Foxie" and "Croâ" ("Croâ" being the go-to onomatopeia in French for a crow's cawing), as if these were first names. When the American comics introduced the full names "Fauntleroy Fox" and "Crawford Crow", on our end, it came through as… "Foxie Fauntleroy" and "Croâ Crawford".
In any event, that was all from the actual Fox and Crow book; I was unaware of this Real Screen Comics and its "March"-related tomfoolery (mad as a March hare, these typesetting folks, I tell you). Seems to largely feature the same characters, though, aside from Daffy the Penguin and that Snorky the Pig. (There was, as I recall, a Li'l Wolf-type feature in the alter Fox and Crows, but it focused on the wolf and it was a very different pig.)
Achille:
Fauntleroy and Crawford were indeed overdue for a featured appearance on this Blog. But they, and the often quirky aspects of the comic books they appeared in, are prime fodder for my “Adventures in Comic-Boxing ” and “Separated at Mirth” features. So are Mutt and Jeff, and you will be seeing more of each of them soon!
As a translator of comic book material, I find the evolution of F&C's names in French to be particularly fascinating! It looks like a case of “What’s a poor translator to do?”
As is so often the case, I work “within the vacuum of the story in front of me”, and with my accumulated knowledge of PAST stories – but with little or no knowledge of what has been done in FUTURE stories, that would have to be accounted for when those “future stories” are also printed here.
As a result, I sometimes have to rewrite things that could cause continuity problems down the line. For instance, I just turned in the first appearance of what has been a recurring character in stories I have not seen. Thankfully, I have a first-line editorial defense in David, who told me exactly what to revise to better connect with future stories. Other publishers – especially as seen in Boom!’s run of Disney comics – wouldn’t have shown that level of care and regard! Here’s to IDW – and especially to David!
So, yeah… I, too, might have “named” the Fox and the Crow, with no knowledge of what was being done in the USA, and I actually commend the French translator(s) for coming up with a clever way to use the names from the American comics, once they became aware of them!
REAL SCREEN COMICS was to THE FOX AND THE CROW, what WALT DISNEY’S COMICS AND STORIES was to DONALD DUCK, or what LOONEY TUNES AND MERRIE MELODIES was to BUGS BUNNY.
Funny thing is, I wasn’t aware of REAL SCREEN COMICS until at least the 1980s, when I began transitioning into fan/collector mode. That’s because it ended in 1959. And, while my grandmother DID by me some comics starting in that year, it wasn’t until 1964 and ”The Return of the Phantom Blot” that I became a “reader-in-earnest”.
At that time, there was only THE FOX AND THE CROW, and no hint of any title called REAL SCREEN COMICS!
The “Daffy Penguin” and the “Snorky Pig” did not last – especially the latter. The regular features in REAL SCREEN COMICS were The Fox and the Crow, Tito and his Burrito, and Flippity and Flop – the latter of which also had a title of its own from 1951 to 1960.
Oddly, unlike REAL SCREEN COMICS, I *was* aware of Flippity and Flop because my grandmother *did* buy me the next-to-last issue (#46) in 1959. …I just wondered why I never saw it again, until my adult back-issue-collecting days!
Had DC published a certain line of giveaway premiums instead of Western, would they have been entitled MCH OF CMCS?
Oh yes, those were good translators working for the "Foxie et Croâ comics, though their names were of course never revealed. Their dialogues were great, and indeed, their handling of names was actually very good; both Foxie Fauntleroy and Croâ Crawford actually sound like very nice, lively cartoon names to French ears. They were better than a lot of the people translating Disney comics into French at the time, too, I'm sad to say. Especially when it comes to names. The French translators did not know how to handle names.
It took forever for them to admit they didn't have a good idea what Donald's last name might be aside from "Duck", and for the longest time French-Donald was in the same weird name limbo as Goofy. Everyone called him Donald, but at the same time, when referred to officially, he was "Mr Donald", and Grandma Duck was, and still is, "Grandma Donald" on French shores. Scrooge is known to as as "Oncle Picsou" (Uncle Pennypincher), and nowadays "Picsou" is actually his last name (making it weird for Donald and HDL to refer to him as that), but for a while they wondered if his name wasn't "Picsou McDuck", or "Picsou McDonald", or "Donald Picsou", or any other crazy variation of that. The Clan McDuck in general was often called variations of "MacDonald". And even today, there was one inexplicable translation where Scrooge was called Balthazar Picsou as is now customary, but his father was still called Fergus McDuck. Go figure.
All these concerns about what lies ahead remind me of similar issues that often happen with book illustrators and movie adaptors. For instance, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events repeatedly mentions an eye-like symbol, which the illustrator drew as, well, an eye, only for it to be revealed a few novels later that it was actually artistically-calligraphed letters: VFD. Of course, the trick didn't work at all with the design the illustrator had drawn. Similarly, the Harry Potter film series ran into many, many plot holes because the screenwriters changed at-the-time-insignificant details that turned out to be prime Chekhov's Guns later on. Though the author did prevent the biggest one by telling the actor playing one of the characters crucial information that she hadn't even written down yet, just so he'd know he was actually an undercover hero and not a bloodthirsty maniac.
Oh, and —
For instance, I just turned in the first appearance of what has been a recurring character in stories I have not seen.
Alright, now you've just made me curious.
TCJ:
“MCH OF CMCS?”
I said it before, and I’ll say it again… How did we ever get along without you?!
…BRAVO! “Johnny BRAVO, even!”
Achille:
Considering that FOX AND CROW stories are generally short on plot and long on dialogue-flow and wordplay, I’d imagine that the French translators of those stories MUST have been very good at what they did – particularly if their work gets a thumbs-up from you! I’m only speculating, but I’d guess that effectively translating and dialoguing a FOX AND CROW would be a more formidable task than doing the same for a DONALD DUCK, simply because EVERYTHING turns on WHAT is said and HOW it is phrased!
Not that this would occur with FOX AND CROW, as their shtick is so well-defined, but the worst thing is when the translator is NOT FULLY (…or, sometimes NOT EVEN REMOTELY) aware of what he or she is translating.
How many of you have read the story I called “Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold Again”, which appeared in THIS ISSUE?
This was during (…all together now) “Those Legendary Last Four Months of Boom!”, where (though, too late) they began employing people to write their dialogues who actually know the characters and conventions – and the HISTORY – of the stories they were publishing!
This story was an Italian tribute/homage/sequel to the original “Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold” by Carl Barks and Jack Hanna. But, you’d NEVER know this by the “Australian English translation” that I was given to prepare a script off of! Whoever did this translation, presumably from the Italian, knew NOTHING of the classic story, never referenced it even obliquely… and called “Yellow Beak” the parrot… “Salty”! Yes, I’ll repeat that… “Yellow Beak” was called “Salty”!
The translated closing line, which I turned into a tribute to another Barks classic, “Only a Poor Old Man”, must have been the absolute lamest such line in the history of these comics! Worse than anything in the (now legendary because, ironically, I made it so) “Bird-Bothered Hero”! You would have had to TRY REALLY HARD to produce a story-ending line as bad as that! …And perhaps they did!
That’s why the translator matters, be it the great Dr. Erica Fuchs, the French translators of FOX AND CROW, Geoffrey Blum and Gary Leach… or Jonathan Gray, Thad Komorowski, and myself at today’s IDW!
…Oh, wait… What were we saying? Sorry, I just always have something to say when it comes to translation and dialogue!
Finally… Sorry, but you will have to remain “curious” about that character making his, her, or its USA debut for just a little while. I’m not always free to discuss such things until they’re solicited.
But, I LOVED the story, and asked for more of that character, if that’s any help.
You know, it's funny that the Australian people got Yellow Beak's name wrong, because that sort of thing kept happening with Yellow Beak in the French translations too!
First, where our translation of the Barks/Hannah story calls him "Bec Jaune" (a direct translation of Yellow Beak), the translation of Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold Again! calls him Vertcoco (Green-polly). And the weirdest thing is, that stayed true in a special anniversary book that directly reprinted Again after a reprint of the Barks story. With a new coloring too, so it clearly wasn't just reprinting the old translation as-was. That left a sore taste in my mouth, I'm telling you.
But even weirder was the French translation of the Seven Dwarfs spin on the Finds Pirate Gold plot (…how many of these were there? I know of five, plus the original cancelled film and the Italian sequel). The translator not only didn't get where Yellow Beak came from, but they confused him with — get this — José Carioca. Yup. The whole story was played off as José Carioca deciding to be a pirate because he'd grown bored with being a caballero. That's… I can't even… the translator had to willingly alter the dialogue that way. Why?
Also, because every Disney comic parrot is apparently José Carioca now, a Mexian parrot who appears in a Scarpa Seven Dwarfs story (…don't ask) was called José Carioca too in our translation. This is extremely puzzling because this is a seriousmodern translation of a never-before-seen-in-French story, as printed in the French Romano Scarpa Library; and the very interesting "historical commentary" added to the story explained at length how this parrot was not actually José Carioca, nor was he named so by Scarpa, even though he looks like a cross of José and Panchito is quite clearly inspired by dim memories of The Three Caballeros.
…Why are parrot names so hard to keep straight for French translators? Sometimes I wonder.
As for the Mystery Characters: I won't ask you to confirm or deny, but allow me to try and guess… hm. Kildare Coot, perhaps? Probably not Genialina Edy Son, given your stated dislike of Super Daisy. I give a somewhat high probability to Juanella Van Damm. Or Feather Mallard maybe? I could be (I probably am) hilariouslyy off the mark, but Kildare, Juanella and Feather are all who come to mind.
Achille:
Let’s see… How many times did Yellow Beak appear?
The Original “Pirate Gold”, the Peter Pan version, the Seven Dwarfs version, the giveaway version, the Woody Woodpecker version, and “Pirate Gold Again”. That’s SIX all together, including the Barks/Hanna original. How does your list compare with mine?
I must surmise that ALL parrots very likely descend from Jose Carioca! What other explanation can there be?
Did you ever see the French translation of MY American translation of “Pirate Gold Again”? I wrote about it HERE!
It was a Canadian publication, so maybe it never reached Europe. “Yellow Beak” is properly translated as “Bec Jaune”, but I’m certain that only occurred because they did as direct a translation of my script as was possible. If I had called him “Salty” (Heaven forbid!), he would have been “Salty” in this version as well.
Another funny thing, which you will see if you take the link – and I didn’t realize it until your previous comments here – “DONALD DUCK” is just referred to as “DONALD” in all the story titles! This checks with your earlier information!
…The wonderful things we all learn from one another! Makes me wonder why so many other folks spend so much time fighting on the Internet, when they can better themselves and enjoy it at the same time! …Sigh! If only I ran the Internet!
Oh, yes… I will not entertain any additional speculation on the “new character”, but I *will* say that all your guesses are incorrect. Be patient! Hee-Hee!
Oh... Apologies for my incorrect spellings of Jack Hannah's name in my comments above.
Can't help wondering if Jack Hannah ever met Bill Hanna... and if they ever talked about folks confusing their last names!
Very interesting countertranslation you have here! But alas, no, I've never seen that, or indeed much of any other, Canadian printing. The Canadian translations are really something else altogether than the French ones, it's the same thing for films (which routine receive a dub in Québec separate from the main French one). Belgian translations were also, for a long time, entirely separate from the French ones, and the characters all had their own Belgian names separate from the French ones. For instance, believe it or not, Scrooge was known as Uncle Jeremy McDuck. Jeremy.
Your list does match up with mine, except that I also accounted for the unfinished Morgan's Ghost animated film and its storyboards, too.
And I don't imagine the translators would have called Salty “Salty”; a Frenchman wouldn't know how to pronounce “Salty”, which would therefore come off as quite weird, and the literal French translation for the word “salty” would just be strange. We have no equivalent of the expressions like “an old sea salt”, you see; all that “salt” would evoke to the average reader would be table salt. I'm sad to say what is most likely is that the translators would have done the lazy thing and called him Polly. (Well, that or the French-only equivalent parrot name, Jacquot.)
Achille:
“Jeremy”? Eeesh!
Well, I’m glad my translation managed to preserve Yellow Beak’s name – from being “Polly”… OR “Salty”, should my translation take on “a life of its own” and become the basis for future translations! Wouldn’t THAT be something!
Sounds like a retcon worthy of John Byrne: "Disney Comics have too many green parrots..I'm going to say they're ALL Jose Carioca at various times in his life and pitch a 12-issue mini-series that documents how all these unrelated stories are connected - 'Jose Carioca: Chapter One'!"
Re: Fox and Crow - I enjoyed the opportunity to actually view the Columbia cartoons back when Antenna TV aired reruns of "The Totally Tooned In Toons Show", the program which repackaged all the UPA & Columbia cartoons...the best probably the last three, which UPA agreed to make under obligation, but they're nice-looking cartoons. The older ones though...the gimmick of the stereotypically effete fox being pestered by stereotypically macho crow has some unusual twists and turns..especially when it looks like the crew was phoning it in at times and their antics tended to get old without empathy for either.
‘Rehab:
Yes, I can see the John Byrne retcon now… “Man (Parrot?) of Teal”! All of the now-related parrots, at various times of their lives, battle a former evil genius-bird, now a corrupt business-bird, named “Pecks Luthor”… who eventually becomes president, and… Waitaminnit! Which “reality” was I thinking of again?
Moving on (…And aren’t we glad for that?) I liked the Fox and Crow cartoons. Didn’t love ‘em like Looney Tunes, but they were okay.
But, like Donald Duck, the Fox and Crow reached their absolute heights in comic books!
Unlike Donald Duck, who somehow managed to become surrogate parent, master of all trades, world traveling adventurer, superhero (in what I will always maintain is a “step too far”), and all the while being the “ultimate everyman”… the Fox and Crow didn’t really DO much of anything in their comics beyond endless variations on their ongoing “Battle of Wits”! Yet, the stories were amazingly complex and far more enjoyable than they ever had a right to be within that serious constraint!
Just as we all owe a debt to Carl Barks for his transformation of the squawking animated Donald Duck into one of the greatest denizens of the comic book page – so we similarly owe artist Jim Davis (for his truly inspired cartooning over the life of the series), and writers Hubie Karp (more or less pre-1953) and the team of Cecil Beard and his wife Alpine Harper (more or less post-1953) for their continually fresh, fast moving scripts packed-to-the-max with great dialogue flow and clever wordplay. Especially so for stories which most often featured only TWO characters who only talked to each other or themselves!
@rehab:
I love the older Fox and Crow cartoons, personally, although it's true there was a stretch towards the end and before UPA took over where the writing was kind of phoned in. While I appreciate the writing of the UPA cartoons, the animation just doesn't compare.
And I never saw an effeminate-vs-macho thing between the Fox and the Crow; the idea hadn't even crossed my mind. To me, the contrast was between a Brit and an American, essentially — one refined and soft-spoken to the extreme, and the other loudmouthed and rude, but resourceful. Also a battle of stereotypes, you'll argue; perhaps; but one significantly more harmless in this day and age than the interpretation you propose. I suppose the whole thing seemed funnier to me as someone with an outsider's outlook on both; I can certainly understand that an American viewer might not want to see themselves as the Crow.
Achille and ‘Rehab:
If I may offer a third variation, I have always viewed the Fox and Crow dynamic as a sort of neighborly “domestic class warfare” – or, at least “conflict”, if not outright warfare!
There are people who conduct their lives and keep their homes, etc. a certain way… and there are those who may do so in other (and sometimes conflicting) ways.
While I’m not a “neat-nik” by any stretch – as Esther will quickly confirm – our house has a nice and neat appearance and not every house on our block does. And while I like all my neighbors, and they certainly do not show up at my door in cheesy disguises in order to scam food or funds, I would characterize myself as a “Fox” and at least three of my block-neighbors as “Crows”. Thankfully, though, the “Foxes” clearly and decidedly outnumber the “Crows”, despite their unfortunate concentration in my relative proximity.
I’ve also had a several different “Crow Neighbors” in other, previous situations over the course of my life, making my view of the Fox and Crow dynamic a sensible one, relative to my own life experience.
I find it fascinating how differently the same thing can be viewed through different life-prisms!
Certainly, that's a very good interpretation! Much the same dynamic can be found between Walter Melon and Hilarius Bitterbug, too.
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