"Separated at Mirth" is our name for the situation when two or more comic book covers or interiors execute the SAME GAG, only with different characters and separated by years or even decades!
Today's example is MUTT AND JEFF # 31 (December 1947 - January 1948) and WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES # 101 (February 1949).
So, what's a guy to do when all he wants is some peace and quiet to get some reading done?
Well, if you're Augustus Mutt or Donald Duck, and you have a caged pet parrot, the answer is simple!
...Though, I'm not exactly certain what it could be that keeps Jeff and Huey, Dewey, and Louie so QUIET! It's a BIRD CAGE, after all, not a "Cone of Silence"!
Things to Note:
Even though the Nephews are bunched-up "three-to-the cage", it's Jeff who looks more uncomfortably restricted!
Donald's parrot is quite PLEASED with this turn of events, while Mutt's parrot is decidedly not! Oddly, Mutt is NOT getting the complete quiet he desires - though his parrot's squawking is likely easier to shut-out than Jeff's antics!
CICERO'S CAT looks rather nervous, perhaps wondering if a stray "Meow!" might soon have her joining Jeff!
The CAGES and EASY CHAIRS (and their occupants) are "flipped" in their respective compositions - though both PARROTS occupy the same "vertical line of space"!
The covers are drawn by Sheldon Mayer and Walt Kelly, respectively. Both were well-known artists famous for other properties ("Sugar and Spike" and "Pogo" - also respectively). But, at the time, both were regular COVER ARTISTS for MUTT AND JEFF and WDC&S - respectively yet a third time!
These issues of MUTT AND JEFF and WDC&S would have appeared little more than one year apart!
The backgrounds of the two covers are both YELLOW, though MUTT AND JEFF's has a nice "wallpaper motif" to it!
There you have MUTT AND JEFF # 31 and WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES # 101 - Separated at Mirth!
...Oh, and I really gotta get myself a FEZ!
8 comments:
So, this got me wondering about when guys actually wore fezzes to relax at home. Here, from the Wikipedia article "fez": "Seen as exotic and romantic in the west, it enjoyed a vogue as part of men's luxury smoking outfit in the United States and the United Kingdom in the decades surrounding the turn of the 20th century." Clearly, Americans (even American children!) in the late 1940's were still expected to recognize the fez as a regular guy's "at home" attire. Did the kids really find it familiar, I wonder? And did anyone still wear a fez at home in that post-war period? Or had it just become a feature in the imagery of popular culture, a holdover from an earlier time?
Elaine:
As a little kid of the later 1950s, into the 1960s, I never saw ANYONE wear a fez.
Musta been before that time, maybe even into the 1940s(?) as these comics were, that you couldn’t settle into your easy chair after a hard day’s work, without donning your fez!
I guess we should put the fez alongside those omnipresent “white gloves”!
Gotta get a pair of those, too!
After our Disney Green Parrots discussion last post, I must say Mutt's angry pacing parrot reminded me of the Barks-drawn Yellow Beak immediately. Either way, I think you're wrong about Mutt being unable to get some quiet because of the parrot's squawking: unlike Donald's laughing psittacid, Mutt's Parrot's swearing and cursing seems written in the sort of cloud-shaped balloon that usually indicates whispering or inner monologue in comic lore.
As for how the two would-be easy-chair-occupants expect a cage to keep their prisoners silent — well, I know too little of the Jeff/Mutt dynamic to answer successfully for them, but maybe Donald's problem with HDL was more that they were running around, knocking him off his chair, firing crackers and so on, as they were prone to do in their early 40's incarnation, than with their making any noise as such.
I'll take this occasion to voice a perhaps uncommon opinion: I don't much like Walt Kelly's Disney covers. The man could be great when working on his own creations, or things like the Gremlins, but I don't think much of his ducks. The oddly large pupils he puts in Donald's socket make him look vaguely bug-eyed, and Kelly sometimes seems to not have a very clear idea how tall the characters are in relation to each other. That particular cover, for instance, has either an oversized uncles or some dwarfed nephews.
Achille:
If you were to ask me what’s my favorite aspect of hosting a Blog like this, it would be seeing just how differently people – even those of a generally similar point of view – can view things.
For instance, I happen to love Walt Kelly’s Duck covers. His nephews are so (for lack of a better word) “cute”, thanks to those cheeks he gave them!
Beyond that, and I KNOW I’m the one who’s out of step here, I would have preferred Kelly to remain an artist for WDC&S and OUR GANG, rather than creating the slow-moving, and way-too-wordy POGO. Don’t write me on this, folks! I admit I’m the (pardon the expression) “odd duck” here!
In my “Perfect 1940s-1950s World”, I would have had Carl Barks on the ducks (as he was) in WDC&S and UNCLE SCROOGE. Walt Kelly as the artist on DONALD DUCK. And shift Tony Strobl to be the primary artist on BUGS BUNNY – in the rabbit’s own title and in LOONEY TUNES AND MERRIE MELODIES! Just look at this Bugs Bunny comic to see why!
Yes, if Mutt’s parrot is merely mutt-ering (pardon), then Mutt WOULD have pretty much achieved the peace he sought. But, Jeff doesn’t incessantly blabber, as much as he puzzles and confounds you with his wild and clearly out-of-the-box antics. So, caging him would indeed accomplish the goal!
Yeah, probably the "guy wearing a fez at home" was just a holdover image in popular culture from earlier decades--at least two decades earlier.
As they say, your mileage may vary. The nephews' chubby cheeks are what I most dislike about Kelly's Duck covers. I'm fine with, say, that favorite of David's, the gremlins cover, which has Donald but no nephews.
My dad loved Pogo and had many of the paperback collections, which I tried to read (because they were comics!) when I was certainly too young to *get* them. But I do appreciate the characteristically sly and kind humor in Kelly's Pogo, and in his kiddie Christmas comics, as well. If the Pogo strip had never given us anything but "we have met the enemy and he is us," it would be worth it just for that. Then there was the little bug they ran for office; all he ever said was "jes fine," but they figured that's all a candidate needs to say! Plus, from my dad I learned to sing "Deck us all with Boston Charlie, Walla Walla, Wash., an' Kalamazoo! Nora's freezin' on the trolley, swaller dollar cauliflower, alley-garoo!" I'd hate to have missed out on that.
Elaine:
I’ll never say POGO isn’t worthwhile. It’s an all-time classic, and has made certain indelible contributions to our culture! Then again, you can say the same thing about FAMILY GUY, or even BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD! Mileage does indeed vary – a lot!
But, in the same way I just don’t seem to be able to appreciate KRAZY KAT (Oddly, save the early 1960s King Features cartoons and the one Gold Key comic that was based upon them!) no matter how hard I’ve tried in years past, POGO will simply never be my personal cup of tea.
Now, I shall retire to my easy chair for an evening of FAMILY GUY and BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD, while wearing my FEZ!
…Ya know, I’ll bet NOBODY has EVER done THAT!
This is only a guess, but wouldn't the fez-wearing fetish be connected with the Shriners? Many men in the old days were members and kept a fez at home. I only know this because I once directed a production of "Bye Bye Birdie" and we needed to round up a supply of fezzes for the Shriners scene. Don't know why wearing a fez at home would be particularly relaxing, but it seems to have been a "thing" at one time.
My favorite quote on the topic is from "Duck Tales: Sphinx for the Memories": "The beak is familiar, but I can't place the fez." Proves it wasn't the only time Donald was caught wearing a fez!
Scarecrow:
The only way I could imagine that “…wearing a fez at home would be particularly relaxing” would be if the fez contained some sort of “relaxing agent” underneath it. This could range from something as innocent as the “Hmm-ing Birds” that nest in Gyro Gearloose’s thinking cap to a dispenser of psychotropic drugs!
Why, a fez could conceal any number of handy-dandy calming curatives or relaxation remedies, giving a whole new meaning to the phrase (…wait for it) “…Keeping it under your hat!”
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