Monday, May 28, 2018

I’m Not an Artist, But… Speaking of Space!



Here's a nice little counterpoint to our last post, which inaugurated the "I’m Not an Artist, But…" sub-series!

In THAT POST, I noted the poorly designed cover for Disney Comics' WALT DISNEY'S COMICS AND STORIES # 574 (1992), and all the needlessly empty blank space, both above, and to the left of, the figure of Donald Duck!  (Below)
 

                                               
In contrast, look at this nice job by an old pro, the tragically underrated Phil De Lara, for the cover of THE PINK PANTHER # 13 (Gold Key Comics, 1973)!  

Specifically, for the use of an ANTENNA on the back of the Panther's car, and how it extends into, and eliminates any possibility of, (...all together now) "empty blank space" to the left of the Panther's head - no matter how slight that  "empty blank space" might have been! 

It's all the more a case of "going that little extra step", and you might not even notice it unless you "linger on the cover and think about it more deeply than is warranted", because the ANTENNA is IN NO WAY NEEDED TO CARRY THE GAG! 

It's just there for the sake of the best possible composition!  It even abuts the logo in such a way that one might imagine the antenna giving the "fancy P" of "Panther" a little nudge!  
 
Well done and bravo, Phil De Lara!  

Completely shifting gears, in addition to categorizing this post in the new "I’m Not an Artist, But…" sub-series, we could also put it in the "Adventures in Comic-Boxing" sub-series, as this observation was formulated while digging through my comics long boxes!  


 And, it even quasi-qualifies for our other sub-series, "Separated at Mirth" with Mutt and Jeff, in that the height disparity between The Pink Panther and The Inspector is played-up similarly to that between Mutt and Jeff - with SOMETHING BEING OPENED ON TOP to accommodate the taller toff of each two!   
 

The Pink Panther with a CAR...
 
 
...And Mutt and Jeff with an UMBRELLA!  

As you can see, Mutt and Jeff did this umbrella gag more than once... MUCH MORE, in fact!  But, that will be the subject of a future "Separated at Mirth"!  

For now, we'll just celebrate Gold Key's THE PINK PANTHER # 13 (1973) for hitting the TIAH-Trifecta of "Adventures in Comic-Boxing", "Separated at Mirth", and "I’m Not an Artist, But…" !   
 
 
How many comics can make a claim like THAT! 

17 comments:

Achille Talon said...

Little did our frimlous hero suspect, as he wandered once again
Into the dark and bountiful realms of I'mNotAnArtistButistan,
More garish colorization awaited his torveous oclumping…


Before I'm taken over by the Society of the Rhyming Dove, let me clarify: besides the general trippiness of that cover's coloring, what bizarre primate decided that Inspector Clouseau's coat should be blazing red, and his hat blue? Not that old Jacques was ever that good at disguises, but try inconspicuously tailing a fiend while wearing that.

(The question was rhetorical, but I'd actually like to know: has any of the data survived for who the colorists of vintage Western and Gold Key comics were? Could we track down the man who decided Scrooge's coat should be red? And, conversely, whatever unsung nongenius insisted for so long that it clearly should be fungus-green? You seem like a man to ask, Joe.)

…Say, Walter Melon actually had some of his finest two-pager moments in a series of 4th-wall-maiming gags wherein he faced his comic book magazine's head printer, one Van Catastroffendus, who kept messing up his color scheme. (Van Catastroffendus is a man with an untranslatable Belgian accent, the build of a gorilla, and the attitude of Flintheart Glomgold on a bad day. He's also very much in charge of what he prints in those magazines. Threfore the results are not in Melon's favor, unless you count ending up as a purple-green-red splotch in the middle of a cataclysmic whirldwind of washed-off ink and paint as “favor”.) Maybe I ought to send these your ways in the not-too-distant future.

The Gang of the Green Gorilla said...

We, the Green Gorilla Gang, approve of the Pink Panther's choice of a color for the last word its title font. But we do wonder what prompted it. Was the colorist secretly one of ours all along? Or, rather, a member of our sister group, the Possé of the Azure-And-Emerald Panther.

After kind reassurances that gorillas are green and have always been (of course; why did you ask?), we congratulate Citizen Torcivia on another D.F.P., or Darn Fine Post, though it could perhaps have been improved yet by the artful addition of a few gorillas. Green ones, fo course.

Not that there's any other kind.

G.G.G. out.

Joe Torcivia said...

Achille AND “Gang Green”:

In the closing-in-on-ten-years that I’ve been operating this Blog, I don’t think I’ve ever seen two consecutive comments on COLORING…

…So, yes, we ought to give some thought to whoever chose the (shall we say… “unique”) color scheme for the cover of THE PINK PANTHER # 13!

The most authoritative place on the Internet that I know for information on Non-Disney Gold Key Comics, The Grand Comics Database, has only THIS for THE PINK PANTHER # 13!

Now, looking at my own copy of the issue, which prompted this post in the first place, I can additionally offer the following:

• All stories in the issue were drawn by Phil De Lara.

• All stories EXCEPT the first one were lettered by Larry Mayer.

• The first story looks to be lettered by Bill Spicer.

• The first story looks to be written by the great Michael Maltese! Just read it, with the knowledge that Maltese had gone back to writing for Western Publishing at this time, because Hanna-Barbera no longer produced the kind of cartoon he specialized in writing, and, if you're at all familiar with the type of cartoons Maltese wrote while at H-B, such a conclusion is inescapable!

But, even with a team-up as mighty as The Grand Comics Database and Yours Truly, there is NO information to be provided about the colorist! Little is known about the letterers and colorists who toiled for Western, and that’s a sad fact.

So, it’s very likely that we will never know who designed the trippy color scheme for THE PINK PANTHER # 13… but, it was at the close of both the Psychedelic Era in general – and the final tiny burst of creative energy at Western Publishing, in Chase Craig’s final few years of editing there, so “anything sorta went” by that time… and this cover was one of those “anythings”!

One thing you gotta admit, that Panther sure knew how to “light up a room”! With this one in your collection, you could throw away your “black light posters”! …Hopefully no one ground-up copies of this comic to use as incense!

Joe Torcivia said...

Specifically to Achille:

Anyone who could come up with a line like: “Into the dark and bountiful realms of I'mNotAnArtistButistan,”, automatically receives “The TIAH Medal of Honor”, with the optional Jr. Woodchuck acronym of your choice!

I’d like to visit “I'mNotAnArtistButistan” someday… or, at the very least, just plain “Butistan”!

You’d think that, over the years I’ve been a member of this crazy but wonderful fandom – going from a wide-eyed, enthusiastic, and curious sponge of a young man, to something of an elder statesman – that I might have encountered more than a few discussions about the colorists at Western Publishing… but, no!

Yeah, why DID Uncle Scrooge’s coat change from “some sorta purple” or “the sickly green” in the Dell comics to the RED, that the Italians decided should be BLUE? And why, in 1968, did he acquire a BLACK collar and cuffs for that read coat! THIS is the issue in which I first saw that… and I can still distinctly remember the strange feeling I had, on that Saturday morning in ’68, when I joyously pulled my subscription copy of the issue out of that morning’s mail – and saw the changes! …Yeah, I remember LOTSA weird stuff like that! Don’t ask me what I had for breakfast today… but I sure remember THAT!

…And, to quickly digress, that was NOTHING compared to the horror of THIS ISSUE, and finding that Kay Wright had taken over drawing DONALD DUCK from Tony Strobl (who’d been there literally all of my life – to that point), on a cold day in January, 1969! Yeah, I remember that stuff like it was “yesterday”… Now, if only I remembered “yesterday”! :-)

Getting back to colorists, and as mentioned in the comments on the previous post, how about when Fred Flintstone’s TIE changed from blue to black, just about the same time as Scrooge’s collar and cuffs? Or why Emil Eagle was “flesh color” in his first two appearances, before changing to his more classic brown – and now, when he appears at all, he’s completely white? There’s probably lots more that I just can’t think of at this late hour!

Naturally, I’d like to see some of those “Meta-Melon” strips! Mutt and Jeff also had occasional encounters with their creator Bud Fisher, and I was going to do a post on some of those… eventually! That’s not one of the posts I have pre-written and set on time-release for times of (all together now) “Horrific Busyness” – like now! …Maybe I could someday tie them in together!

Joe Torcivia said...

Specifically to “Gang Green”:

I searched high and low, and Green Gorillas would seem to be at a premium.

Best I could do is an unfamiliar gorilla stirring-up a green brew, or a more familiar gorilla with a green cover!

Compared to this, Pink Panthers – or Pink Mountain Lions, even are easy! …Exit, covering myself all the way, stage right!

Achille Talon said...

Or why Emil Eagle was “flesh color” in his first two appearances, before changing to his more classic brown – and now, when he appears at all, he’s completely white?

Actually, that one's not a coloring slip-up at all; there's an actual in-story reason. Now, Vic Lockman wrote both his debut, The Evil Inventor (US #63), and Og's Iron Bed (DD #109). The two stories were printed months apart, but considering Lockman then proceeded to never use the character again for two years, it seems reasonable to assume he wrote those three around the same time, and artist delays led to the spread-out printings. We do know from the Barks "date of writing" data complied by I.N.D.U.C.K.S. that it was not unusual for a script to only be run months after its completion.

Now if we accept that, there's no reason not to think "Iron Bed" should actually have run before "Evil Inventor", and if you do that, then all suddenly makes sense. Because at the end of The Evil Inventor, Emil, who had up til then been explicitly a bald eagle (not only flesh-colored, but drawn in a way that clearly made him look like one; no whiskers on the sides), got sprayed with Gyro's hair-tonic formula and gained the feathers he is known with.

And boom, in all subsequent appearances, he kept 'em, in a rare case of such a change to status-quo changing.

As to brown vs. white, this is akin to the Italians' blue-coat-red-cuffs as opposed to the American red-coat-red-cuffs/red-coat-black-cuffs. The Italians always had it white, the Americans always had it brown; but when Emil was reintroduced on your shores, he'd been out of print in the U.S.A. for years, whereas the Italians had never stopped using him, so they went back there to see what he was supposed to look like and had him white.

And this sort of color-scheme alteration worldwide is quite common! Throughout the 30's, in France, Donald's feathers were yellow. Yellow. …Yeah. And it's even happened recently: the color schemes recently decided on in America for Jubal Pomp and Doctor Zantaf, to only name two, are good'n all, but they're an abrupt change from their time-honored ones (visible on their pages on the Wiki: http://scrooge-mcduck.wikia.com/wiki/Jubal_Pomp and http://scrooge-mcduck.wikia.com/wiki/Doctor_Zantaf). There's also Don Rosa's weird insistance that Scrooge's coat's cuffs and collar should be grey, something they had never been up til then, which somehow stuck in American comics ever since (something I deeply deplore; I don't think it looks very good at all).

Joe Torcivia said...

Achille:

Now that’s a VERY interesting thought on Emil Eagle! Story-continuity-wise, his appearance could very well have been changed by the events of the ending of “The Evil Inventor”!

Assuming, as you suggest, that “The Evil Inventor” took place AFTER “Og’s Iron Bed”, later leading into what emerged 1.5 to 2 years later in Lockman’s “The Mechanical Monster” in DONALD DUCK # 118 and “The Case of the Dazzling Hoo-Doo” in WDC&S # 330, which evidence now seems to indicate was written by Cecil Beard!

You can “buy-into-Beard” by clicking HERE! For what it’s worth, I fully accept this!

Also, before this fact becomes lost to history like so much else, I should note that both DONALD DUCK # 118 and WDC&S # 330 went on sale ON THE SAME DAY in January, 1968! Most likely, either on the last Tuesday, or the last Thursday, of that month. I know because I was at the local candy store (almost day in and day out, back then) and snapped them up immediately! ‘Twas on that fateful date that I saw Emil Eagle revived and redesigned, as well as the debut of Dimwitty! It was the LAST little spurt of the great period of creativity that defined the Gold Key Disney comic books, starting in 1964 with the (American) revival of The Phantom Blot! …After that, for reasons still unknown, the innovation that was EVERYWHERE across all these books petered-out and ceased!

To completely digress – yet simultaneously inch back toward our original featured comic book – that “creativity” didn’t exactly die, it just shifted over to Non-Disney titles like the subject of this post, the PINK PANTHER title (an amazingly good book for the early to mid-1970s, which is largely regarded as a “general decline” period for Gold Key! Revitalizations in the Warner Bros. titles, WOODY WOODPECKER, and TOM AND JERRY, after being primarily made up of Dell reprints since late 1964 – early 1965, were a highlight of this period for Gold Key!

Among the reasons for this were Mark Evanier joining Gold Key, and Michael Maltese returning to it as writers for those titles, artist Phil De Lara revising his classic style to more of a “then-contemporary De Patie-Freleng style” also for those titles – and even Italian Disney comics artist Massimo Fecchi drawing BUGS BUNNY, YOSEMITE SAM, and TOM AND JERRY (as per the impeachable sourcing of Alberto Beccatini)!

One final thing, on the amount of time it took for scripts to run… Don R. Christensen personally told me that Western worked up to TWO YEARS in advance! So, we’ll never really know HOW things were run in that wonderful, now mythical, place!

TheKKM said...

I have to say, while the Pink Panther cover is obviously wonderful in its use of the antenna etc, I'd have had the drawing a touch smaller- too much empty space is bad, but I feel too little feels claustrophobic. But then, that's purely my aesthetic concerns; I imagine marketing-wise you want the drawing as big as possible to stand out in the newsstand.

Joe Torcivia said...

KKM:

Perhaps the drawing was large and “claustrophobic” in order to emphasize the Panther’s size all the more, in contrast with The Inspector and the small car!

With Gold Key, especially once the sixties had passed, there was no telling the reasons for anything!

Still, it works better than with too much empty space!

Achille Talon said...

Oi, KKM, so you're still alive! Any chance to see you on your blog or Feathery Society again in the near future? We haven't seen you in forever.

The Drove of Database-Compiling Dromedaries said...

We at The Drove of Database-Compiling Dromedaries, seeing the splendid sortment of Secret Societies your blog has attracted, have completely compiled a menagerie of their messages here: https://scrooge-mcduck.wikia.com/wiki/User:Drleevezan/TIAHSecretSocieties. Do enjoy our camel-created collectery of comments.

Joe Torcivia said...

Achille:

I’m also glad to see that KKM is still alive, as it’s been a while since he’s joined us here! Then again, the way things are going, I’m glad enough to see that *I’m* “still alive” each morning when I open my eyes! …I suppose I shouldn’t be concerned about the latter, until they *don’t* open!

Speaking of “opening”, I *know* I shouldn’t “open THIS door”, and I will consider it slammed shut and locked tight – and closed to further discussion, at the conclusion of this comment, but… I hope you eventually see KKM at “that other site”, too… because you’re sure as heck never going to see ME over there again! … ‘Nuff said!

Joe Torcivia said...

Ye Cats, “Drove”! (…Or, should that be “Ye Camels”?)

That’s quite a database you have there! And I used to think that camels stored WATER in those humps!

HERE’S the link… if you dare/to go there!

Achille Talon said...

Joe:

In all honesty, and though you are of course entitled to your opinion, I don't think you ought to be quite so bitter about The Other Site. Yes, that argument was all-around terrible, but decrying Feathery Society as a whole for its existence — especially since it was so swiftly dealt with by the admins at the time — feels like forsaking Donald Duck as a whole just because Bird-Bothered Hero exists.

Just my two cents.

(Which Scrooge will now yell at me for having so thoughtlessly squandered on (PFAH!) good advice.)

Joe Torcivia said...

Achille:

I thank you for those "Two Cents"!

We’ll “agree to disagree” on this matter, and please note that I’ve published and addressed your valid comment, even though I had declared no discussion on this! I’m just an old softie, who enjoys your contributions, but no more on this from anyone, okay?

Continuing the “agreeing to disagree”, whatever rebuke there was, was hardly strong enough when someone capriciously and arbitrarily “calls for someone’s job – and the crippling of one’s livelihood”! Don’t they know that someone in a decision-making capacity might be reading this? Even worse, perhaps they DO!

And, it was all the more egregious because I had NOT even been involved in the discussion at that point! If I had, at least I could understand a person’s notion to “fire back”! But here, I was just casually called to be fired by some malcontent hiding behind a screen name, while my real name is attached to any and every thing I say online!

I would never let ANYONE say such a thing about you, or any of my readers in this space! Any comment doing so would simply be deleted before it is seen by anyone!

I hope you, and everyone else, understands the difference between “this place” and “that other place” ( …which, admittedly, has some good stuff that I *do* peek in on from time to time). Please don’t expect me to put my good - and REAL - name out there, to be potentially assaulted by immature and undisciplined persons shielded by false names!

Finally, in fairness to Fethery Society, I must add that such needlessly rude behavior is far from uncommon “out there in Internet Land”! It sure shows us “something about ourselves” – and it also continues to show me why I don’t participate in such forums! I’d rather LEAD HERE BY EXAMPLE, and hope that someone… ANYONE, follows!

There will be no additional comments published on this subject! Please respect my feelings on this matter!

Thank you, all! ...And my sincerest apologies to those who (thankfully for you) have no idea what we're squawking about!

Adel Khan said...

To quote Ned Flanders, “"Well, get out the crayolas and colour me 'Tickled Pink'!" I wasn't sure how much of a Pink Panther fan you were, but it was an unexpected surprise seeing this post. You brought up an interesting observation that the cover to Pink Panther #13 that the antenna serves no purpose other than filling up the empty space. You have cornered all the wide-open spaces on this post Joe.

Had you viewed the Pink Panther shorts when they were released in theatres or on television? Did you enjoy the live-action films starring Peter Sellers?

As a child, my sister brought me back issues of "Pink Panther" #29 and #74 . Seeing the Panther express his thoughts as he was a silent character felt odd. If you recommend any Pink Panther issues I would love to retry them.

That issue introduced me to The Inspector and The Commissioner. I saw for the first time The Inspector as he was designed for the theatrical shorts instead of the Peter Sellers caricature.

I always imagined that had Mike Maltese had written an Inspector it would have played out as Snooper and Blabber short or Daffy think "Deduce, You Say” (1956).

I wonder if it was a coincidence that Phil DeLara ended up illustrating Maltese’s scripts? As they were both employed by Warner Bros. I can’t think of a better pairing than that.

I was surprised that as late as 1973 Phil DeLara was inking. Isn’t interesting how toned down his style was by the seventies? I was reading “Bugs Bunny Meets Fantastic Freddy” (Bugs Bunny #149) and I wondered who the artist was. According to GCD, the art is by Phil DeLara, but looking at the style I would have thought another artist inked it.

Phil DeLara a master of drawing funny-animal, had a flair for drawing many felines from Sylvester, Tom, Snagglepuss, Top Cat, and the Pink Panther.

I always thought the creativity was drawn out of Western Publishing post-1967. It’s nice to see it was shifted to non-Disney titles.

There seemed to be no rhyme or reason as to the colors of characters. Among the other issues my sister brought for me were:
Hanna Barbera Fun-In #4, and Hanna Barbera Spotlight #1. Upon seeing the cover of “Hanna Barbera Fun-In #4” I thought it was odd to see a green Muttley. I was naive thinking why wouldn't they have appropriately color Muttley, but the more I read your blog and Mark Evanier's that there was no care in coloring choices. Throughout the years Western Publishing's color schemes only got more bizarre.

Two years later, when I first read “Only A Poor Man,” I thought it was odd seeing Scrooge’s coat colored red with grey trim as I was accustomed seeing the blue and red coat in DUCKTALES. Over the years I was used to seeing Scrooge’s red coat with grey trim. I agree that the unorthodox colors of “THE PINK PANTHER” #13 stand out for the time. I thought the word “Panther” colored green provides a contrast, but upon thinking of the issue the Panther had with a green asterisk in “Pink Punch” (1966); Shouldn’t the word “panther” be green?

I wonder if taking a wiff of the oxidized pulp the comics were printed on constitutes tripping out?

Joe Torcivia said...

Adel:

Great to see you back in these threads (COMMENT “threads”, not clothing) again!

“I wonder if taking a wiff of the oxidized pulp the comics were printed on constitutes tripping out?”

If so, I’d have lost my mind decades ago! Uh, wait… Er, what were we discussing again?

I first saw the Pink Panther shorts on NBC Saturday mornings. The original show that had only two Pink Panther cartoons, with an Inspector cartoon sandwiched in between. And all had a laugh-track added.

However, the series was released theatrically for so long that I saw one in the movies as late as 1975! And they went beyond that!

Phil De Lara was illustrating Mike Maltese comic book scripts as far back as the earliest issues of Dell’s DAFFY DUCK title – and further back with Bugs Bunny, in his own title and in LOONEY TUNES. Also in the earliest issues of BEEP BEEP THE ROAD RUNNER, alternating with Pete Alvarado.

I don’t think De Lara “toned-down” his style as much as he MODIFIED IT to suit the more modern “De Patie/Freleng look”! You can see this in the first 15 or so issues of the PINK PANTHER title, but also in some of his Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker stories of the early seventies. He was a consummate and versatile professional, who was equal to any task. His passing in 1973 was a major loss to Western Publishing – and to us all!

Gold Key’s PINK PANTHER title was perhaps the outright funniest title of Western Publishing’s 1970s non-reprint output – and tragically underrated. The first 15 issues (plus # 17) were drawn expertly by Phil De Lara, with stories by Carl Fallberg, Michael Maltese, and others.

You could tell Maltese was going back to his old “bag of tricks” in these stories – some of his very last work – as he often writes the Panther as if he were Snagglepuss! In # 17 he even has a “Sugar-Loving Horse” that acts just like Quick Draw McGraw’s “Snuffles”! My guess is that Maltese would be in scattered issues from # 8 to # 17!

With De Lara’s death, the art (and lettering) in PINK PANTHER was taken over by Warren Tufts – whose style REALLY lent itself to the funny stories – and made them funnier still! Tufts truly made this book “his own”! Tufts’ last issue would seem to be # 63! I’d recommend ALL the De Lara and Tufts issues!

After that, the remaining issues were primarily drawn by Joe Messerli, and became more like standard late ‘70s-mid ‘80s Western Pub fare.

Finally, of the many, many, MANY things we will never know about Western Publishing, the colorists will remain a huge mystery. I can’t think of a single one I’d even know by name!