A less familiar offshoot of Western Publishing's (Dell and Gold Key Comics) comic book product was "March of Comics".
"March of Comics" was designed to be a giveaway premium, and was used for promotional purposes by major retailers such as Sears, and by others you probably never heard of.
This line, while completely separate from Western's "standard or traditional" comics, featured the same characters and properties Western produced for its Dell and Gold Key Comics series – Disney, Warner Bros., Hanna-Barbera, Walter Lantz, MGM, and many more - and were written, drawn, and edited by the same talented individuals that produced the standard line.
Tony Strobl.
Bud Sagendorf.
Harvey Eisenberg.
Even Carl Barks produced three notable Donald Duck efforts for March of Comics, with dealer prices so high I could never consider owning any of them! Thank goodness for reprints...
Cover art by Don Rosa.
Earlier issues of March of Comics were full comic book size, with later versions produced in this oblong 7 ½” x 5 1/8” size...
...Finally settling into a more book-like rectangular 5” by 7”, with issues such as seen below. You can read more about this JETSONS issue of March of Comics WITHIN THIS POST!
Note the LIGHT GREEN BLANK SPACE at the bottom, where your very own business's logo could be inserted!
March of Comics began in 1946 and ran until 1982! But, today's "Comic-Boxing Adventure", concerns MARCH OF COMICS # 75 BUGS BUNNY, from 1951.
Bugs also seems to be... er, "comic-boxing" below! (Pardon!)
The stories, as noted, were typical Western Publishing fare. And, when published in the early "comic-book-size" format, appeared virtually identical to their concurrent Dell counterparts.
Honestly, if not for the indicia, could you tell if this was a standard Dell "Bugs Bunny", or a March of Comics? ...I couldn't!
At this particular time, the interior page count was 22 pages, vs. a standard comic book's 32 or more. A story such as this would run 18 pages, with the remaining four pages used for puzzles, games, and other activities that (SHUDDER!) most often required a pencil, pen, crayon... or even (GASP!) scissors!
"The Mysterious Ocean Cruise" ran for the aforementioned 18 pages, with "writer unknown" and art by Ken Champin.
And, our usual comic-book-history-lesson aside, it is the ART by Ken Champin - and ONE PANEL IN PARTICULAR - that makes this an "Adventure in Comic-Boxing"!
One might consider this something of an "Ironic Cameo", considering its insertion into the silent medium of the comic book...
...But, isn't that a nice caricature of MEL BLANC, the VOICE of Bugs Bunny, and virtually every other Warner Bros. cartoon character, save (ironically, again) Elmer Fudd, whose pocket he's seen picking!
...Or would that be a "carrot-ature"? (...Sorry again, I can't help myself!)
At least I got through that "Ironic Cameo" part without a gag...
Oh, no... wait! Sorry x Three!
Okay, at least I won't repeat the pun about Ken Champin... "Drawing a Blanc"?
...EEP! I just DID THAT, TOO! I'd better end this post now!
Ken Champin is one of those unheralded artists from a time when ALL of them were great, and virtually all of them working for Western Publishing came directly from the major animation studios of the day - bringing ALL of that superb craftsmanship with them.
He deserves more notoriety than he's gotten, alas! Special thanks to our friend and extraordinary comics historian Alberto Becattini for his assistance in my recognition of Ken Champin's work.
And, finally, back to March of Comics... As store giveaways, and perhaps more likely a "disposable throwaway" than even "regular pre-1970s comics" would have been, amassing a collection of MOC is truly an impossible dream. Even one as dedicated as I have only a handful of them - and mostly from the less-pricey later smaller-sized years.
...Like this one, Doc!
But, if you are a fan of ANY era of Western Publishing's output, from the late 1940s onward, March of Comics can open up an entirely new "collecting vista"! And, unlike many of the Dell-era stories like these, and their corresponding reprint versions...
...Stories appearing in March of Comics were almost NEVER reprinted...
...Save for very infrequent occasions in GOLDEN COMICS DIGEST, a series nearly as difficult to amass as MARCH OF COMICS itself...
...Or, in some of the extreme later issues of MARCH OF COMICS, before the series finally came to an end.
So, enjoy 'em... nay, TREASURE 'em, if you find 'em! ...And happy hunting!
So, enjoy 'em... nay, TREASURE 'em, if you find 'em! ...And happy hunting!
...That includes "Wabbit Hunting!"
22 comments:
I own nineteen issues of MOC from between 1978-81, because my mom was coming to Sears to make monthly payments on a washer and dryer. They also had one of those booths where you could watch a cartoon for a quarter. Now, when I'm dragged shopping by a lady friend, I'm bored stiff. No comic books or cartoons to pass the time is the top reason given by economists as to why "brick & mortar" department stores are failing.
((I note a very rare case of a typo marring this otherwise-splendid, and well-illustrated, post. considering it's insertion —> considering its insertion, of course. ))
Fascinating post, Joe!
I suggest you begin every future post in your "Adventures in Comic-Boxing" series with that cover showing Bugs comic-boxing!
I never knew about March of Comics. What a great deal for kids! And, of course, what a great deal for the stores and for Western Publishing as well. A pity that comic book publishers don't do this anymore.
Very cool Mel Blanc cameo. I like the fact that he's hawking a throat tonic... a reference to Blanc's profession, and perhaps to the fact that voicing Yosemite Sam put a strain on Blanc's throat.
I'm struck by how well-drawn the caricature is. Most caricatures that I've seen exaggerate certain features of a person so wildly that they really don't look anything like the person. That's the point, of course: to exaggerate features for comical effect. In this case, though, Blanc's features are not exaggerated... no doubt because, unlike many caricatures, this one was surely done from a place of love for the subject depicted.
And yet I can't help but wonder whether Blanc picking Elmer's pocket is some kind of a dig at him. Is Champin suggesting that by voicing virtually every (male) Looney Tunes character save Elmer, Blanc is in some sense picking other voice actors' pockets (by taking jobs that could have gone to them)? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me; after all, why should Warner Bros. have paid more people to voice characters that the "Man of a Thousand Voices" was perfectly capable of voicing himself? But it's nonetheless possible that this is a dig (perhaps playful, perhaps not so playful) at Blanc.
Whatever Champin's intentions were, it's a delightful panel: the cameo, the indirect reference to Blanc's job as a voice actor, and the intriguing depiction of Blanc picking Fudd's pocket... it's all pure gold. And the most amazing thing of all is that this masterful moment occurred in a free comic book.
Champin may have drawn a Blanc here, but he certainly didn't draw a blank. :)
TCJ:
You write: “Now, when I'm dragged shopping by a lady friend, I'm bored stiff.”
Same here, only I get to say… “That was no ‘lady friend’, that was my wife!”
“No comic books or cartoons to pass the time is the top reason given by economists as to why "brick & mortar" department stores are failing.”
Yes, now you can shop, read comic books, AND watch cartoons online! Why would you ever want to leave the house!
Seriously, it’s great that you got some of these at their original time of publication – albeit in their final years! It’s kinda like my reading original Carl Barks comics during his last few active years. You may not have experienced “the best” as it happened, but you DID get to experience a piece of it!
Just curious, did you equate these in any way, with the Gold Key and Whitman comics of the day? Or, did the connection not occur to you?
The reason that I ask is that I saw only ONE March of Comics in my kid days. It was not given as a retail store premium, but as a promotion by some van parked outside my school, hawking KOOL-AID in 1968! In fact, you can see it HERE on the far right!
I recognized the story therein as having been drawn by John Carey, whose style I was familiar with from contemporary Gold Key Comics, even though it would be many years before I had names to associate with the various styles. I thought… “This is a MINI GOLD KEY COMIC!”
That was the first – and ONLY – one I would ever see until my collecting days, from the ‘80s onward!
It seemed that my local Sears (…known as “Sears and Roebuck and Co.”, back in the days when Wilma Flintstone used to charge stuff there) was primarily an appliance, electronics (such as they were in the 1960s), and tool store – rather than the “Big-All-Family-Type-Sears-Stores” I would discover later.
I suspect, not being a kid-friendly store, was why they didn’t give away issues of March of Comics!
Coincidently, I have occasional opportunity to pass through my childhood home town as it’s not all that far from where I live now, and the site of that Sears store has long been a fried-chicken-take-out, and a donut place! …LONG before the rest of Sears began disappearing!
…If only they gave away March of Comics! (Sigh!) It might have all been different… :-)
Achille:
You write: “ ((I note a very rare case of a typo marring this otherwise-splendid, and well-illustrated, post. considering it's insertion —> considering its insertion, of course. ))”
Thank you… “ITS” been fixed! :-)
Sergio:
You write: “I suggest you begin every future post in your ‘Adventures in Comic-Boxing’ series with that cover showing Bugs comic-boxing!”
Yeah, but wouldn’t that be a little tough on Bugs’ shadow? That’s no, er… “rabbit punch” he’s throwing!
With March of Comics, and so many other things, Western Publishing was quite the innovator in its prime years. What a pity the innovation atrophied, and they were unable to compete – or even PARTICIPATE – when comic books shifted to the “Direct Market” paradigm!
If I had to speculate – and, when we speak of the wondrous ways of Western Publishing, often ALL we can do is speculate – I’d say the caricature of Mel Blanc was “not exaggerated”, simply because it was nothing more than a sly in-joke on the part of Ken Champin (…or / with the writer and editor), and nothing an ordinary reader was expected to get.
We will add some in-jokes to our Disney comics, and you will find them in things like SCOOBY-DOO TEAM-UP, BATMAN ‘66, etc., but with the intent that SOME readers will get them, and derive THAT MUCH MORE enjoyment from the reading experience. And, not mar the experience for those who do not.
In 1951, before Looney Tunes were all over TV and other media – and were just an irregular part of the greater movie-theatre-going experience – I’d wager to say that few folks even knew who Mel Blanc WAS (beyond his association with the Jack Benny Radio Program), much less what he looked like!
But, for the group of moonlighting (and/or former) studio animators who produced some of Western Publishing’s most finely crafted comics, this was a nice in-joke, just for them!
…It only became so for the rest of us as time went on, and Mel Blanc and Looney Tunes became cultural icons! In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if “other characters” in such stories were sometimes caricatures as well – and we STILL haven’t figured it out!
And, as diligently as I look for such in-jokes, I doubt the Blanc character’s “pocket-picking” was anything more than a mere element of the story. …But, it’s always interesting to think otherwise. Elmer’s voice was set before Blanc had a more-or-less exclusive contract with Warners. And the voice was probably TOO familiar, by the time he had said contract, to change.
“It's all pure gold. And the most amazing thing of all is that this masterful moment occurred in a free comic book.”
I couldn’t have put it better!
Yeah, but wouldn’t that be a little tough on Bugs’ shadow? That’s no, er… “rabbit punch” he’s throwing!
Hah! Tell that to Lucky Luke! This prominent Franco-Belgian comic series (by the same writer as Asterix) is a hilarious Western parody (…the movie genre, not the publisher). The titular larger-than-life hero's gimmick is that he shoots faster, and more accurately, than anybody else, to the point that he can disarm criminals with a shot before they even realize their gun is gone. This earns him the nickname of “the man who shoots so fast, his shadow can't follow”, which the artist Morris encapsulated in an illustration usually reproduced on the back of the hardback Lucky Luke books:
http://www.reponseatout.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/bd-lucky-luke-dos-album-296813.jpeg
If it interests you folks, this video [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWRUohM_3oE ], from the 1980's animated-series adaption of the comics (which was much more faithful to its source comics than either DuckTales, for the record) has an even zanier animated rendition of the same gag. It's at the 01:07 minute mark, though, what the hell, you should watch the entire intro. The lyrics are in French but it's a catchy tune either way, and the visuals will give you an idea of the series' tone.
Anyway, though nothing quite so surreal ever happens in the comic proper, the image is memorable and iconic (spawning many parodies in French media). And also somewhat reminescent of the Bugs Bunny cover, which was my original point. Is it enough to make a “Separated at Mirth” out of this, Joe?
I suppose I might have equated the MOC line with their corresponding Gold Key (or Whitman by that point) counterparts - Certainly, I recognized that they both contained the same licensed properties. I just didn't put as much thought into the matter as you did. It was a FREE comic book - that was all that mattered at the time!
I'm somewhat surprised at your revelation that these premiums weren't widely available to you, as they were quite ubiquitous when I was growing up all during the Seventies. Everyone from small, independent shoe shops to the big chain department stores carried them. I'm wondering if perhaps, since they were generally kept behind the counter, that you just weren't aware they were there.
And, although the books were intended to be given out solely (Pun intended? Intended!) with a shoe purchase, my experience was - in the department stores, at least - that if you asked the salesclerk politely, they would generally just let you have one without buying anything. Missed opportunities, Joseph!
Without a doubt, the reader who would have recognized Blanc in this cameo at the time would have been a rare bird indeed.
It's always fun to notice these in-jokes. One of the great things about reading comics — old or now; after all, there are plenty of references to old-time comics and animation in modern-day comics, as you know — nowadays is that, thanks to the rise of cartoon/comic history as a serious field (or hobby in some cases) and to the wonders of the Internet, readers are far more likely to notice cameos and inside jokes.
You are absolutely correct that some incidental characters in old comics are cameos that, even today, the vast majority of readers would never notice. For example, an incidental character appearing in four of the Tintin books is a caricature of one Jacques Van Melkebeke. Who was Jacques Van Melkebeke? A writer who worked with Hergé. Who would know this? Only hardcore Tintinologists. I certainly didn't know this until just the other day, when I somehow stumbled onto this Wikipedia article:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Van_Melkebeke
And for good measure, here is a comprehensive list of cameos in Tintin books:
http://www.tintinologist.org/guides/lists/cameos.html
Achille:
Yeah, I think that Lucky Luke image could qualify as having been “Separated at Mirth” with the Bugs Bunny cover gag – even though I’d vastly prefer to be attacked with a boxing glove, rather than a gun… if I MUST be attacked at all!
HERE is that very image for your enjoyment!
And HERE is the video link!
Be warned, the video has SOUND, and runs for 24 ½ minutes, just in case you’re visiting my Blog while you’re at work!
TCJ:
While I was a kid in the sixties, rather than the seventies (Lucky ME for having seen the sixties first hand! Lucky YOU for being younger today! …Things always even out, don‘t they?), I don’t think the times would have made any difference, as March of Comics was around during the sixties, and prior.
It may have been a “New York thing” – or, more precisely, a “non-New York thing”? My folks took me to shore stores in suburban New York City malls (such as malls were in the 1960s). None of ‘em had, or at least OFFERED, March of Comics! Nor, do I recognize the shoe-brands that appear on the covers of MOC issues, as anything I recall seeing as a kid. BUSTER BROWN, where most of my kid-shoes came from, offered premiums, but never anything as good as “mini-Gold Key-type-comics”!
I suspect, had I known of one of the larger, more full-service Sears stores – the ones that had children’s departments – in my youth, March of Comics and I would have crossed paths more often than that once, courtesy of Kool-Aid!
Sergio:
I LOVE in-jokes, in comics!
I love discovering them, as seen here with Mel Blanc! I love planting them in comic scripts I write! I love even THINKING I found one, even if I don’t completely get it – especially if I come to “get it” later.
For instance, I found another one I hadn’t noticed before in THIS COMIC, and will most likely do a follow-up post on it one day! This was a REAL DC/SCOOBY-DOO type of in-joke. If anyone who read this issue thinks they’ve found it, tell me.
I also loved that about the Looney Tunes cartoons. I often knew there were in-jokes, even if I didn’t always get them at the time.
Nice to know that Tintin also had its share.
HERE is the first link!
And HERE is the second!
Hey! I have discovered that there actually were, briefly, dubs of the Lucky Luke animated series, and what do you know, they had two completely different dubs of the opening song (plus different names for secondary characters). This first one is pretty close in feel to the original —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9SMvcWCZp8
while this one is a complete reorchestration —
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpUhNcWOHcI
(though it has the advantage of having a bit of dubbed film afterwards if it interests anyone.)
There were also, I found, dubs of at least two of the theatrical Lucky Luke animated films, done in the golden age independantly from the animated series and with direct involvement from the comic's authors: Daisy Town and The Ballad of the Daltons. I highly recommend both if you can find them (as well as the Asterix movies by the same studios, though I digress).
As a general warning, following Joe's definitely sound policy, all links in this comment contain SOUND.
Oh, and to complete this imprompty history lesson about the opening credits of Lucky Luke, here's an odd factoid: a few years after the one we've been discussing there was a second TV series, made by a different studio. For inscrutable reasons, it still used the same opening credit visuals, but changed the music to something completely different (as seen here, in an obviously sound-y link):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mw2K_5OwEwA
Achille:
Very enjoyable! Yes, everyone… BEWARE OF SOUND! But, enjoy!
LUKE LINK 1 As a special treat, this one was done by Hanna-Barbera!
There’s even a Franco-Belgian styled version of SCOOBY-DOO in there! Was that an authentic Lucky Luke character, or a Hanna-Barbera addition – as they were sometimes wont to do?
LUKE LINK 2 So was this one. Same animation. Different theme song.
LUKE LINK 3
The dog is a longstanding regular, Rantanplan, and, beyond the color scheme, has little to do with Scooby; rather, continuing the "Western parody" trend of Lucky Luke, he's a parody of the televised Rin Tin Tin of yore (who was rather popular in France too). He's a prison watchdog and everyone acts like he is a paragon of canine intelligence, an unmatched bloodhound with an uncanny sense of smell and a nose for danger, etc.… except he's a total moron, something only poor Lucky Luke ever notices. We get to read Rantanplan's internal monologue, a la Dick Kinney's Tabby, and it's often a highlight of the books. He once spent an entire book convinced Luky Luke's trusty horse, Jolly Jumper (also possessed of an internal monologue, but much cleverer than him), was a cat and that she should thus seek to chase him at every opportunity.
(Rantanplan also has some very fine moments in the aforementioned theatrical animated film, The Ballad of the Daltons. And in the series, where the voice actor they'd found for him in the French version was just plain brilliant.)
Oh, and I see that in one of the dubs (can't tell you if it was one of the two dubs of the Hannah-Barbera-animated TV series, or in one of the movies) Rantanplan was given a name after your own heart, Joe: Rintincan.
My uncle owned a shoe store in Wisconsin, and whenever we visited he would give the latest March of Comics to my brother and me. At the time, my brother was not a reader, so I ended up with the collection. (By "collection" I mean about eight total.) We had the Jetsons, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Lost in Space, and Lassie, among the set. Recently, a few years ago, I discovered these in the attic of my mother's house. I had--can you believe it?-- nearly forgotten them in the interval. Naturally, I latched onto them.
This discovery spurred my interest in collecting more, so through a few online sources I have managed to get an extra handful or so. They are terribly, terribly expensive, even for the less remarkable stories. However, I now own all but two of the Flintstones issues, and hope to make up the deficit this fall.
Take another look at your Golden Comics Digest collection. I have discovered that many of my March of Comics are reprinted in those pages. I suspect there are more MOC reprints than meet the eye. The stories are formatted for digest size, which is one clue, and they run about 18 or so pages, which is another clue, and they are on occasion followed by a "puzzle page" featuring the character, which is a third clue. In issue #2, the first of three "stellar" Hanna-Barbera issues, I count four MOC stories--the opening Flintstones story (of which I have direct proof), plus the Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, and Jetsons stories (which I only suspect, but they fit the criteria). Furthermore, in other issues, several of the Tom and Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, Bugs Bunny, and Daffy Duck stories fit a similar pattern.
Now I realize the waters are somewhat muddied by the occasional re-formatting of the classic Dell and Gold Key stories to fit the Golden Comics Digest, plus original stories that were specifically composed for the digests, so I'm sure that not every story that LOOKS like an MOC truly is, necessarily. But I think my theory holds true pretty frequently, if I am any judge, and this is confirmed occasionally by copies of MOC that are actually in my possession. By far most of the reprinted stories from the standard comic books retain their four-tier format when ported over into the digests, so most of the digest-friendly stories, many at least, appear to be reprints from MOC. It's kind of reassuring that some of these great stories, and even some of the mediocre ones, had an extended life through the digests.
It makes sense from an editorial point of view--much easier to reprint a story that already fits the digest format so well, rather than commissioning new stories to fit a certain size criterion or re-formatting older ones from the larger comic books.
I suspect some of the Disney digests also used MOC stories, but I cannot identify these with as much certainty as I can the ones in the GCD. The Mickey Mouse story in issue #3 looks like a reprint from MOC.
Interesting to note that as the styles of the general comic books got looser starting around the early 70's, (characters carelessly drawn, coloring off sometimes, less background detail, etc.) this same loose style found its way into the later MOC issues.
I'm delighted you posted on this topic. One of my favorites, and I hope for some good continued discussion!
Achille:
I didn’t really think there was much of a connection with Scooby-Doo, beyond the fact that Hanna-Barbera was putting a “Scooby-Like-Dog… or Cat, or Shark”, etc. in almost everything they did back then!
Something tells me that I’d REALLY LOVE the character of “Rantanplan”… especially if he bore the name “ Rintincan”!
“ Rin Tin Can”, by the way, was a gag name I first heard on the 1960s animated version of BEANY AND CECIL – a show that specialized in glorious puns. I loved the name then, and love it now.
Beyond Scooby (who, oddly, I don’t always regard as a “TRUE dog”), my favorite comics dogs are Paul Murry’s Pluto (from those 1950s Don R. Christensen stories where we are privy to his thoughts - PLUTO'S thoughts, not Christensen's!) and Rufferto from GROO THE WANDERER! “Rantanplan”, with some exposure, has the potential to join them!
Scarecrow:
Yes, indeed… GOLDEN COMICS DIGEST may have been the only place some of those MARCH OF COMICS stories were ever reprinted! I did mention that briefly, but I’m glad you brought it more to light.
A funny thing was, not knowing anything about MARCH OF COMICS back in 1970, that I was totally bewildered by the lead story in GOLDEN COMICS DIGEST # 11 – Yogi Bear in “A Super-Type Bear”. I could not, for the life of me, determine WHERE it was reprinted from!
I had ALL the Yogi comics from the mid-sixties era from which that story originated! And that story was not in ANY one of them! It didn’t look like a Dell story, nor an “early-Gold-Key” story… or, even a 1970 new Gold Key story. It HAD to be from about 1964-1966! And, even back then, I was rarely wrong in making such identifications!
It wasn’t until early in the 2000s that I learned that “A Super-Type Bear” was from MARCH OF COMICS # 279 (1965)… Right again! Told ya I was good at this!
Since then, and as you note, I’ve identified a fair number of stories in various issues of GOLDEN COMICS DIGEST as having originated in MARCH OF COMICS! …But, as I’ve noted, GOLDEN COMICS DIGEST is also a very difficult series to collect. I’m only interested in the Warner Bros., Hanna-Barbera, Walter Lantz, MGM, and Pink Panther issues… and I’m still missing four of those!
Another odd thing, while Disney was a “regular” presence in the earlier days of MARCH OF COMICS, there were very few, if any, Disney issues in the years it was no longer “full-comic-book size”.
The very last one, is the one I pictured in this post - MARCH OF COMICS # 263 Donald Duck in “A Beaver Tale” (1964), which was reprinted in WALT DISNEY COMICS DIGEST # 12 (1969)…. And just like the Yogi Bear story, I couldn’t figure out where that one came from, because I had all the Donald Duck comics from 1964-1965.
There were no Mickey Mouse MARCH OF COMICS issues that would have corresponded to the time of the story in WALT DISNEY COMICS DIGEST # 3. As odd as it sounds, I think that might have been an original!
Alas, unlike yourself, I have only ONE Flintstones MARCH OF COMICS - # 317 “The Go-Getter Vote-Getter” (1968), where Fred runs for mayor of Bedrock! For 1968 Western Publishing, that was actually quite a funny story! And, it was one of the last times The Flintstones really looked like themselves – before the art changes of (guess when?) 1969… even before Charlton would make them look still worse!
And, it was exactly that “looser, more careless, less background detail, etc.” style of 1969-onward that you note (…I’m looking at YOU, Kay Wright!) that firmly placed the Yogi Bear and Donald Duck stories I mentioned firmly in a different time period. And, sadly, one NOT that long ago from 1969-70.
Oh, and of course, any sins noted here were seriously dwarfed by the dreadful Hanna-Barbera comics from Charlton, that began in August, 1970! …Yeah, I’ll never let that go! So, what?
Western Publishing, and its very mysterious ways, are always a fascinating topic for discussion! Wouldn’t you say?
It probably didn’t help the Gold Key books that around that time, a lot of the artists who worked at Western Publishing were also creating material for the Disney Studio’s in-house comics program to help provide licensees with material for their (often weekly in many countries) comics. So some of the better artists were probably too busy, so they brought in lesser artists. (Note: All speculation on my part).
Deb:
That speculation just happens to be TRUE, in certain cases. Tony Strobl actually told me so, back in the '80s. That's why we ended up with Kay Wright and Bob Gregory's art on DONALD DUCK... Because Strobl was better paid at Disney! Can't blame him, really.
I'd imagine the same applied to Jack Bradbury and Al Hubbard.
Others retired and some, like Harvey Eisenberg and Phil DeLara, actually died during their active careers.
That still doesn't explain why Western didn't find BETTER artists than Kay Wright and Bob Gregory, et al as replacements!
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