What could a "Smarter Than the Average Bear" possibly have in common with a "Bear of Very Little Brain"?
Not much, I'll grant you, but they DO have a Mirth Separation over Honey (or "Hunny") and the not-so-safe transport of same!
Consider the "sidekick's delight" on the covers of YOGI BEAR # 14 (Gold Key Comics, Cover Date: October, 1963)...
When you set them in reverse chronological order, they're even WALKING TOWARD one another!
And with all four characters in the correct proportions to one another! Tallest to shortest: Yogi, Pooh, Boo Boo (almost neck-and-neck), and Piglet!
Ya think one bear might tip off the other? You know like the "Brotherhood of Fellow Bears", or something like that? ..."Code of the Bears", if you will?
Or maybe Yogi and Pooh are too taken with visions of Honey (or "Hunny") to notice... and Boo Boo and Piglet will just wink at each other!
The branch-bearing bears might even obliviously walk into each other, and ask directions back to Jellystone Park and/or the Hundred-Acre Wood. After all, ONE OF THEM would be seriously out of place. ...Probably lost because they didn't heed their perpetually-worrying sidekicks!
Well, regardless of WHO's headed WHERE, we have YOGI BEAR # 14 and WINNIE-THE-POOH #21 simultaneously "together" while "SEPARATED" AT MIRTH!
4 comments:
Boo Boo is safe, since he, like Yogi and Pooh, is a card-carrying member of our brotherhood. Pooh should not interfere. As for Piglet, we think Yogi has a duty to alert Pooh. Our motto is, "The Common Good of Bears Above Self-Interest."
Of course, when Yogi advises Pooh of the situation, he may discover Boo Boo's treacherous deed.
The chaos that will ensue could be ugly, we fear!
Resolution will surely require the brainpower of a "Smarter Than the Average Bear!"
Oh, bother!
ABoB:
“The chaos that will ensue could be ugly, we fear!”
I don’t think I could BEAR to watch!
I am endlessly fascinated by these juxtapositions, Joe! It would take me years to discover these cover gag repetitions!
One thing I would point out is the background of the Pooh comic book. The setting looks to me more like Jellystone Park than the Hundred Acre Wood. The birds in the tree look more like birds that would support Yogi and Boo Boo rather than birds belonging to the world of Pooh and Piglet. I can easily imagine the covers with the backgrounds switched--or with Yogi and Boo Boo enjoying the Jellystone background and a new background for the Pooh characters that looks more like the place where Christopher Robin plays. Of course, there is nothing wrong with the background (or lack thereof) on the Yogi comic book--although to my eye it feels as though a forest setting would help to sell the gag better than the abstract background. But in either case, it's a great cover--make that TWO great covers!
Scarecrow:
The juxtapositions come pretty easy, but only because of my (not-as-often-as-I’d-like-lately) immersion in (all together now) The Great Comics Organization and Storage Retirement Project!
I might discover ONE of a pair of shared gags and recall the other, or discover BOTH over the course of the project – and label them as “Separated at Mirth”. It is also where I discover the vast majority of the enjoyable oddities seen in the “Adventures in Comic-Boxing” series of posts.
It didn’t occur to me that Pooh’s setting evokes Jellystone, more than the Hundred Acre Wood… but yeah! I guess I’m just too used to the Hundred Acre Wood looking like that in the interior of the POOH comic, so it just looked normal to me.
As for the Yogi cover, recall that 1962-1963 (at the very beginning of Gold Key Comics) Western sorta went all-out with stylization… on their covers as well as the interior stories. Those highlights were part of it. When the cover was reprinted in 1969 for YOGI BEAR #36, it was just plain white. No background was necessary in ’63 or ’69 because the figures of Yogi and Boo Boo so nicely filled the area – with the branch and bee hive perfectly covering the disparity in their relative heights. …Just another reason Harvey Eisenberg was so great!
The figures of Pooh and Piglet, being smaller, were perhaps in more need of a background and, despite any differences with Disney or Ernest H. Shepard, the background works just fine – with not one but TWO branches covering the height disparity!
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