When it comes to PENGUINS, Warner Bros. Looney Tunes has a pretty memorable one that twice co-starred with Bugs Bunny...
Walter Lantz had a pretty memorable one of his own... CHILLY WILLY!
But there must have been a brief period during Chilly's tenure at Lantz when he may have become dissatisfied with his contract... and briefly defected to Warner Bros.
Otherwise, how would you explain THIS?!
WALTER LANTZ NEW FUNNIES #278 (Dell Comics, Cover Date: July-August, 1960)
Maybe he was tired of working with SMEDLEY?
The GOOD SCRIPTS, like "The Legend of Rockabye Point" (possibly the single funniest cartoon of all time)...
...And "I'm Cold" stopped coming, much to the little guy's displeasure.
Or maybe he just wanted to work with "that Oscar-Winning Rabbit, Bugs Bunny!" Or the rabbit's renowned animation director Chuck Jones?
Ya, know... like that OTHER penguin did!
But, alas, Chilly's experiences at Warner Bros. were not good...
...Being a PENGUIN and all, they cast him in a BATMAN movie, as a "hench-peng" to THIS GUY!
...And so, he once again became "Walter Lantz Chilly Willy"!
Chilly didn't like that AT ALL!
Coincidently, at that time, Walter Lantz decided to lure him back with the promise of working with THEIR top star, Woody Woodpecker...
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Could it have possibly been nothing more than a... PRINTING ERROR?!
Could THIS...
...Have been erroneously run in place of... THIS?
...Eeeh, COULD BE!
31 comments:
Or maybe someone at Dell confused Chilly Willy with Playboy Penguin?
And, I mean, you can't blame them. A story starring a character named Playboy Penguin in a Dell Comic? Unthinkable! After all, Dell Comics are good comics.
Hmm, you can see how this might happen, W-A-_-_-E-R! Not as serious a mistake as the constant "mis-poling" of penguins in maps and illustrations of Santa's North Pole village. Penguins do not live in the Arctic! But hey, they live in an icy polar world, and they're cute and kids like them, so voilà: there they are in Santa's village. And back to comics: this mispoling of penguins was corrected in the title of Pihl's "Arctic Antics" (which features an underground society of talking penguins) when it was printed in the USA, in Gemstone's Mickey Mouse Adventures 2: the title on the first page is printed as "Antarctic Antics"! But Inducks doesn't indicate that, someone should add that in.
Sergio:
Did the character actually take on the name “Playboy Penguin” outside of the original cartoons, like Michigan J. Frog and Gossimer? I’ll assume it was derived from his top hat and the way Bugs referred to him!
And while Playboy Penguin might not have *actually* and *officially* appeared in a Dell Comic, there really was an adaptation of the Bugs Bunny cartoon “Frigid Hare” (1949), which introduced the little guy, in BUGS BUNNY’S CHRISTMAS FUNNIES #1 (Dell Comics, Cover Date: 1950), an issue I wrote about (though not about the penguin) HERE!
It used a different-but-similar penguin character, though not as cute and heartstring-tugging as Playboy, along with the Eskimo hunter.
…So, he came close! And, I’m sure he appeared in the DC LOONEY TUNES, as they’ve used every character at some time or other.
Elaine:
So, it’s one of those “You say WALTER, and I say WARNER, let’s call the whole thing off!” situations, eh? Well, to double-quote Bugs… “…Eeeh, COULD BE!”
As far as the “mis-poling” (I like that!) goes, the story in BUGS BUNNY’S CHRISTMAS FUNNIES #1 and the two Chuck Jones/Michael Maltese cartoons in which the little pen-goo-win appears all specify the South Pole! Indeed, in “8 Ball Bunny” (1950), Bugs emphasizes it with some of his best over-acting: “SOUTH POLE?!!! OOOOH, I’M DYIN”!”
Oh, and you may want to check out THIS OLD POST to see how the Humphrey Bogart line in that cartoon was altered from Bogie’s original!
If Pihl’s originally published title translated to “Arctic Antics”, I wonder if it should remain listed as such, but with an additional note offering the corrected American English title. I can’t do anything about Inducks, but I could do so for GCD… so I checked it and found no interior data whatsoever, only the issue skeleton!
Well, situations like that are why I joined in the first place, so I should put correcting it on my long GCD to-do list!
Yes, the title at the top of the page would stay the same, of course, but the entry for the USA publication should have "Antarctic Antics". And I believe the official title of an Egmont story *is* in English, so no translation involved. I don't know whether the titles used in comics in the various other countries it was published in would have the same issue "Arctic" does in English, of being specific to the northern polar region.
Elaine:
Well, in any event, I just filled-in the basic story information and credits at GCD – and it is presently under review – so, at least it will be correct there. It may even be approved later tonight or tomorrow, if you wish to see it. Not as detailed as I usually do, but this was a rush job! :-)
Re: Playboy Penguin's name, I asked ChatGPT, and it replied as follows: "The penguin was not called Playboy Penguin in either Frigid Hare (1949) or 8 Ball Bunny (1950). The name was given to the character later, likely by Warner Bros. staff or fans after the fact. In the original cartoons, the character was simply a cute, silent penguin without an official name."
Sounds correct to me. I certainly don't recall the penguin being referred to as Playboy Penguin in the cartoons. My comment was just a lame attempt at a joke.
Re: penguins in the wrong pole, I didn't realize that was a trend in comics! Interestingly, one story I read every year around Christmastime, which appeared in "Santa Claus Funnies" #1 (Dell, 1952), has a rather amusing take on this common misconception. In "A Christmas Cruise," one of Santa's reindeer floats on an iceberg down to a desert isle where a group of funny animals, including one Benjamin Penguin, are stranded. Flying back to "the Pole" isn't an option, as Santa's reindeer can only fly on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. So, Benjamin Penguin helpfully says that he can lead the reindeer back to "the Pole", as that's his native land. He carves what's left of the iceberg into a ship. Along the way, the iceberg continues to melt. When the other animals ask Benjamin why it is getting warmer, Benjamin replies that that's only natural, as to get to the South Pole one must first cross the Equator.
I just re-read Elaine's comment and stand corrected. The "mis-poling" is not an issue in comics, but elsewhere. That makes sense.
A quick glance at INDUCKS shows that most likely, the pole mix-up may also be the case in the Czech and Finnish version, while other titles seem to either refer to the South Pole or drop the reference at all. The Polish version I read was called "Mroźne widmo" ("Frosty Phantom") - a pun on "Mroczne widmo" ("Dark Phantom"), our name for Episode I of Star Wars :)
It's also worth noting that there is another unrelated story called "Antarctic Antics", by Nærum, Løkling and Midthun: https://inducks.org/story.php?c=D+2011-070. I had a chance to read it; an interesting yarn, with a bit of absurd humour, but a bit weird in that it introduced a lookalike of Barks's "Cabbage Professor" who nevertheless appears to be a competely separate character, judging by his behaviour.
Sergio:
That sounds correct to me, too! Without watching the two cartoons again, didn’t Bugs call him a “playboy” (lower case “p”) in one of them? If so, that might have led to the coining of the name.
But the scariest part of your comment is that you “asked ChatGPT”! …And that it gave you an answer frighteningly similar to the answer *I* would have given! Therefore, making me and people like me irrelevant!
…I guess there’s nothing left for me to do but climb on to the conveyor belt and melt myself down in that great blast furnace in the sky! (…That’s a kinda obscure LOST IN SPACE reference… but ChatGPT can tell you about it once I’m gone!)
Sergio:
That’s a fascinating (and new-to-me) concept about Santa’s reindeer being able to fly ONLY on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day! …And would also make sense in the grander scheme of things. I guess all those “reindeer games” of legend were played strictly on the ground!
I also remember reading (in either a Superman comic, or Savage Dragon, or perhaps both – around the “turn-of-the-last-century”) that Santa had the ability to “warp time”, allowing him to circle the globe in just one night!
Then, of course, in my “forever-favorite” Christmas show, “Christmas Flintstone” (1964), when Fred (subbing for an ill Santa) asks how they manage to deliver all the presents in one night, one of the elves replies “We don’t take coffee breaks!”
It appears not to be possible to reply to a reply here--but I'm replying to T.'s reply. Nice to hear about the titles of the story in other languages, including the clever Polish pun! And yes, I own and have read the *other* Antarctic Antics, and I agree on the weird use of the Cabbage Professor. Inducks correctly lists him in the character list as a "look-alike" of the professor from W US 8-02. A fun but forgettable story, not near the top tier of stories I've read by the Norwegian Triad! The Inducks raters rate it significantly higher than I would.
T.:
A bunch of interesting stuff there – all, in one way or another, stemming from the wacky world of translation – a world I’ve “been known to frequently inhabit”!
This one kinda goes back and forth at will, but Disney often frowns on any references to Star Wars in the translations we do! I had one removed from “Night of the Living Text” (my all-time favorite of the stories I worked on), but I didn’t mind because I’ve never been a big fan of Star Wars (too overexposed these days – and because it owes several “unspoken debts” to Lost in Space, especially when it comes to “robots”). Besides, David replaced it with something even better, and Disney Comics related! …But, I digress! Anyway, I would definitely have called it something different – and nothing within a far, far away galaxy’s sniff of Star Wars!
The other translation matter involves the Cabbage Professor being unrelated to the original Barks character. Obviously, I’ve never seen either the original Danish version or its Polish translation but, either the Professor cloned himself to appear in this story, or it was a matter of the translation not recognizing the Barks source material! Perhaps someone could shed some additional light on this.
The latter explanation is not as unlikely as you might think! Way back when I translated and dialogued the story I titled “Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold Again”, I did so off an Australian translation of an Italian story. A translation that had ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE that this was a sequel/tribute to the early classic “Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold” – up to and including calling YELLOW BEAK the parrot… “Salty”!
Naturally, recognizing the story for what it really was, I stuffed it full of “Pirate Gold” references and then some, making the USA version into what the Italian creators always intended it to be! I was especially proud to find that a subsequent French-Canadian printing of the story used MY version translated into French!
But that’s just an example of the vagaries of translation, and maybe that’s the case here! In any event, HERE is T.’s link to the story in Inducks.
Elaine:
When Google changed the way Blogger processes comments (with NO announcement, or instructions on how to navigate these changes – which I had to figure out on my own), it became more difficult overall, including losing the ability to preview links before the comment is actually published!
That means that, if I’ve messed up the handling of a link through HTML, I have to publish the comment, test the link, DELETE THE COMMENT AND RE-CODE THE HTML, and publish it again… and test it again… and repeat until it finally works as planned! ...That is to say, I must publish the comment BEFORE I know whether or not the links work!
It also now allows you to stack your replies to specific comments, rather than just publish them in order of receipt and/or entry! But, even that required some experimentation! In your case, I think the way to “reply” specifically to T.’s comment would be to REPLY TO YOUR OWN ORIGINAL COMMENT and have it fall into its place in the “reply stack”!
…At least that’s what I had to do to attach my own reply to T.’s comment! You can always try that in the future. If it doesn’t go as planned, I can always ask you for a resend that I can work on at my end. PROGRESS… BAH!
Again, you can see my thoughts on T.’s comment above (at least on some displays). It also encompasses what I might have replied to your most recent comment as well!
Joe:
If I recall correctly, Santa's reindeer were also said to be unable to fly outside Christmas time in the 1994 remake of "Miracle on 34th Street"; this is how Kris Kringle explained in the courtroom why he can't prove his identity by making a reindeer fly. I have no idea, though, if that scene was also present in the 1947 original.
Joe:
As regards "Star Wars" references: I recall you writing on some occasion that Disney in America also frowns upon quoting real-life songs in comics dialogues; it may be the case that intellectual property laws in Europe are not as strict when it comes to the justified right to quote other works. Even though Disney now owns Star Wars, there are still different companies, different right holders and this entire gallimaufry of mutual links, connections and contracts which may discourage the company from accidental, unplanned "cross-IP" quotes in the US.
Anyway, our translator of Disney comics, Jacek Drewnowski, is also a great fan of Star Wars (and a translator and editor of SW comics in Poland), so references to the galaxy far, far away are quite often in Polish stories... not that it bothers me, as a SW fan myself, as long as they are incorporated skilfully and avoid "on-the-nose-ness," which is fortunately the case :)
Re: Cabbage Professor - I took a quick glance at the story in question and I must say that INDUCKS is right in classifying that character from the Egmont story as "lookalike" - his "mad scientist" behaviour and attitude are so different to Barks's benevolent researcher that they are certainly not the same person. More likely, this is just a knowing nod to more experienced readers. The lookalike even makes an off-hand mention of cabbage, to which Donald nephews respond with a surprised "did-he-just-break-the-fourth-wall" look. I know that Ferioli did a similar thing several times - he would put various background characters from Gottfredson strips in his comics in different roles and under different names as Easter eggs for Mickey buffs.
Moreover, it seems that the Egmont story actually named the lookalike (at least that's the case in the Polish version), which is in stark contrast to the namelessness of the Cabbage Professor - perhaps this was done to better distinguish the two. In my issue, he introduces himself as "Firn O'Sopel" (literally: "Firn O'Icicle").
Elaine:
Thanks for your reply! Great to know that other translations of the Norwegian story are in line with the Polish version: this makes a potential misunderstanding much less likely :)
T.:
I’ve never seen the 1994 remake of “Miracle on 34th Street” because, in almost every case, if there’s a remake of an old classic, I’ll stick with the original. And, while the original “Miracle on 34th Street” is definitely on my DVD shelves, I haven’t seen it in a long while – so I cannot say conclusively if that scene was present in the (what I would call “Real Version”).
But, since that felt as if it were a “new-to-me” concept, either it was not present or was a throwaway line that I simply don’t recall! Perhaps someone can definitively confirm or deny.
And this is more directed toward Elaine but, of course, anyone can play… My other original “Christmas viewing standard” (along with “Christmas Flintstone”) is Lost in Space (gee, I’ve mentioned that show a lot in what is a completely unrelated comment thread) “The Toymaker”. It, as well as it’s other “Christmas episode”, “Return from Outer Space”, both employ music cues from “Miracle on 34th Street”! …I love when stuff like this comes together!
T.:
Interesting to learn that we translators can work under different rules. But it would make sense, as I write (very) specifically for “my audience” and, presumably the Polish translator does the same! I’m also pleased that Jacek Drewnowski (by your account) would seem to do a very good job for “his audience”!
That’s what these comics really need! Translators and localizers that take the various stories and make them shine and crackle for their local audience. Not everything (especially humor) is directly translatable and we should be able to cut loose when the situation requires it! The worst thing that can be done to these comics is dull and uninspired translations, as we got at the end of IDW’s run and occasionally beyond!
Oddly, the song lyrics you refer to in the story I called “Plane Dine from Outer Space”, the title being a riff on the infamous Ed Wood film “Plane Nine from Outer Space”, were written not in Italian – but in English – while the rest of the story was in Italian, as I would expect it to be! And said lyrics were the ACTUAL lyrics, not parody versions!
What was I to do but proactively rewrite each and every one of those into parody song lyrics? So, I did, and that's what the best “translators and dialogue creators” are supposed to do! Deliver the best possible product for our audience!
No, I wouldn't say that at all!
I confess I was skeptical about ChatGPT at first. I thought it was a disaster in the making.
But, after seeing its power time and again, it's won me over to the dark side. :)
Used properly, AI doesn't replace humans but is an invaluable tool in their toolbox. It's like Google, only much more efficient. No more spending hours scouring often irrelevant links in search of an answer to what should be a simple question. ChatGPT gives you exactly what you're looking for in seconds!
Rather than making the researcher obsolete, AI allows the researcher more time to do deeper research due to the speed at which it gives you answers!
For instance, had I not quoted ChatGPT, you might have given me a similar answer yourself, and that would likely have been the end of our research into this matter.
Instead, ChatGPT's answer allowed you to go straight to the next level and advise that you seem to recall that Bugs called the penguin a "playboy" in one of the cartoons.
This, in turn, led me to watch the cartoons.
In doing so, I realized that I'd seen "Frigid Hare" before, but not "8 Ball Bunny."
This explains why I didn't understand why the penguin is known as "Playboy Bunny" until today.
Bugs addresses the penguin as "Playboy" (I guess the "p" can be capital or lower-case) in "8 Ball Bunny", but not in "Frigid Hare."
That explains where the offical name eventually came from!
Mystery solved, thanks in large part to both you and ChatGPT (or, as I prefer to call it, Helper, after Gyro Gearloose's assistant). Or perhaps RUDI from "The Jetsons" is a more apt parallel?
Sergio:
WOW! Everything is just so inter-related these days! I’m not yet as ready and willing to crossover to the “dark side”, as you put it, but that’s an interesting cause-and-effect scenario you put forth!
However, while I *would* have given you a similar (almost verbatim) answer to your question, I would very likely have also added that Bugs might have called the “pen-goo-inn” a “playboy” in one of the two cartoons – and you would have been prompted to further research all the same!
And, if either I or ChatGPT are responsible for you seeing “8 Ball Bunny” for the first time… well, that’s a win-win for you since it’s such a GREAT cartoon! …And now you know where the abovementioned reference to “pen-goo-inn” comes from – as well as all the Humphrey Bogart stuff!
I’ll take “Helper”, if it means I can be Gyro Gearloose – and not RUDI, if it means I must be George Jetson!
Just as long as it doesn’t become The M-5 Computer from Star Trek!
I have to weigh in on the Miracle on 34th Street comment. I watch the movie once a year on Thanksgiving Day. It kicks off my whole month of nonstop Christmas viewing. Though I enjoy all of the remakes, nothing beats the original. And I can vouch that there is NO scene regarding when and under what circumstances the reindeer can fly. While there are a few references to reindeer throughout the film, the most sustained one comes at the very beginning when Mr. Kringle is offering helpful but unwanted advice to the store clerk who is arranging the toy reindeer in the window display. In the novel version by Valentine Davies (written after the screenplay, not before), Mr. Kringle spends time at the Central Park Zoo where he seems to have a rapport with the live reindeer. Later on, it is mentioned that on Christmas morning the deer appear to be somewhat tired, in a lather of sweat, implying but of course not showing that they were up to some strenuous activity the previous night!
Scarecrow:
Thanks for clarifying this! I was fairly certain there was no such reference, but glad to have definitive confirmation – particularly from such a devoted fan of the film!
Sergio:
I still remain skeptical about Chat GPT and other AIs: in a large part because if you ask it about something you don't know, then even if you get an answer, you don't know if it is true or if that darned thing once again started to hallucinate... and if you need to check its answer against reliable sources, you might as well consult those sources at the very beginning! B'sides: doing research on your own is fun! :) And certainly satisfactory, too.
Some time ago, I came across this forum thread, which shows how wild AI hallucinations may be if you ask it about comics... Brrr! It's old-fashioned books and Google links for me, thanks! :)
https://classiccomics.org/thread/8649/chatgpt-question-comics-write-answer
HERE is T.’s link to that forum thread about AI. There was WAY too much about Wolverine and the Hulk for me to get through more than two pages – but, if you’re willing to slog through it, I’m willing to link to it!
I share much of your skepticism about AI, T.
Here's why I cautiously welcome it:
Doing research on comics and cartoons is fun. Doing research on other topics is not always so fun.
And no matter how fun it is, research is time-consuming.
It's nice to have a quick answer available in nanoseconds. In many cases, it's all I need/want. If it's really important or I'm deeply intrigued, I can double-check it by consulting real sources.
But yes, AI can hallucinate.
For instance, take the Humphrey Bogart parody in "8 Ball Bunny." I found out this was a Humphrey Bogart parody yesterday right after watching the cartoon for the first time, when I googled the phrase, "Pardon me, but can you help a fellow American who's down on his luck?"
I googled the phrase because I know enough about "Looney Tunes" to realize when I was watching the cartoon that it was a reference to *something*, but I didn't know to what exactly.
I goggled it, as opposed to using ChatGPT, for a couple of reasons. One, the phrase seemed distinctive enough that I figured that Google would yield me an answer in seconds. Two, I was afraid, based on past experience, that ChatGPT would hallucinate if I asked it about this phrase. It just seemed like the sort of thing AI would hallucinate on!
Today, I decided to ask ChatGPT about the phrase, just for curiosity's sake.
This is what I asked it:
In "8 Ball Bunny," there's a gag where a human repeatedly drops in on Bugs and asks, "Pardon me, but could you help a fellow American who's down on his luck?" Is this a reference to something?
This was its reply:
Yes, the gag in "8 Ball Bunny" (1950), where a character repeatedly asks Bugs Bunny, "Pardon me, but could you help a fellow American who's down on his luck?", is a reference to the 1948 film "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre". In that movie, a down-and-out prospector played by Barton MacLane repeatedly asks Humphrey Bogart’s character for money using a very similar line. The phrase became a recognizable pop culture reference, and "Looney Tunes" often parodied popular films of the time.
I'm not sure if this is correct.
From what I read yesterday, the character in "8 Ball Bunny" is a parody of Bogart.
So it seems odd to me that a Bogart caricature would speak a line Bogart didn't actually say.
I asked ChatGPT about this, and this was its reply:
You're absolutely right! Humphrey Bogart’s character, Fred C. Dobbs, never actually says the famous line. Instead, he is the one being asked for money by a panhandler, played by a young Robert Blake, who repeatedly says, "Say, mister, could you stake a fellow American to a meal?"
The character in 8 Ball Bunny is still widely considered a parody of Bogart, though, likely because the film itself (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre) was so closely associated with him. Even though Bogart never utters the line, his grizzled, down-on-his-luck prospector persona from the movie may have influenced the depiction of the 8 Ball Bunny character. Plus, Looney Tunes often played fast and loose with their parodies, blending real figures with iconic scenes.
Is this true?
Joe, have you seen "The Treasure of Sierra Madre"? If so, can you confirm or deny?
Hilarious discovery! Had he really crossed companies, Chilly Willy would have been in good company, given Yellow Beaks's infamous turn opposite Woody Woodpecker, and, of course, Oswald the Rabbit's extended vacation in Lantzland until Disney recovered the rights (leaving his 50s grey-furred design in limbo).
Sergio:
I’ve not only SEEN "The Treasure of Sierra Madre", I’ve even reviewed the DVD on this Blog… HERE! …Though it WAS a few months shy of 15 years ago!
…And ChatGPT is more WRONG than right! YES! Let’s hear it for human beings! WE RULE! …at least for a few years more?
Bogart’s character (“Dobbs”) *IS* the panhandler and it is director John Huston (in a cameo) whom Bogie puts the bite on! Robert Blake was just a Mexican KID who tries to sell Dobbs a lottery ticket! Blake NEVER says the line… Why he wasn’t even PLAYING a “fellow American”!
The recurring “fellow American” line is strictly Bogart’s – and that’s why Michael Maltese and Chuck Jones had him say it (though in modified form) throughout "8 Ball Bunny"!
Hope that helps – and sorry for the long time in replying!
Achille:
Yes, these things do happen from time to time, and aren’t you all glad to have me bringing them to light?
…Um, you ARE “glad”, aren’t you?
The Yellow Beak situation was probably the comic book equivalent of a movie studio loaning an under-contract actor to another studio. After all, he was so adaptable – playing against Donald Duck, The Seven Dwarfs, and Peter Pan – that Woody had a truly seasoned actor to play off of!
And, while I believe that more people are happier to see Oswald with WALT, rather than WALTER (…at least he’ll always know his boss’ name), I’ll actually miss the “Lantzland” Oswald – who began his comics life as a TOY among a community of toys and, as he evolved from that into a “real anthropomorphic rabbit”, ADOPTED Floyd and Lloyd as his SONS!
A unique evolutionary journey, before settling-in as just another suburban 1950s everyman… er, rabbit!
Sorry for the long time in replying! Things have been crazy-hectic 'round here!
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