Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Adventures in Comic-Boxing: "Boo Boo Runs Wild - The Prequels" and "Woodsman, WHERE'S that Tree?"


"Boo Boo Runs Wild" was a... (Ahem!) rather unforgettable cartoon produced by noted cartoon creator John Kricfalusi for (what was once) Cartoon Network in 1999!


In it, Yogi Bear's kind and gentle sidekick, Boo Boo Bear, snaps and commits one bizarre atrocity after another! 

But, did you know that dear sweet Boo Boo showed unusually sadistic and anti-social tendencies many years before? 

"Uh, shouldn't that be a book on Abnormal Psycho-cology, Boo Boo?" 

Perhaps it was justified after years of stuff like this...


But, kind and even-keeled Boo Boo never let it get any more out-of-control than occasional mild pranks!


After all, more often than not, Yogi was quite benevolent to his bitty-bear-buddy! 


At least until 1970, when Charlton Comics began publishing their own "alternate universe" version of YOGI BEAR! 

 Yeah, my reaction was not unlike Yogi's above! 

Perhaps it was the strain of appearing in these spectacularly bad comics that pushed Boo Boo over the edge for the first time... If so, who could blame him?! 

But, check out these two examples of Charlton's interpretation of Boo Boo Bear, and decide for yourselves...  As always, Click to Enlarge! 


Really, Boo Boo?  Yogi should have taken your warning, but "being right" hardly justifies this!  


In this case, at least, he was passive... Inappropriately morbid, but passive!  ...But, then there was this!


If your heart hasn't stopped yet, we can dolly-in for a closer view of Boob's wanton cruelty!  ...Some "thrill", eh? 


Just look the expression of JOY as harm befalls his "bestest-bear-buddy"And that's the END of the gag!!! 


SHOCKING!  But, perhaps "not shocking" for Charlton!  Oh, sooo often, they just really didn't get it!  

Even John Kricfalusi "got it" more than Charlton... and he produced THIS!  


And made the characters look like THIS...


But, at least he never made 'em look like THIS!  ...Eeesh!  


BONUS BIZARRE CHARLTON ARTIFACT: 


The GAG is "nothing to write home about" and neither is the ART, though instead of "home", it DID make me consider "writing my congressman"!  

But, look at the first four panels of Yogi and Boo Boo... Then, check out the FIFTH PANEL where a TREE just seems to appear out of nowhere to help "pull-off" the tepid gag!  ...If you ask me, our old friend artist Ray Dirgo should have been "pulled-off" these comics!  (...But, given an equivalent assignment that was more in line with his unique artistic stylings!  ...We never call for people's jobs around here!)  Remember, even creators you may not care for are PEOPLE too!  


That said, a more skilled artist would have at least "set up" the tree in any of those previous panels!  

But, there is NOTHING overhead, or even behind, Yogi and Boo Boo until the tree materializes to punctuate a gag that needed "punch" far more than "punctuation"! 



Forget "A Change of Mind", what we needed was a CHANGE of ARTIST, and a change of WRITER... or dare I say a change of PUBLISHER!  Yes, I dare! (...While simultaneously not calling for anyone's jobs, because, unlike certain Internet trolls, we just don't do that 'round here!)


But, to give the (deservedly) underappreciated Mr. Dirgo some due... 

I doubt even the great Harvey Eisenberg...


...Would have had the audacity to try an unorthodox angle like THIS!  


And, precisely because of such wonderfully painful things like this, Charlton will always hold a special place in the annals of "Comic-Box Adventuring"!   

11 comments:

joecab said...

John K said he kept changing Ranger Smith's look over and over to reflect how many different styles he himself exhibited in those early years before settling down into a more (yawn!) consistent style. That short was cra-zay.

Joe Torcivia said...

JoeC:

The “changing Ranger Smith gag” was my favorite bit in that series!

It didn’t need to be “gross”, or of questionable taste, as John K. is wont to do. It was funny because it was ACCURATE!

Now, we need to see such a gag with the comics Yogi – starting with the perfect design of the great Harvey Eisenberg, moving on to Pete Alvarado and John Carey… and finally ending with the creative distortion of Phil Mendez (who drew the “Yogi-cliff-death” gag) and good old Reliable Ray Dirgo!

That, too, would be rather funny!

scarecrow33 said...

There is at least one good thing to be said about Charlton's rendering of the Hanna-Barbera characters--it made the stories from other publishers look like Masterpieces. Any Gold Key story that hitherto may have seemed not up to par--shines brilliantly by comparison. In fact, the Charlton issues make me at once nostalgic for the "good old" Gold Key days and forward-looking to the comparative excellence of the Marvel and DC days that lay ahead.

By the time Marvel took over the licensing, and not a moment too soon...it was like a breath of fresh air.

But for the duration of the Charlton years, we got material like "little monster Boo-Boo" and "fall guy Yogi," not to mention desecration of the Flintstones, Jetsons, Top Cat, Quick Draw McGraw, Huckleberry Hound, and Magilla Gorilla.

I don't get why, when Harvey got the license, they dug up the Charlton archives, instead of reprinting the Dell, Gold Key, and/or Marvel issues. Or doing new material themselves. One good thing about the Harvey comics was that for the most part they had excellent and very on-model covers. That alone makes them worth collecting, though the content does not live up to the exterior art.

Joe Torcivia said...

Scarecrow:

It’s a funny thing about Charlton, they worked like no publisher of licensed properties before or since – and all of the oddities, piled atop so much purely random weirdness, really fascinate me!

As good as the Marvel H-B comics might have been – and Mark Evanier and some of the artists from the Gold Key days like Dan Spiegle, Pete Alvarado, Tony Strobl, and Jack Manning MADE THEM SO – they only lasted a fraction of the time that Charlton did!

Indeed, if you don’t factor in their Dell predecessors, Gold Key’s Hanna-Barbera run was not very much longer than Charlton’s! Mid-1962-mid-1970 for Gold Key, and mid-1970-very-end-of-1976 for Charlton! Though the Dell and Gold Key Hanna-Barbera comics will ALWAYS be MY GOLD STANDARD for these characters in comic book form... except for (you guessed it) SCOOBY-DOO TEAM-UP!

Also odd is that the Charlton POPEYE and ABBOTT AND COSTELLO series (…the latter based upon the 1967 Hanna-Barbera animated version of the classic comedy duo) were generally much better done than the “Classic Character H-B Comics”, as has been noted at this Blog.

I’ll have lots more to say about Charlton in future posts – both bad and (sometimes surprisingly) good!

Harvey, as it existed in the ‘90s, was another matter entirely. While Charlton *was* capable of some earnest and sincere attempts that fell-short for various reasons, ‘90s Harvey, under its then-new ownership, was pure unadulterated exploitive schlock! Their philosophy? License and vomit-out anything they could get their hands on, and flood the market with cheap, badly done – AND BADLY EDITED – excrement! …Then, sell-off everything you own, as soon as you realize it’s not working!

The ULTIMATE in deceptive advertising were the Harvey Hanna-Barbera covers, often wonderfully drawn by Scott Shaw!, wrapped-around Charlton reprints! Like THIS ONE, with darn near EVERY Flintstones character in it! As for why they used the Charlton material in the first place, the obvious answer would seem to be that it was the cheapest available!

At least Charlton had enough integrity to have covers that actually represented the interior contents, for better or for worse! …And these two were by the SAME ARTIST, good old “Reliable Ray Dirgo”!

Elaine said...

When I first looked at the whole page of "A Change of Mind" in this post, I was immediately struck by the weird perspective in panel 3. Nope, never seen anything like that before! I didn't notice the magical appearance of the tree/beehive ex nihilo until you pointed it out, though. I guess Charlton Yogi has a personal genie who makes such things appear whenever Yogi imagines honey dripping into his mouth. Truly, you don't need to go on vacation when you've got personal genie service like that.

And speaking of HB characters WELL presented: the upcoming issue of Scooby-Doo Team-Up features Magilla Gorilla, yay! I look forward to your post on it!

I know you tell me I should buy all the SDTU because they're all great, but really, they're only funny if you some basic familiarity with the characters. Since I had zero familiarity with the Scooby-Doo characters themselves, I only buy the issues where I know the other side of the team-up. And those have been great! Flintstones, Jetsons, Magilla...I'm rooting for Touché Turtle. How would Scooby and Dum-Dum get along?

Joe Torcivia said...

Elaine:

Negotiating the uncharted waters of Charlton can be a trip and a half! There is probably more outlandishly weird stuff per issue (even per *page*) than any other publisher! And all the more so because you’ve seen many of these properties done elsewhere with a greater degree of overall professionalism. Charlton’s art is looser and stories are less coherent – though often amusing in their own crazy way – than in the previous Dell and Gold Key comics, as well as the later Marvel and DC versions!

One thing that stands out, even in the best of the Charlton material is that, unlike Harvey Eisenberg, Pete Alvarado, and Phil DeLara in the past, and Scott Jeralds who does such a fine job with those characters when they appear now in SCOOBY-DOO TEAM-UP, little attempt is made to even approximate the classic Hanna-Barbera drawing or design style! And that’s why we got stuff like you see in this post.

Oddly, in some of the latter issues some effort was made toward that end (and a few of the earlier issues ran what appear to be sparsely-translated foreign-drawn stories – looking like faux-Gold Key art), but, more often than not, Charlton’s original stuff looked like “something totally its own”!

Oh, and Yogi DID have a personal genie once HERE! But, then again what classic cartoon character of any reputation didn’t?

Also, while searching Yogi videos, I found THIS WONDERFUL THING! I hope these things aren’t removed for a while!

Oh, I am definitely looking forward to the Scooby/Magilla team-up! I’ve been meaning to review the issue of SDTU with Dick Dastardly and Muttley, but that old “horrifically busy” thing keeps getting in the way! But, I can’t let Magilla pass un-reviewed!

I still say read ALL the issues of SCOOBY-DOO TEAM-UP! If you aren’t familiar with the guest-starring characters, you will become so – easily and quickly! It’ll broaden your comics horizons in the same way that reading DC COMICS PRESENTS (essentially “Superman Team-Up”) did for me in the early-mid 1980s… and THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD (essentially “Batman Team-Up”) did before that!

Anyone who misses the way I dialogued IDW’s Disney comics, is bound to enjoy the work of SDTU’s superb writer Sholly Fisch! Lots of character-driven jokes and references, both expected and unexpected, are his stock-in-trade! And, I appreciate stuff like that more than anything… especially these days!

I think that Scooby and the Gang partnering with Touché and Dum-Dum on a case would be a superb idea. So, Mr. Fisch? DC? Anyone?

Comicbookrehab said...

I know DC has stopped doing those DC-Hanna-Barbera/DC-Looney Tunes team-ups with "Scooby-Apocalypse" ending, so I guess I won't get those "Supergirl & Penelope Pitstop", "Zatana & Lola Bunny", "Green Arrow & Pepe le Pew", "Batgirl & Peter Potamus" or "Tom & Jerry and Blue Beetle & Booster Gold" one-shots I used to daydream about seeing. Maybe Marvel Comics will pickup the slack, bite the bullet, push the twin beds it shares with the Disney Company together and do some freaky-looking team-ups of Marvel and Disney characters. But that would be them admitting they're a part of the House of Mouse..

I still own a few of the 90's Harvey Hanna-Barberas and appreciate the introduction to the Charlton Era's unique combination of slapdash storytelling and coloring book-style illustration. I remember practicing my ability to draw Scooby, Yogi, Fred & Huck like Ray Dirgo does it. Hazelton's too hard. Do it like Dirgo, I say.

;)

Comicbookrehab said...

I DO remember an example of Harvey's "work" at re-printing vintage material, like the "Happy Hound" stories Carl Barks worked on - they re-wrote the dialogue, but the only reason I knew that was because the originals were reprinted last year.

Joe Torcivia said...

‘Rehab:

You write: “Hazelton's too hard. Do it like Dirgo, I say.”

Reading that caused me to involuntarily throw-back my head and let-out with a hearty laugh! Thank you!

I, too, once had hopes of drawing. But no matter how hard I practiced, I could never get my Ducks and Goofy to look better than Kay Wright… so I gave up! Besides, it’s much more fun – and far less tedious – to be a writer! Until you look at your pay stubs, that is!

Of late, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’ve turned my some of my collecting attentions toward Charlton! And, as you’ve also noticed, there’s actually some great stuff strewn amongst the larger pile of “that which has gone tragically wrong”!

The much maligned – and often rightly so, as witness this very post – Ray Dirgo is oddly on both sides of that spectrum! Unlike Kay Wright and Bob Gregory on the Gold Key and Whitman Disney comics, Ray Dirgo ACTUALLY IMPROVED his art as he progressed from 1970 to 1976! …Yes, really! I kid you not!

It’s funny that you compared his work to Gene Hazleton because, if you look at his last Flintstones cover, it looks more like Hazleton (oaky, so squint a little, but “give the Dirgo his due”) than that which we normally think of as “Ray Dirgo art”!

Or, compare this Yogi Bear cover with the (figuratively and literally described) “skunk cover” seen in this post! Yeah, Boo Boo’s still a little loose, but his Yogi figure is vastly improved.

This is the sort of thing you’d never notice with Harvey’s random reprintings, but comes together in some logical form (as much as the term “logical” could apply to Charlton) when you survey the originals in their proper (as much as the term “proper” could apply to Charlton) order!

The key difference between Charlton and Harvey is that Charlton committed its gaffes while at least sincerely trying to put out a reasonable product, as witness its POPEYE and ABBOTT AND COSTELLO titles that I’ve written about elsewhere – and whatever “improvements” were eventually made to its other Hanna-Barbera comics.

The Harvey stuff of the time, on the other hand, was a quick cash-grab schlock job that shows on every page! There’s also a vast difference between the “accumulated publishing knowledge” of 1970 and of the early to mid ‘90s! The lack of that knowledge by Charlton in 1970s is, at least in some ways, excusable! That same, seemingly purposeful, lack on the part of Harvey in the ‘90s is inexcusable!

You’ll be seeing more of Charlton – “The Good, The Bad, and The Sloppy” (with apologies to Clint Eastwood and Sergio Leone) in future posts, because they are just such a fascinating publishing anomaly!

...As long as we're doing movie analogies, dare I even say Charlton was "The Ed Wood of Comic Books"? Yes, I dare! Sincere, but often inept, and with low budgets! That's it, all right!

Comicbookrehab said...

He DOES get bonus points for drawing Wilma & Betty with extra-large posteriors and even perhaps a "meta" wink to his own efforts in the form of those cave drawings, but the effort is unmistakably a "Ray Dirgo"...but that Yogi Bear cover shows some evolution breaking through..only time would've told..and it ran out. I don't really dislike his drawing "efforts", but it is weak tea when you stare & compare the other stuff..maybe toward the end he was peaking at what other artists did when they drew the character and took the hint later than he should've.

Joe Torcivia said...

I think you said it perfectly, ‘Rehab!

Whatever the reason, Ray Dirgo’s work showed eventual improvement, over the horribly rough and often hideously off-model stuff he was grinding-out at the beginning of the Charlton Era.

Oh, it’ll never even sniff Harvey Eisenberg as far as Hanna-Barbera perfection is concerned – and, even at its best, it was more often than not (as you say) “weak tea”.

But, unlike Kay Wright – who was BAD, and Bob Gregory – who was BAD and DULL , Ray Dirgo (or his editors?) came to recognize that some (nay, LOTS… a veritable boat-load, kingdom-sized, prithee, verily, and by-my-troth amount of) improvement was needed… and he actually made an effort to do something about that!

I stand by my many earlier criticisms but, as a “proper and in-order” survey of his Charlton comics shows, there was undeniable improvement, and I respect him for that!