I'm not an artist but... that doesn't mean I can't express puzzlement at some of the strange, odd, and sometimes downright unfathomable things I see while rooting through my comic book collection!
For instance, this issue-opening splash panel from THE JETSONS # 14 (Charlton Comics, Cover Date: December, 1972)...
Okay... A PLANET HAS "FALLEN OUT OF ITS ORBIT, AND IS HEADING RIGHT FOR EARTH!"
Jane, at least, shows some concern... but WHY IS GEORGE SO HAPPY ABOUT IT?!
"I'm Not an Artist, But..." can't George have been drawn just a little more like Casty's Mickey Mouse in the modern-day classic "Plan Dine from Outer Space"?
...I don't mean drawn with "big round ears", but a tad more reasonably concerned when a celestial body is about to slam into the Earth?
For instance, let's look in on "another member of a futuristic TV family", and see how HE would take such news...
Yeah, that's more like it!
Perhaps, though, by The Jetsons' time "planetary collisions" are just as routine as presidential scandals are today... and, by being so sadly plentiful, nobody pays attention to them anymore!
Sure, just "evacuate Earth"! ...As easy and routine as "going for donuts"!
Nope, sorry! I'm not an artist but... George should look far more distressed than he does!
Even by Charlton standards, he should be "MORE THIS"...
Whadda you think?
6 comments:
ANYthing to get the heck away from Spacely!
Joe C:
Yeah, ya know what… Even I had a boss (or two, or three) that MIGHT be worth losing the Earth to escape from!
But, knowing Cosmo G. Spacely, he’s probably got… um, “satellite offices” on Mars, Venus… and most likely Uranus, ensuring the continuation of George’s servitude!
Note that Elroy likewise has an amused expression on his face. Jane, if anything, is either mildly amused or mildly perplexed. But NONE of the three Jetsons depicted in the panel appears to be terribly concerned about the possibility of Earth's getting wiped out.
A similar situation occurs in one of the Charlton issues of "Hanna-Barbera Parade." I believe it is issue #1, and there's a Magilla Gorilla story in which Peebles is accused of hijacking a plane and is arrested. In the panel to which I refer, Peebles is in a cell and is shouting "I'm innocent! Let me out of here!" (not an exact quote, but the general idea) and a policeman is standing a few feet away with a condescending look and a hand in a reassuring position, as though he were about to say "Calm down, Mr. Peebles" or words to that effect. But the actual words that he says are "We'll throw the book at you, Peebles." (This one is the exact quote.) This with a smile and a reassuring hand! This comment makes no sense in context of the picture. It's as though "throwing the book" at Peebles is somehow a reassuring notion. Just as another planet colliding with Earth is cause for amusement.
Some of those early Charlton issues featuring the H-B characters used what appear to have been pre-drawn stories to be used internationally--a theory I have floated here before--and as such probably didn't come with pre-written dialogue scripts, leaving the words to the translator or writer who was given whatever assignment. A clue, in the Jetsons panel above, is the excessive amount of white space below the text of the news commentator's speech. Most originally American-made comics have exactly (or nearly) the amount of space to fit the text. Another feature of those stories is that nearly every page contains a possible ending panel at the bottom, so that the stories could either stop or continue, depending on how much space needed to be filled. This is pure speculation on my part, but my theory seems to fit in several instances. But with the story already drawn out, the writer could insert whatever dialogue he seemed to think would fit--and in several cases in the early Charltons, we got seeming errors such as the "Jetsons" one above.
It looks to me like Elroy is even more excited about it. But then I can remember when I was young that scary natural disasters were often a form of excitement for me and I had no fear that I would be harmed. I think George is still thinking like an excited kid, "Oh boy Jane. We may get to evacuate. Anything to break the boredom of sitting at work watching sprockets go by while I push meaningless buttons that do nothing."
Carl:
Of course, Elroy is happily excited… No Earth means NO SCHOOL!
Back then, I would have sacrificed the Earth, in exchange for no school, in a heartbeat!
George may very well be looking at planetary evacuation as a “vacation” too! Perhaps the only family member who might give the situation the proper amount of alarm would be ASTRO! With cowardly SCOOBY-DOO as an ancestor of sorts, it’s bound to have SOME sort of effect!
Scarecrow:
You write: “But NONE of the three Jetsons depicted in the panel appears to be terribly concerned about the possibility of Earth's getting wiped out.”
Perhaps there’s nothing wrong with the art, and human-kind has just become THAT DESENSITIZED by then! Who’da thought that could happen when the show premiered back in 1962 – or when this comic appeared a decade later!
But, art, or dialogue, or editing, or whatever… such things were “just the way Charlton was”! The Magilla Gorilla story you cite is a perfect example of the balloons reading at odds with the panel art, or at odds with the story overall!
Decades from the (Ahem!) “beloved Disney comics translator” I would eventually become, I was an early high school kid when these comics were published… and EVEN BACK THEN, I would “mentally re-write them” to sound so much better than they did!
Yes, clearly there were a large number of “foreign market” stories mixed-in with the “original Charlton product” – they stand out because they all look like “inferior, but kinda decent, imitations of the “Pete Alvarado / Gold Key style”. …But, they almost always “read poorly”, or at least “inconsistently with the art”, as we’ve both noted in these comments.
Conversely, the “original Charlton product” was more often badly drawn, but would READ better, thanks to “old hand” Joe Gill, and the inconsistent but imaginative Gwen Krause.
It seemed as if there was always some “bad” and some “good” in those comics… even if there was more “bad”! …Often far more! Yet, POPEYE and ABBOTT AND COSTELLO were consistently much better than the classic H-B stuff… and I’ll never understand why!
I have another Charlton Jetsons post in the queue that discusses (with excruciating illustrations) one of the very worst MISTAKES I have ever seen in comics! And, it occurs FOUR TIMES in one story! You may actually know what this is, so please don’t spoil it for the blissfully unsuspecting out there! BUT, IT’S A REAL SLACK-JAWED DOOZY! …And you’ll see it sometime going forward!
PS: Your comment actually had me pull my copy of HANNA-BARBERA PARADE # 1 (1971 – and the ONLY issue in this series I ever had, bought new off the newsstand), and the Magilla story is not in that one! Too bad, ‘cause I wanted to see that story… and, if I ever do, that means I’ll have to buy yet another issue!
Aw, heck… I’ll probably buy it because Charlton just may be the most fascinating publisher in American comic books, because NO ONE did things the way they did! And, as one who “came up” on the more traditional Gold Key and DC, they sure walked to the beat of a different drum… or drummer… or strummer… or bummer!
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