From our great friend Debbie Anne Perry comes a primo Mirth Separation with DISNEY COMICS ALBUM #3 (Disney Comics, Cover Date: August, 1990) and CHARLIE McCARTHY #4 (Dell Comics, Cover Date: December, 1949 / January, 1950).
As Deb pointed out to me, both Donald and Charlie were in Walt Disney's "Fun and Fancy Free" (1947)... and, to bring them still closer together, both are known to have been "dummies"!
...Especially Donald!
And, if you put both covers together this way, the bulls would be running smack into each other... POW!
"So, who's the dummy NOW, huh?"
Deb is thanked for adding another brick to the vast, SIMILARLY-GAGGED wall that is... "SEPARATED AT MIRTH"!
4 comments:
I had no idea there was ever a Charlie McCarthy comic book. Any info about it? Was he a puppet in the stories or was he a person?
And the juxtaposition of those two covers is spot-on and brilliant!
Scarecrow:
I have only one Charlie McCarthy comic book which, to be perfectly honest, I bought strictly because Harvey Eisenberg drew it – which is a good reason to buy ANY comic book! That would be DELL FOUR COLOR #196 (1948).
The cover, as you can see HERE, consists of a large inset photograph of Charlie in his actual “dummy” form, and Eisenberg’s illustration depicting Charlie and Mortimer Snerd as boys – which is what they are in the two stories therein.
Edgar Bergen is not a character in the stories, as the parental figure you’d sort of expect him to be. Like any number of comics kids, Charlie and Mortimer have their adventures and misadventures on their own. I don’t know if Mr. Bergen appears in any of the other issues. A shame, actually, because Harvey Eisenberg would have drawn a fine “realistic looking” Edgar Bergen alongside his “not-overly-cartoonish” looking Charlie and Mortimer.
Edgar Bergen DOES appear on the back cover, in a “Mexican-serenading” color photo with Charlie and Mortimer… lest we forget who speaks (and serenades) for them.
Like most Dell Comics series, Charlie McCarthy began as a sporadically published title in the DELL FOUR COLOR series, and graduated to his own eponymous regular series which ran for nine issues between 1949 and 1952.
Finally, one of the greatest things about this humble Blog is when someone learns or discovers something among my (equally humble) posts – and all the more so when SOMEONE DOES THE SAME FOR ME! Thank you, Deb, for being today’s teacher… and for providing a great Separated At Mirth!
AND ONE MORE THING… “And the juxtaposition of those two covers is spot-on and brilliant!”
AND ONE MORE THING… TO THANK DEB FOR! …It takes the eye of an artist!
WOW. I never made this connection, probably because I (wrongfully) write off any Dell covers that don't just contain dumb cartoon-looking animals or humans against bright beautiful backgrounds. Cover art means a lot, and this McCarthy piece just doesn't cut it. To be honest, neither does the Donald one, which I always thought was odd (and what's up with the coloring on the bull? Is he wearing a sweater?)
With Barks, Stanley, Eisenberg, Heimdahl, Sagendorf, and even Charles Schulz among the many talented cover artists at Western, the artist who did this McCarthy piece isn't up to snuff. I disagree with GCD's Eisenberg identification; he was such a master of staging that he never would've left that ugly blank space below the "Bull Fighter" caption box. Charlie's seen better days. If he did the interiors, it's worth buying, but not for the cover. A shame.
Austin:
For what it’s worth, I didn’t make that artist ID for Eisenberg, but I agree with it. In fact, that’s why I originally bought that comic years before I became involved with GCD. And Eisenberg definitely did the whole inside! It was interesting to see him handle something that was not MGM, Hanna-Barbera, or Chip ‘n’ Dale – and where the characters were primarily “human” – or “human-looking”!
If you’re taking issue with the GCD credit strictly because you feel that Eisenberg “…never would've left that ugly blank space below the "Bull Fighter" caption box.”, I would actually agree with that. No, he was too much a “master”, as you say, to have done that.
But, knowing a bit about how these things worked, my “educated guess” would be that Eisenberg was not responsible for the title caption box. No more so than Barks was for those on his Gold Key covers for UNCLE SCROOGE. He might have been told by his editor, presumably Carl Buettner, to leave such an open space for the box, as was the case with many Dell covers of that vintage, but I seriously doubt he was responsible for its placement – especially so as it encroaches on Charlie’s hat! In support of this it is also clearly not Eisenberg’s lettering.
As for the Donald Duck cover, originally from FOUR COLOR # 308, this one WAS actually drawn by Buettner who did many fine Dell covers in the 1940s – into the early 1950s. But, just as I do not blame Eisenberg for the title caption box, I do not blame Buettner for the Bull’s coloring… which is considerably more jarring than on the reprint.
You can see that version of the cover HERE!
That “honor” would go to the “forever-anonymous” colorists that GCD groups together under the generic-but-all-encompassing-description “Western Publishing Production Shop”! But, do notice that, for the reprint, a purposeful attempt was made to soften the originally garish error – resulting in a look that I’d term as “where and how the sun hits the bull”.
Finally, it’s always nice to see some love for “The Old Masters”: Barks, Stanley, Eisenberg, Heimdahl, Sagendorf, Charles Schulz – and so many others who made these comics great!
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