I like Ha Ha Comics, published by ACG, which featured moonlighting animators and writers. Hubert (Hubie) Karp was a gag writer, and I favor his stories because I think he’s one of the funniest of the bunch. He wrote the “Stalwart Swinburne” comic stories.
This particular Stalwart tale has the knight facing a roc who has eaten the other knights. Stalwart is confident in his own abilities, even when faced by an enemy hundreds of times larger than him.
By Hubie Karp and artist Allan (Al) Hubbard. From Ha Ha Comics #35 (1946):
Normally the Roc was and is imagined as able to fly, in which case the bridge failure should not have proved fatal. But I'd have trouble believing that a bird of the form and scale shown could even walk.
ReplyDeleteUnlike that Roc, the story was light-weight; but it was amusing enough, and delivered with illustrations of good quality.
It's persistently interesting to me how the issue of meat is handled in funny animal comics and animation. In this case, they ate the villain (after somehow retrieving his enormous cadaver). But, usually, there's just parts of the body of someone being served-up. I'm sure that the illustrators almost always recognized the implications. I wonder whether they laughed or shuddered or sighed.
That's a really beautiful piece of work. It's hard to do a story where the characters have such a size difference, but it's pulled off well and it's got a lot of funny and charming moments, and paced really well.
ReplyDeleteDaniel, well...it is a cartoon so rules that apply to us in the real world don't apply here. Or, for me, the world I see is as "real" as I can stand until, like Popeye, "I can't stands no more!" That's when I turn off the TV.
ReplyDeleteThe comic came from 1946, right after a time when meat was rationed. Or perhaps when it was drawn meat was rationed. Either way, the idea of all the meat one could eat and then some was tantalizing, I'm sure.
Brian, thinking about what you say about size differences, I visualize the artist at the drawing board. The page to be drawn is on a standard size piece of paper, so the little guys would have to be drawn really tiny. And they'd have to stay that size unless they are drawn without the giant to match up to. Whew. Makes my head ache just thinking of it.
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