Number 2292: Spunky, Junior Cowboy, and Stanley the horse in the ghost cave

Jack Bradbury’s cartoon drawing style is a favorite of mine. I find the characters he both created and drew, Spunky, Junior Cowboy, and his horse, Stanley, irresistible. I am a great admirer of the moonlighting animators who worked in comic books during the forties and fifties; they were gifted in the main, but even among his fellow funnymen, Bradbury stands out for me.

This story, from the first issue of Spunky, shows his solid craft and professionalism. It is also funny; a funny ghost story, no less.

From Spunky #1 (1949):

Number 316


Love-sick!


Speaking of love--without the sick--I really love Jack Bradbury's comic art from the late 1940s and early '50. The work he did later for Disney comics I find less interesting, but he was working in a stricter panel format on characters well established by other artists. Bradbury created Spunky and Stanley, published in Spunky Junior Cowboy, and it is Bradbury's genius that makes the strip so good.

Every panel with Stanley, the love-sick horse, is funny. Spunky's horse belongs to an animation tradition, and I'm thinking of Ichabod Crane's horse in Disney's The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow. Bradbury had a true gift for comic exaggeration and every time I look at his work I admire it more.