Number 835

Man Hunter of the North

Dell Comics licensed many popular animation characters, but when kids went to the movies and saw cartoons featuring their favorite characters in the movies and then read a Dell Comic they were often reading about a different character with the same name.

The publisher found out early they couldn't just reproduce animated cartoons. The characters got into adventures and stories unlike the movie cartoons. Even with that editorial policy the first issue of Woody Woodpecker, in Dell Four Color #169 from 1947, while entertaining enough, seems jarring. John Stanley, of Little Lulu fame, is credited with this issue. "Man Hunter," which is 29 pages long, seems like a stretched out 10-pager. There are jokes, even Stanley's "Yow!" to assure us he wrote it, but my feeling about this story is that it seems generic, that you could take Woody out, insert Bugs Bunny, Andy Panda or Porky Pig and they'd fit just fine.

I posted the second story from this issue--even more startling in its representation of Woody--in Pappy's #350, and a non-Stanley New Funnies story featuring Woody acting more like the zany character of the screen in Pappy's #577.

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The new Pappy's logo comes from one of my favorite covers, Man O' Mars #1, published by Israel Waldman's IW Comics in the late '50s. Flying saucers, aliens, half-dressed babe. Yep, that'll do it for me every time! It's a reprint of a Fiction House comic of the same name. I posted the story that goes with the cover in Pappy's #343.

As I said in my original posting, I believe the cover is drawn by Gray Morrow, an homage to Frank Frazetta's cover of Famous Funnies #212, from 1954, used as inspiration rather than a swipe.

Number 577


Oswald's war jitters


New Funnies #72, where this Oswald story appeared, came out in 1943, but the story was drawn in 1942. I posted another strip from this issue, Billy and Bonny Bee by Frank Thomas, in Pappy's #168. Both of the stories show that while the war wasn't directly addressed in New Funnies, it wasn't that far away. Many, if not most, of the children reading this comic book would have a father, brother, or other family member in the war. It was close to home for everyone.

There's at least a nod to the war jitters of the time, some mosquito dive bombers. That wasn't a new image; everyone who made animated cartoons had used that cliché a time or two. It just had poignancy because of the circumstances around the time this comic book was published.

I like the crazy Woody Woodpecker in this story better than the later bland version.

Number 383


Pepe y Pepito


Paul Murry is one of my favorite funny animal artists, but I had trouble finding anything he drew that wasn't for Disney. Murry was best known for his Mickey Mouse comics done from the 1950s to the '70s. I avidly followed his serials in the back of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, enjoying them almost as much as the Barks Donald Duck strips. I don't scan and post Disney comics, so I was happy to find "Pepe and Pepito" as the closing strip for the giant comic, Woody Woodpecker's County Fair #2 from 1958.

Murry had a real animated, solid drawing style, and he had a great ink line. I read once that he criticized Barks — horrors! criticize Carl Barks??!! — for using too thin a pen line, because of the limitations of the comic book format. Barks' work seems to have survived the process just fine, and Murry's looked great, too. Murry wasn't the auteur that Barks was, so I took the criticism for what it was worth. Murry was one of the best of the Mickey Mouse artists. For me it's a toss-up between Floyd Gottfredson and his Mickey Mouse comic strip work of the '30s and '40s, and Murry with his comic book work in the '50s and '60s. They're both great, but I'll always lean a little toward Murry because his was the Mickey I grew up with.

Murry died in 1989.