Clearly, this book (minus the cover, and new advertising pages), was the insides of the second issue of Fox's Animal Crackers, which was due to be issued in early 1951, but was never issued due to Fox's cash flow problems and Victor Fox's dealing with his legal issues. I don't know if he had already shut down ALL of his comic book operations, by that time, or if the sales of Animal Crackers' first issue, # 31, warranted release of its second issue. For some reason, the cover of this second issue, when released by Israel Waldman's IW Comics, had #9 on it. But that was likely a number chosen by Waldman, rather than having been Fox's number, already on the artwork. The Waldman issue with that cover had insides from a book from a completely different publisher in the issue. But the cover was clearly drawn by the same artist who drew more than half the stories in THIS book. The two artists who drew this book and Animal Crackers 31 were new to Fox(produced in 1950), not having worked on Fox's 1940s funny animal books. The artwork of Rufus The Dog's and Flunky the Monkey's stories looks like Louis Ferstadt's work, while I have no idea who drew Drooley Lion and Satchel Crocodile, but it looks like the style of some of the artists from the New York studios. Ferstadt closed his own studio down in 1946, so he may have been hired by Fox, as a single artist, along with the other artist, exclusively to work on this one series.
Link to the book:
Leo the Lion 1
