[Quirky Quokka]

Thanks QQ,

You have explained it very well.  I'm finding the reactions from others about your choices fascinating, and will comment before the end of the week.

cheers!

Thanks Panther. I thought we'd just have fun with a couple of lighter reads. Didn't realise I was setting the cat among the pigeons, but it has indeed been interesting 

Cheers

QQ

[Morgus]

Geez, MR MAGOO. Haven’t thought of him in YEARS.
The draughtsman who did the art were pretty dead on with looking like the cartoons. And (thankfully) they didn’t use ‘Cholly’ his Asian side kick. He always called McGoo ‘bloss’ If anybody got more mileage out of ONE joke and it’s set up, I’d like to hear about it.
Considering the problems they’d have moving the cartoon to a static medium, I’m not sure it could be any better. McGoo always had a stream of running commentary going under the constant action. So, yeah. There would be dialogue heavy panels with no flow.

NELLIE THE NURSE was hit and miss, but you expect that is what really was a greatest hits collection.

Oh, one way cool MR MAGOO story.
UAP were going to make a feature of McGoo as Don Quixote. They called in Aldous Huxley to write it.
None of those Brianiacs KNEW that Huxley was pretty much blind. He talks away about changes to the script and NOBODY wants to tell him that the essential punchline is that McGoo can’t see. They didn’t want to oftend him, and kept their mouths shut, courteously listened  and thanked him for coming in. But some of the staff wondered if he wouldn’t have rolled with it and said;”Oh, that’s nothing. Let me tell you about MY screw ups..."

[Robb_K]

Geez, MR MAGOO. Haven’t thought of him in YEARS.
The draughtsman who did the art were pretty dead on with looking like the cartoons. And (thankfully) they didn’t use ‘Cholly’ his Asian side kick. He always called McGoo ‘bloss’ If anybody got more mileage out of ONE joke and it’s set up, I’d like to hear about it.
Considering the problems they’d have moving the cartoon to a static medium, I’m not sure it could be any better. McGoo always had a stream of running commentary going under the constant action. So, yeah. There would be dialogue heavy panels with no flow.

NELLIE THE NURSE was hit and miss, but you expect that is what really was a greatest hits collection.

Oh, one way cool MR MAGOO story.
UAP were going to make a feature of McGoo as Don Quixote. They called in Aldous Huxley to write it.
None of those Brianiacs KNEW that Huxley was pretty much blind. He talks away about changes to the script and NOBODY wants to tell him that the essential punchline is that McGoo can’t see. They didn’t want to oftend him, and kept their mouths shut, courteously listened  and thanked him for coming in. But some of the staff wondered if he wouldn’t have rolled with it and said;”Oh, that’s nothing. Let me tell you about MY screw ups..."

That artist was Pete Alvarado, who worked as an animator at Disney Animation, Funnies Inc. working for Timely and Fawcett Comics, Warner Bros. Animation, Western Publishing (Dell Comics), DePatie-Freleng Animation, Hanna-Barbera TV Animation, and Film Roman Animation.  He finished a 67-year animation, comic strip and comic book cartooning career in 1999, working on Garfield & Friends TV show.  He had worked on "Snow White
' and many of Disney's early films, as well as ALL the different Disney, WB, MGM, and Walter Lantz Dell Comics series, and alsoworked on cartoon shorts for WB on every one of their characters, Plus The Roy Rogers and Gene Autrey newspaper Comic strips and Western comic books, plus Little Lulu,Mr. Magoo, Donald Duck, Yogi Bear, and The Flintstones newspaper strips, plus later on Disney's l;ater films,The Rescuers, Robin Hood, and Gay-Purr-ee.

[Morgus]

Wow. what a history of accomplishment. Thanks for the info

[crashryan]

A late last word on the Mister Magoo date issue. The 1965 date is correct, reflecting the fact that this is a reprinting of the 1961 issue using the same Four-Color Series number as the original printing. The cover logo says "Second Printing" and the indicia includes the phrase "Reprinted by popular demand," Dell's standard tag for reprints.

(I suspect the "demand" came from the publisher wanting to make money off existing product rather than paying for new stuff. It's hard to imagine a write-in campaign by kids begging for a new edition of a four-year-old Mr Magoo comic.)

At any rate, my guess is keeping the 1961 Dell "stamp" logo on the cover was done to save printing costs. Adding "Second Printing" and the new date info to the cover meant the printer only had to remake the black plate. Changing the logo would have involved altering the three color plates as well. 

[The Australian Panther]

The Near-Sighted Mr Magoo - Four Color Series #1235
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=33977

Some perspective on Magoo.
Jim Backus voice was crucial to his portrayal of Magoo.
MR. MAGOO
https://toonopedia.com/magoo.htm

  The Disney film [with Leslie Nielson] drew protest from advocates of the vision-impaired, who pointed out rather vociferously that there is nothing funny about blindness. They're right, of course — but it's not his blindness that has always made Mr. Magoo funny. It's the fact that he stubbornly refuses to admit or compensate for his disability. 

Nobody really knows who created Quincy Magoo. Millard Kaufman wrote the script for that first outing. Director John Hubley certainly had a great deal of input. But when most people think of the character, the one element that stands out most strongly is the voice of actor Jim Backus (best known as millionaire Thurston Howell in the 1960s sitcom Gilligan's Island, and as his voice in animated versions, New Adventures of Gilligan and Gilligan's Planet). Backus was encouraged to ad-lib in his depiction of the crotchety old coot, and to ham it up to his heart's content. A great deal of the final product represents his off-the-cuff creativity.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1225373

"Backus asked what he was like, what he looked like. Hubley said, 'well I haven't any pictures with me, but if we could wander over to UPA, I could show you some rough sketches and a story-board. ...Backus studied the character and when Hubley said he was near-sighted  and lived in his own little world, Backus said he could do it. He said, 'My father lives in his own little world, never quite seeing things they way they really are.It isn't that he's nearsighted but his whole attitude toward life is a kind of personal isolation towards the rest of the world."   

I myself was born with a degree of vision impairment. As a consequence I wore glasses from early primary school and was bullied because of it.
But I never saw the Magoo cartoons as poking fun at blindness. In any case, Magoo is nearsighted, not blind. Magoo is almost always in error, but he is not depicted as nasty and the consequences of his mistakes are never as graphic as many Warner Brother cartoons, like the Roadrunner cartoons (of which I never tire) 

So, basically, the  Magoo Cartoons are a premise for a constant series of slapstick gags.

So, to this book.
And the problem is,
If you try to reproduce slapstick on a 2-dimensional book page, you have your work cut out for you. The best examples are Carl Barks early Donald Duck shorts where the art nearly jumps off the page.
In the Magoo cartoons, Magoo talks all the time, explaining what he thinks is actually going on. 
That's a handicap in a 'funny animal comic' so, it really doesn't work at all.
I'll take Magoo on the screen!
I'm a huge fan of Gold Key and Dell, but their cartoon adaptions mostly leave me cold. The Moose and Squirrel comics are an exception. And a few others.                     

[Robb_K]

A late last word on the Mister Magoo date issue. (1) The 1965 date is correct, reflecting the fact that this is a reprinting of the 1961 issue using the same Four-Color Series number as the original printing. The cover logo says "Second Printing" and the indicia includes the phrase "Reprinted by popular demand," Dell's standard tag for reprints.

(2) (I suspect the "demand" came from the publisher wanting to make money off existing product rather than paying for new stuff. It's hard to imagine a write-in campaign by kids begging for a new edition of a four-year-old Mr Magoo comic.)

At any rate, (3) my guess is keeping the 1961 Dell "stamp" logo on the cover was done to save printing costs. Adding "Second Printing" and the new date info to the cover meant the printer only had to remake the black plate. Changing the logo would have involved altering the three color plates as well.

(1) Yes, you are correct.  I couldn't believe Dell would use the old logo, because that might cause confusion, as the new, streamlined, non-stamp logo had been used already for 4 years.  But I found out that my own issue was the original, which listed Dec 61-Feb 62 as the publishing date, and the price was 15¢; whereas in 1965, it was 12¢. Also, my original issue had a full colour Mr. Magoo gag on its back cover, while the reprint has an advert.

Here are the different pages:






(2) Yes,There's no way that a bunch of young children, or, especially pre-teens, would write in requesting a reprint 4-year old book's stories.  Something along those lines probably DID happen to Gold Key Comics, with Disney and WB fans mostly Donald Duck/Barks fans and Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck fans writing in for generally reprinting stories from the 1950s, when collectors had a few scattered books from that time and liked most of them, and wanted to fill in their collections.  But, yes, the main driver for printing reprints was that Dell was hurting for sales, because Western had taken away ALL their best sellers, Dell now had very few Titles selling much, and only as very small staff of their own artists.  It's interesting that even some of the best of what Dell had after their "breakup with Western, returned back to Western when Dell finally dropped their comic book lines, completely in 1973.  Western/Gold Key only lasted 10 years after that.

(3) Yes, printing costs had to be the reason for just using the colour and art plates from the 1961 issue.  It made a sort of anomaly, that would have been a collectors' item during the 1960s, IF it hat been a 1940s book.  But no one was collecting 1965 Dell comic books then, and very few people were even buying these books.  And almost no one collects them even now, except, possibly foreign collectors.  In 1964 UPA produced a TV series showing Mr. Magoo cartoons, and so UPA hired artist Pete Alvarado to draw a new daily newspaper comic strip.  And so They also made a deal with Dell to reprint their previous 5 Mr. Magoo books' stories from their 1961-63 series (Western Publishing still owned the copyrights to the 8 Magoo/Gerald McBoing-Boing Books from their partnership with Dell, so they'd have cost Dell significantly more to issue).  Perhaps they were planning to get Alvarado to draw new Magoo stories for continuing this new series after the reprint material would be used up, IF the reprints sold well.  But, apparently sales were so small that they didn't bother to reprint a second of their 5 second series books. 

[Robb_K]

The Near-Sighted Mr Magoo - Four Color Series #1235
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=33977

Some perspective on Magoo.
Jim Backus voice was crucial to his portrayal of Magoo.

Nobody really knows who created Quincy Magoo. Millard Kaufman wrote the script for that first outing. Director John Hubley certainly had a great deal of input. But when most people think of the character, the one element that stands out most strongly is the voice of actor Jim Backus. Backus was encouraged to ad-lib in his depiction of the crotchety old coot, and to ham it up to his heart's content. A great deal of the final product represents his off-the-cuff creativity.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1225373

"Backus asked what he was like, what he looked like. Hubley said, 'well I haven't any pictures with me, but if we could wander over to UPA, I could show you some rough sketches and a story-board. ...Backus studied the character and when Hubley said he was near-sighted  and lived in his own little world, Backus said he could do it. He said, 'My father lives in his own little world, never quite seeing things they way they really are.It isn't that he's nearsighted but his whole attitude toward life is a kind of personal isolation towards the rest of the world."

So, Jim Backus had a LOT to do with characterising Mr. Magoo, including partly basing him on his own father's peculiarities. Very interesting.  Bakus was one of my favourite character actors.  He was also the co-star and driver of the comedy in the US TV series, "I Married Joan", co-starring with comedienne, Joan Davis.    He also starred in his own show, "Hot Off The Press", in addition to "Gilligan's Island".  He was a character actor in many films.including James Dean's father in "Rebel Without a Cause".  He was good in both comedy and dramas.

[Quirky Quokka]

Geez, MR MAGOO. Haven’t thought of him in YEARS.
The draughtsman who did the art were pretty dead on with looking like the cartoons. And (thankfully) they didn’t use ‘Cholly’ his Asian side kick. He always called McGoo ‘bloss’ If anybody got more mileage out of ONE joke and it’s set up, I’d like to hear about it.
Considering the problems they’d have moving the cartoon to a static medium, I’m not sure it could be any better. McGoo always had a stream of running commentary going under the constant action. So, yeah. There would be dialogue heavy panels with no flow.

NELLIE THE NURSE was hit and miss, but you expect that is what really was a greatest hits collection.

Oh, one way cool MR MAGOO story.
UAP were going to make a feature of McGoo as Don Quixote. They called in Aldous Huxley to write it.
None of those Brianiacs KNEW that Huxley was pretty much blind. He talks away about changes to the script and NOBODY wants to tell him that the essential punchline is that McGoo can’t see. They didn’t want to oftend him, and kept their mouths shut, courteously listened  and thanked him for coming in. But some of the staff wondered if he wouldn’t have rolled with it and said;”Oh, that’s nothing. Let me tell you about MY screw ups..."

You always have an interesting anecdote, Morgus. You're going to one of those brilliant raconteurs in your old age, entertaining all the neighbourhood children and grownups with tales of wonder. It would have been great to know what Huxley would have thought of it.

And yes, I seem to recall that the animation was the funniest part of Mr McGoo cartoons, so it was always going to be hard to convey that with static pictures. The narration too would have seemed very wordy in a comic book, but it puttered along nicely in the cartoons with Jim Backus's voice. My first acquaintance with him was as Mr Howell on Gilligan's Island, and I remembered having an a-ha moment in my teens when I realised he was the voice of Mr Magoo. And yes, very glad they didn't include Cholly. Definitely would have been a cringe factor now.

Cheers

QQ

[Quirky Quokka]

A late last word on the Mister Magoo date issue. The 1965 date is correct, reflecting the fact that this is a reprinting of the 1961 issue using the same Four-Color Series number as the original printing. The cover logo says "Second Printing" and the indicia includes the phrase "Reprinted by popular demand," Dell's standard tag for reprints.

(I suspect the "demand" came from the publisher wanting to make money off existing product rather than paying for new stuff. It's hard to imagine a write-in campaign by kids begging for a new edition of a four-year-old Mr Magoo comic.)

At any rate, my guess is keeping the 1961 Dell "stamp" logo on the cover was done to save printing costs. Adding "Second Printing" and the new date info to the cover meant the printer only had to remake the black plate. Changing the logo would have involved altering the three color plates as well.

Thanks for the clarification about the date, Crashryan. Yes, I think there were probably lots of other titles the kids would have been asking for before this one. Maybe the reprint coincided with more Magoo cartoons or reruns on TV, so they were hoping that would boost sales.

Cheers

QQ

[Quirky Quokka]

The Near-Sighted Mr Magoo - Four Color Series #1235
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=33977

Some perspective on Magoo.
Jim Backus voice was crucial to his portrayal of Magoo ...

I myself was born with a degree of vision impairment. As a consequence I wore glasses from early primary school and was bullied because of it.
But I never saw the Magoo cartoons as poking fun at blindness. In any case, Magoo is nearsighted, not blind. Magoo is almost always in error, but he is not depicted as nasty and the consequences of his mistakes are never as graphic as many Warner Brother cartoons, like the Roadrunner cartoons (of which I never tire) 

So, basically, the  Magoo Cartoons are a premise for a constant series of slapstick gags.

So, to this book.
And the problem is,
If you try to reproduce slapstick on a 2-dimensional book page, you have your work cut out for you. The best examples are Carl Barks early Donald Duck shorts where the art nearly jumps off the page.
In the Magoo cartoons, Magoo talks all the time, explaining what he thinks is actually going on. 
That's a handicap in a 'funny animal comic' so, it really doesn't work at all.
I'll take Magoo on the screen!
I'm a huge fan of Gold Key and Dell, but their cartoon adaptions mostly leave me cold. The Moose and Squirrel comics are an exception. And a few others.                     

Thanks Panther. Sorry to hear you were bullied because of your glasses. And I guess we didn't have the range of designer glasses we have today that can look quite trendy.

I also never thought the cartoons were poking fun at blindness. (Though I'm not sure my vision-impaired friends would agree). For me it was more that he was in his own little world completely oblivious to the havoc he was creating, and the animation along with Jim Backus's voice made the cartoons funnier. It's hard to translate that onto the page. I agree the Rocky and Bullwinkle comics were a better adaptation. Still lots of funny situations and quips, which can work in both a comic and a cartoon. Whereas others are probably better suited to one medium.

Cheers

QQ

[Quirky Quokka]

So, Jim Backus had a LOT to do with characterising Mr. Magoo, including partly basing him on his own father's peculiarities. Very interesting.  Bakus was one of my favourite character actors.  He was also the co-star and driver of the comedy in the US TV series, "I Married Joan", co-starring with comedienne, Joan Davis.    He also starred in his own show, "Hot Off The Press", in addition to "Gilligan's Island".  He was a character actor in many films.including James Dean's father in "Rebel Without a Cause".  He was good in both comedy and dramas.

Robb, my first experience of Jim Backus was as Mr Howell on Gilligan's Island. That show was very popular when I was a kid, and it played in reruns over and over. I could probably tell you the plot of most episodes. It wasn't until later that I realised he was the voice of Mr Magoo. He definitely brought something extra to that role. I'm not sure if he did much other voice work. I remember seeing him in 'Rebel Without a Cause'. For me, it was very different seeing him in that kind of role, playing the henpecked husband. A great character actor.

Cheers

QQ

[The Australian Panther]

And I guess we didn't have the range of designer glasses we have today that can look quite trendy.   

Yeah. No.
My first pair of glasses had round lenses and thin wire frames. I hated them, they were government issue and stood out and made me a target. Nobody else wore glasses like that.
I couldn't wait to get rid of them and get a pair that were not round and had a more solid frame. And I did.
Almost immediately, what happened?
John Lennon made them trendy. Unbelievable.
John Lennon’s Glasses: The Story Behind His Iconic Frames
https://www.classicspecs.com/closerlook/john-lennons-glasses-the-story-behind-his-iconic-frames/
Never went back though. Stuck to my guns.

[Quirky Quokka]

Well, I thought I would just choose a couple of 'fun' books this time, but I didn't realise I was throwing the cat among the pigeons. Mr Magoo, in particular, brought a wide range of opinions from mildly amusing to politically incorrect to unhappy memories of having to endure the cartoon as a child. Oh dear! Well, it's always interesting to hear everyone's opinion, so here are my two cents' worth.

b]Mr Magoo[/b]

First of all, Mr Magoo's not my favourite either, but I thought it would be interesting to see some of the art that made up the slapstick situations. As some of you noted, it was always going to be hard to translate an animated cartoon into a static comic book, especially when Magoo's wordy narration was missing Jim Backus's voice.

As others have said, the joke of him not seeing clearly did tend to wear thin. I know you have to suspend disbelief for these kinds of stories, but it was hard to understand why no one ever spoke to him or tried to correct him or avert danger. For example, when he says he has shooting pains in his neck, and Waldo can clearly see Magoo has a hat stand sticking up the back of his coat, why does Waldo suggest going to the doctor instead of removing the hat stand? There were lots of those kinds of things, which did make it a bit too ridiculous at times.

Also, the idea that he would be allowed to drive, and that it doesn't bother him to drive when he can't see clearly, is pretty unbelievable. The town I live in can get quite foggy at times, and it's nerve-wracking driving in a pea-souper with low visibility. The idea that Magoo would happily drive around when he can't see what he's doing, doesn't make sense. So is he unaware of how bad his eyesight is and he thinks what he is seeing is accurate? For example, he's continually misreading signs and not even getting them close to the actual words. Maybe he's delusional rather than short-sighted.

Which brings me to the political correctness issue of more recent years. Are they making fun of his poor vision? I never saw it that way at the time. I thought the humour was more to do with the fact that he was totally oblivious to all of the havoc he was creating. Though I have a vision-impaired friend who I think would probably feel differently. Though for a comparison, Marvel's Daredevil was blinded in a childhood accident, but developed special abilities and became a superhero. (I'm not all that familiar with him and I believe they had some stories where his sight was restored?) But in any case, it showed that a blind character could be a hero.

I did find some of the references to contemporary issues of the time interesting. In the first full-length story, for example, he mentions nuclear testing (this was Cold War era) and cloud seeding and tampering with nature's laws.

And because I'm Australian, I can't finish without commenting on the full-page ad for BB guns on the back page. Nothing says Christmas like shooting some pesky squirrels. I was going to boast that we would never allow it here, but then discovered that you need a license to have a BB gun in every Australian state except for Queensland and South Australia. I live in Queensland, so I might pop out and get one right now! Actually, I remember going to see a department store Santa when I was a kid, and Santa gave everyone a little speech beforehand to say that he wouldn't be bringing anyone a gun. Spoilsport!

Thanks to everyone who commented. I did enjoy reading all of your thoughts. And thanks for all of the behind-the-scenes info. It was a great discussion. I'll say something about Nellie tomorrow.

Cheers

QQ

[Quirky Quokka]

And I guess we didn't have the range of designer glasses we have today that can look quite trendy.   

Yeah. No.
My first pair of glasses had round lenses and thin wire frames. I hated them, they were government issue and stood out and made me a target. Nobody else wore glasses like that.
I couldn't wait to get rid of them and get a pair that were not round and had a more solid frame. And I did.
Almost immediately, what happened?
John Lennon made them trendy. Unbelievable.
John Lennon’s Glasses: The Story Behind His Iconic Frames
https://www.classicspecs.com/closerlook/john-lennons-glasses-the-story-behind-his-iconic-frames/
Never went back though. Stuck to my guns.

You were ahead of the times, Panther. A trendsetter from way back. John Lennon probably got the idea from you. And don't forget Buddy Holly, Michael Caine and Elton John. Glasses are hip or groovy or whatever the word is now 

Cheers

QQ

[The Australian Panther]

1304 - Nellie the Nurse
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=37824
The cover and the one-page gags are signed KAZ.
Problem is there is a more famous KAZ who was an underground cartoon artist.
SuperScrounge and QQ identified KAZ as Lawrence Katzman

However the pacing, characterization, wide-open mouths and visual gags that run on for pages, clearly marks this as John Stanley's work.He of 'Little Lulu' and 'Nancy'. As Robb has already pointed out.

This may be  Lawrence Katzman's pencils over Stanleys layouts.
But the one panel cartoons are all Katzman.   
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/s/stanley.htm

From the 1940s throughout the 1960s, Stanley was a productive writer and artist for Western Printing Co., the company that produced comic books for Dell publications. In the early 1940s, Stanley worked on features like 'Bugs Bunny', 'O'G. Whiz', 'Linda Lark' and did scripts on 'Porky Pig' stories. For a long period, he was writing and drawing 'Nancy and Sluggo' stories for the comic books based on Ernie Bushmiller's newspaper comic.   

Until the 1960s, Stanley contributed scripts and artwork to many other Dell comic books, like 'Tubby', 'Melvin Monster', 'Clyde Crashcup', 'Choo Choo Charlie' and 'Thirteen' 

Being a fan of John Stanley's work, I quite enjoyed it.

Robb on Monday!

[SuperScrounge]

SuperScrounge and QQ identified KAZ as Lawrence Katzman

Additionally there is a copyright notice on the cover that gives his name. 

[Quirky Quokka]

Hi everyone

Just a few wrap-up comments on Nellie the Nurse.

I had never come across Nellie before. I don't think the one-panel cartoons were in any Australian magazines or newspapers. Panther might know?

So when I first looked at the book, I thought it was just a bit of fun. A nurse who's a bit scatterbrained, getting into slapstick situations. However after reading your comments, it seems that the way Nellie is depicted in this comic book is quite different from the way she had appeared in the one-panel cartoons. Perhaps more ditzy in the comic book rather than the smarter humour in the panels. As some of you have said, it is hard to translate one-panel strips into longer stories and Nellie does often seem to put her patients at risk.

It's not my favourite comic, but as a new person looking at it for the first time, I didn't mind it. The stories were a bit silly, but I liked the art. It reminded me of the kinds of comics I would have seen in the 60s and early 70s when I was a kid. The humour is a bit dated today, but would have brought a smile at the time. I remember having a Jerry Lewis comic when I was about 10-12 years old. It was pretty silly, but I thought it was hilarious at the time. Maybe I would have liked Nellie if I'd seen her back then. I also liked the way it incorporated a few different kinds of comics - the one-panel gags, the longer stories, and the three-page story that was all done in pictures (though that one did get a little confusing).

Thanks for the background info some of you chipped in about Katzman. That was interesting in itself. Thanks for your contributions. I enjoyed the discussions and variety of opinions.

Cheers

QQ

[SuperScrounge]

I had never come across Nellie before. I don't think the one-panel cartoons were in any Australian magazines or newspapers.

Robb mentioned she appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. A weekly American magazine that produced a number of recurring comics that went on to bigger and better things, such as Carl Anderson's Henry, Marge's Little Lulu, Ted Key's Hazel, and probably others.