Giggle Comics 37(1) Front CoverI always loved front covers having solid, jet-black backgrounds, because that makes those books stand out compared to everything else around them. I also like the staging that the artist, Dan Gordon, used. and the idea of a cat dressed up as a Human baby, standing upright like a Human, and acting as an air traffic controller stopping normal air vehicles to let Santa Claus fly by in his flying reindeer-drawn sleigh.
(2) Inside Front Cover - Ha Ha Comics Ad/Indicia PageArtist Dan Gordon did a good job of drawing Ken Hultgren's and Bob Wickersham's characters. Maybe it was a bit over-the-top in touting the funniness of the stories in Ha Ha 37 (implying that it was rolling on the floor, pants-wetting humour) when it was good for a few chuckles, but worth reading if you like good quality artwork.
(3) Superkatt - Written and drawn by ex Van Beuren, Paul Terry, MGM, and Fleischer Studios animator, Dan GordonThis cute and funny Christmas story starts off with a very colourful, Christmasy/Wintery splash panel, featuring the gender ambiguous Superkatt, and her/his sidekick best friend, Humphrey Hound, being accosted by a stereotype ignorant and boorish Brooklynite mean bully, throwing snowballs at them. Superkatt vows to instil the misdirected heathen with "The Christmas Spirit". As Superkatt acts like a boy, I'll refer to him as "he". He plans to get the bully a Christmas gift, which will change his outlook on life (mean disposition). First, he asks the young son of his "owners" (pet cat of their household) for one of the latter's gifts, and gets batted through his house's wall. "Supe" then decides to dress up as Santa Claus and give a gift to the poor kid. Seeing a grumpy thief, dressed like Santa, he remembers there is a Santa costume in his family's cellar, and they go there to get it. Meanwhile, the thief climbs up on a ladder and goes down their chimney to rob the owners. He finds their live-in housekeeper, Petunia, and the little son.
Meanwhile, Supe and Humphrey wait outside the house for "The Real Santa" to arrive and leave presents, and they'll take one to give the poor kid. Seeing the thief leave, they come down the chimney, scaring Petunia, who telephones the police. Nice twist with the real Santa arriving and the police taking him off to jail. And if that weren't enough unexpected events.....Superkatt and Humphrey follow the thief and, instead of the typical heroism of them beating up the crook, and retrieving their family's stolen gifts, or thinking of a clever way to physically overcome and capture the criminal, they "shame" him into turning himself in to the police (like a Will Eisner, "Spirit" Christmas story). And if that weren't enough clever plot twists, I was blown away by the freedom postwar writers, artists and editors had to poke fun at societal moral norms, seeing the ill-bred kid having received, from The Jolly Old Christmas Elf, himself, a violent/nasty novelty practical joke box (a boxing glove-in-the-box) that slugs its unwitting opener in the jaw. And after The Bad Kid tricked him with it, came the funniest, unexpected gag of all, Superkatt day-dreaming of pulling a cannon up to The North Pole, to blow Santa to The Moon, for giving such a present to a violent kid. This is one of my all-time favourite non-Disney Christmas comic book stories.
(4) The Snake and The Stocking - Text StoryA centipede's hundred tiny stockings hanging on a fireplace mantle, couldn't get any gifts large enough to impact a snake'[s Christmas, (unless each one were filled with a tiny diamond, which, when fused together could form a large, valuable diamond he or she could sell to buy some profit-making
STOCKS!)
(5) The Duke and The Dope - Written and drawn by Ken Hultgren, ex Disney animator and future WB animatorThis story, about "The Duke" a highly educated, but lazy, sly tramp Fox, who travels from town to village, living off of begging, his wits, conning and fleecing people, and when he has to, day work, with his imbecilic sidekick Rabbit, "The Dope", who is about as stupid as they come, but very truthful, and very lucky. It is my favourite ACG Funny Animal series. This particular story is not all that funny. But, like the artwork of the great Carl Barks, Hultgren's drawing quality was always so great that no matter how weak the storyline was, his stories were always a pleasure to view. It is typical of all the 90 stories of the series in that The Duke sees a chance to make easy money (in this case, by finding a lost box of new can openers they can sell), but, as usual, The Dope screws things up by throwing the money away by not understanding something, or, in this case, by landing The Duke in jail (in this case, for selling items without a local selling license). The irony of the story was that The Dope had to be coached, over and over, to be a shill for Duke's sales, and so has to pretend to not know The Duke. So, when the police catch Duke selling without a license, The Dope finally plays his part correctly and denies any connection to The Duke, and ironically visits Duke at his jail cell. The joke is that The Dope, not playing his part correctly, bragging about finally saying his rehearsed his correctly, in front of the police, alerted the police to ask The Duke for his license. It's too obvious a plot, and not funny enough to carry a whole story. The best stories of this series have interesting plots and funny scenes.
As to Scrounge's question about why The Duke puts up with The Dope's incessant imbecility, which often gets him into trouble, and it would be easy to ditch him in a town or the countryside, and be forever rid of him. But in other stories of the series, we find the answer to that question, which is multi-faceted. Probably the best reason is because "The Dope" is bound to The Duke as his permanent companion, by a curse placed on he Duke's family since The Middle Ages, when Duke's Fox ancestor wronged Dope's imbecilic Rabbit ancestor. No matter how hard The Duke has tried to ditch him, Dope's miraculous luck, caused by the curse, brings him back to The Duke, like a "bad penny". Secondly, after their travelling together for many years, and Dope being loyal to Duke, meaning the best for him, despite getting him into trouble and unwittingly ruining his money-making schemes, The Duke feels sorry for him, knowing that the idiot couldn't possibly get along on his own. He can't bear the thought of the helpless half-wit being taken advantage by cruel, greedy people. Thirdly, their going through hard times together has created the sort of bond children have growing up together, or soldiers get by surviving hellish life danger situations together, or combative sports team members get after several years of fighting hard to win championships for their teammates so they can share in the triumph of finally getting the "payoff" for all their hard struggle and work together. It's hard for most people to "throw away" a "family member", or someone who struggled together with you, if "their heart is in the right place", but their mind's workings or the way they act is affected by disease or birth problems, or an accident. There is a natural instinct to help the weak and helpless of your family, tribe, team, or even just your species, when you've battled together for survival. The proof that that is true in this case, is that Duke DID actually have the perfect chance to dump Dope in one story, and it was clear that Dope's luck (the curse) was NOT going to dump him right back in his lap. And yet, given that opportunity, knowing he was free of the imbecile's chain around his neck, The Duke actually went back to find Dope, and they travelled onward together at the end of the story, with Duke starting to get irritated by The Dope's inane prattle in the last panel.
(6) Spencer Spook - Drawn by Ken Champin, former WB animatorThis is my second favourite ACG Funny Animal series originated by Champin; but I like Disney animation and Disney Comics' Jack Bradbury's version better. Spencer is a Ghost who lives in old houses occupied by living people, and earns his "rent" by haunting them. He is assigned to these abodes by The Chief of his Workers' (Haunting Ghosts) Union. IF the living residents complain about him (usually that he is not "entertaining enough", or too noisy, and they can never sleep) he loses his place to haunt, and generally given a less desirable place. This is a really silly story, with a plot that makes no sense. Spencer is haunted by two Ghosts who are "Ghost Haunters". And Spencer wants to get rid of them from their bothering him. So he reads a book about "Killing Ghosts. He gets rid of them, when he finds out their Ghost grave headstones are opposite for the pair. He pulls their headstones out of the ground and switches them, and the Ghost Ghosts stay in their Ghost graves, and don't bother him anymore. But, Spencer is unsatisfied, as he misses them!
This plot is not a good, or funny concept for a comedy story, because it makes no sense. Apparently, when people die, they become Ghosts. Then, in that second existence, if they are disliked too much by other Ghosts, and so, are killed, they go to a Ghost graveyard, and in a third existence, as a Ghost Ghost, Haunt second existence Ghosts (during day or night).
(7) Binky (Dog) - Drawn by Ken HultgrenThis story, apparently a flashback to when Binky was a puppy, and his Human family moved to a rural area containing small farms, and he didn't know what a pig was. Two older dogs want to have fun at his expense, telling him that a pig is another dog (like them). They return to find out that Binky is enjoying behaving like a pig, wallowing in the pig sty's mud. Neither interesting nor funny, nor unexpected.
(8} Potsy (Parrot) - Written and Drawn by Don R. Christensen, ex Disney and WB animatorThis is a play on the ancient Germanic folk tale of Hansel and Gretel, from the days of great famines, when parents had to choose which of their children would live or die, as there was not enough food for their family to survive, so the father would have the horrible job of taking the excess children to the woods, sneaking away from them, and leaving them there to starve to death, die of exposure to the cold of fall or winter night, or to be eaten by wolves. This story copies the children's leaving a trail of breadcrumbs, which Potsy does to find his way back home, after his owner gets fed up with the terrible screeching of the parrot's singing. But, when a fellow bird eats the portion of Potsy's "trail" nearest him, Potsy panics and asks every animal in the woods to help him find the remains of the trail. To get them to help him look for it, he brags about all the delicious food where he lived, so , just after her arrives back home, the final panel shows 50+ animals looking through the windows into his house to the shock of his owners.
As to Scrounge's question, no, there is no rule about Herbert not hurting Potsy. And he often gets very angry at the wacky, often reckless, scheming parrot. But isn't it against the laws of animal rights (for non-food animals) to act cruel towards them? I know that Canada has both Federal and Provincial animal rights laws that make cruel treatment by Humans towards them criminal actions. I assume that USA has similar Federal and State laws.
(9) Uncle Ringo (Raccoon) -2-Page Gag - Drawn by Gil Turner, ex Disney animator, future Disney Comics artistNot a very funny gag - too obvious, too often used cliché of the cantankerous old maid schoolteacher. I do like the view from under Ringo's garage grease pit. Apparently, he operates an auto mechanics service out of his residential garage. I think this is the only story in which it was shown. The series was generally titled: "Ringo Raccoon", and his nephews only seldomly appeared in the stories.
(10) Lionel (Lion) - Written and Drawn by Ken HultgrenWhat a way to cheat on writing a story- thinking of a simple gag that works (to a certain extent, can be illustrated with several emotional takes (including athletic movements), and those elements can stretch the simple gag into 4 pages of artwork that can be accepted by the editor and paid for m(both for 4 times the pages of the gag's plot's worth. This was the sneaky way for the poorly paid comics writers to up their pay per hour of work a bit avoiding the time consuming work of thinking up a more complicated plot, and thinking involved in strategically laying out the panels and best dialogue. This one wrote itself, and its layout and dialogue flow out automatically, with no added thinking needed. Of course wasting the great plot of a professor-type who can send messages by mental telepathy on a mere 4-page "story", when it could have been used in a 10 or 12-pager, in this series, or maybe a 20-30 pager in a Sci-Fi themed epic story in a giant annual is an unwise move.
(11) Northern Nonsense - Drawn by Allan Benedict (A.G.B.)A bit stereotyped are The Eskimos (Inuits) having lemon yellow skin. Are they meant to be suffering from jaundice??? The Inuits did NOT carve wood Totem Poles? Where would they find the wood. The Pacific Coastal First Nations people of Panhandle Alaska and British Columbia, and Washington State and Oregon were far, far, away from where The Inuits lived. This is an error similar in severity to placing penguins in The Arctic, or polar bears in The Antarctic. And yet, many comic book artists and writers made these mistakes. And, of course, no moose live in the polar ice cap areas (only caribou as deerlike animals go). I do like this story's unexpected ending, of the bragging father daring(risking) his igloo to crumble by swearing that his completely made-up "fish Story" is true, and the ending gag of his wife's complaining that they've lost their home that way many times over.
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Topic: Reading Group #364 - Hey its the season (Read 274 times)
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