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[Robb_K]

It's time for another book reading and review.  And, as some of you might have suspected, it's another book with mainly Funny Animals.  It's from MLJ's early 1940s (1943) attempt to jump on the "Funny Animal Bandwagon" of recent success that Western Publishing was enjoying from publishing comic books with new stories made especially for comic books using characters from animated cartoons, connected with the largest, most successful animation studios (Walt Disney's Comics & Stories" with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck), (Leon Schlesingers' "Looney Tunes" with Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig), Walter Lantz's New Funnies with Woody Woodpecker, Andy Panda, and Oswald Rabbit), and (MGM's "Our Gang Comics" with Tom & Jerry and Barney Bear).  MLJ had morphed its "Jackpot Comics" series from mainly action and Human-character comedy to all children's comedy, heavy on the funny animal titles.  And they even titled it "Jolly Jingles", to take advantage of the animation studios' cartoon series names, using a combination of a word for "funny" and one for "musical", mimicking Disney's "Silly Symphonies" and Warner Brothers' "Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies".

I hope you all enjoy it to some degree.  It provides insight into the marketing strategy of US comic book publishers during World War II, and even has a Superhero story.

Here's the link:

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=72717

[SuperScrounge]

Super Duck - Okay.

It Shouldn't Happen To A Dog - Okay. Interesting to see Joe Edwards not drawing in his Li'l Jinx style.

The Boogy Boys And Company - It's a shame the writer lost interest in the Boogy Boys and had to save the day with a discount Mickey Mouse. Reading this I was reminded of a Youtuber's comment that if a character's name is on a story they should have one awesome scene in the story. The Boogy Boys was cheated of an awesome scene.

Superduck text story - Why couldn't the editor's get the spelling of Super Duck's name consistent? It seems like most of the text story writers almost always spelled it as one word, while the comics spelled it as two (mostly). Okay story.

Maw Paw And Willie - Sub-par. It feels like the writer had a bunch of gags and just strung them together to fill pages.

Pinky - Narf poit! What do you wa... oh, wrong Pinky. Ehhhh... okay? I didn't care for Pinky, but the weird concept and jokes at least worked with the story and art unlike the previous story.

Baba The Black Sheep - The art's okay, but not much of a story.

Snowball - Mushmouf drawing style and dialect humor, yeahhhhh... ignoring that the story was skimpy, but okay.

Woody The Woodpecker - How did that name avoid a complaint from Walter Lantz? Okay, but nothing special.

Boo Boo And Butch - Eh, okay.

[lyons]

'Funny Animal' characters are rarely funny or entertaining.  There are some anomalies - Walt Kelly, Warner Brothers, and Disney anthropomorphic creations - but most 'funny animal' stories from this era were written for a very young audience of comic book readers.  An enlightening and interesting choice.  Thanks Robb.             

[Electricmastro]

Super Duck - Okay.

I thought it stood out more for how much energy was packed into it, the swooshing in particular:

[Robb_K]

1) Super Duck - Okay.

It Shouldn't Happen To A Dog - Okay. Interesting to see Joe Edwards not drawing in his Li'l Jinx style.

2) The Boogy Boys And Company - It's a shame the writer lost interest in the Boogy Boys and had to save the day with a discount Mickey Mouse. Reading this I was reminded of a Youtuber's comment that if a character's name is on a story they should have one awesome scene in the story. The Boogy Boys was cheated of an awesome scene.

3) Superduck text story - Why couldn't the editor's get the spelling of Super Duck's name consistent? It seems like most of the text story writers almost always spelled it as one word, while the comics spelled it as two (mostly). Okay story.

4) Maw Paw And Willie - Sub-par. It feels like the writer had a bunch of gags and just strung them together to fill pages. 

Pinky - Narf poit! What do you wa... oh, wrong Pinky. Ehhhh... okay? I didn't care for Pinky, but the weird concept and jokes at least worked with the story and art unlike the previous story.

5) Baba The Black Sheep - The art's okay, but not much of a story. 

6) Snowball - Mushmouf drawing style and dialect humor, yeahhhhh... ignoring that the story was skimpy, but okay.

7) Woody The Woodpecker - How did that name avoid a complaint from Walter Lantz? Okay, but nothing special.

Boo Boo And Butch - Eh, okay. 

1) I think "Super Duck" was drawn well, but the story was pretty weak.  It's interesting that Super Duck is the "Security Guard" for the henhouse on a farm - probably because he gets super powers from his vitamins.  But, there's nothing unexpected.  The author tells us upfront, about Super Duck's powers, and how he gets them.  The villain comes to steal a chicken, finds Super Duck, wants duck instead, rather than chicken, chases Super Duck, who swallows pills, and defeats him.  Not much of a story - especially for introducing an interesting concept (an animal with super powers - who works for a Human farmer). 

What is interesting about this character is that only 2 issues after Super Duck got his own book in 1944 (after only 9 comic book issues (including the 7 Jolly Jingles), the superhero angles was dropped, Super Duck lost his super powers, and became an ordinary, suburban single parent to, first his little brother, Fauntleroy, who was quickly changed into his nephew.  He kept his superhero name, but now became just a volatile bi-polar poor man's Donald Duck, displaying mainly the latter's penchant for getting into trouble, angry hothead and mischievous sides, without Carl Barks' heroic and sympathetic and empathetic humane characteristics.  Fagaly also gave Super Duck a feisty neighbour as a rival foil, who could be constantly tortured by Super Ducks tricks, and they could be constantly at war with each other.  That combative relationship  was also pervasive between Super Duck and Fauntleroy, with the pair constantly playing tricks on each other.  Super Duck was also given a greedy, fickle, unpredictable girlfriend (Uwanna) by Fagaly, who was beautiful, but a major "pain-in-the-ass" to him.  They had a similar co-dependent relationship to that which Carl Barks had given to Donald and Daisy Duck.  Fagaly also gave Uwanna a gigantic, mischievous young nephew, to act as another thorn in Super Duck's side.  I was amazed that Archie's only major funny animal series,  "Super Duck", was so successful, lasting from 1944 all the way through 1960.


2) "If a character's name is on a story's title, he(or she) should have an awesome scene in the story."  - Absolutely!  A rule by ALL editors, that should NOT be broken! 


3) "Why couldn't the editor's get the spelling of Super Duck's name consistent?[/b] It seems like most of the text story writers al most always spelled it as one word, while the comics spelled it as two." The official spelling was always two words.  I guess that the text stories were often written by "crankout" writers not normally used for the drawn stories, and paid very little.  So, they often had little connection to the publishers.  Also, the text stories were ONLY thrown in the books to make the series considered "literature", and thereby, worthy of being eligible for the much cheaper 2nd Class postage rate, which allowed the publisher to make a much better profit on each book.  Neither the readers, nor the "writers", nor the editors paid much attention to the content.  It was a "throwaway" but necessary part of the book. 


4) "It feels like the writer had a bunch of gags and just strung them together to fill pages."   That's EXACTLY what the "writer" of this string of sight gags did.  He doesn't even attempt to effect a pretense of a plot.  That style of work was also quite common in Fox's funny animal stories, which were drawn by beginners and artists with flaky reputations as unreliable, and "written" by post high school comic book writer wannabees.


5) Yes, "Baba The Sheep" 's art is good.  It was drawn by Howie Post.


6) Snowball - Mushmouf drawing style and dialect humor, yeahhhhh... ignoring that the story was skimpy, but okay.
It's incredible that this type of racist, derogatory humour was so popular even back in those days.  It is also very interesting to me that a lot of people in USA, even as recent as the beginning of the 1940s, belived that Black people were sub-human, and thought of them more like "the high end of animals" rather than "Human".  As it relates to comic books from that time, a young boy of "African ancestry" was often the headliner of the only "human-character" feature in an otherwise all funny animal book. 

It is also interesting that The USA is still almost as racist today as it was back then.  But, this kind of art should not be outlawed, because it gives us a peek into the pervasive way of thought in previous times. 


7)  "How did that name avoid a complaint from Walter Lantz?" 
Walter Lantz's "Woody Woodpecker" debuted in a November 1940 cartoon short, and in mid 1942 in Western Publishing's "The Funnies" issue # 64, comic book.  MLJ's "Woody THE Woodpecker" (with a very different design) first appeared in "Zip Comics" #36, around the same time.  It was the only short, filler series in "Zip Comics", and only ran 2 issues before moving to the new, funny animal book, "Jolly Jingles", made it difficult to "discover".  Most of the attention to what MLJ was doing, paid by competing publishers would have gone towards MLJ's main success, which were its books which included their teen comedy series such as "Archie" and "Wilbur", rather than their paltry number of short, filler, funny animal series in"Jackpot", "Zip", "Top Notch", and "Pep Comics".  In addition, "Jolly Jingles" only lasted 7 issues, and with it, "Woody THE Woodpecker" ended. (Perhaps because Lantz finally found out about it and threatened a lawsuit?).  That theory seems very plausible, given that most of the other, regular funny animal and comedy features that had made up "Jolly Jingles" were scattered as fillers to different surviving MLJ magazines, such as "TopNotch/LaughComics", "Archie", "Super Duck", "Pep", and "Wilbur" ("Cubby", "It Shouldn't Happen To A Dog", "Willy The Wise Guy", "Li'lChiefBugaboo", "The Bumbie Bee-Tective", "Squoimy Woim" ALL continued, being scattered to those other surviving books. 


8] No comments that Boo Boo Dog is a Physical clone of a later model of Disney's Goofy - even to his clothing and their colours? And he's also somewhat of a dimwit like his Disney "cousin".

[Robb_K]

'Funny Animal' characters are rarely funny or entertaining.  There are some anomalies - Walt Kelly, Warner Brothers, and Disney anthropomorphic creations - but most 'funny animal' stories from this era were written for a very young audience of comic book readers.  An enlightening and interesting choice.  Thanks Robb.             

Very true!  And to make things worse, these stories were produced near the very beginning of the period when the large backlog of newspaper strip stories were drying up, because they had started being printed in comic books in the mid 1930s, and so, the production of new stories exclusively for printing in comic books was new, and the publishers didn't make enough profit on each book to pay experienced story writers.  So they hired inexperienced teenaged and early 20s comic book fans to do the job, and it took most of them until the mid-to-late 1940s to get proficient at it.

We know from Carl Barks', Bob Karp's, Walt Kelly's, John Stanley's, Merrill De Maris' (and all of Disney Feature Film writers who also wrote for Gottfredson's Mickey Mouse, and many other writers, that young children's comic book stories can be written well (and on 2 levels, which can also be enjoyed by adults).

[Robb_K]

Super Duck - Okay.

I thought it stood out more for how much energy was packed into it, the swooshing in particular:

Yes, the animation-style artwork provides the feeling the action is really taking place.  It looks like it really is happening in front of our eyes.  The artist (main "Super Duck" artist from 1943-1955), Al Fagaly, was one of the few early 1940s funny animal comic book artists whose artwork was great at depicting action, and yet, didn't have a background as a film studio animator.  He was a newspaper single panel cartoonist, and comic strip artist, who, along with Red Holmdale, became MLJ/Archie's in-house main funny animal and comedy series artists.  But, the artwork of this story was credited to both Fagaly and Dave Higgins.  Higgins signed this book's cover.  His detailed style on the cover is more similar to the finished art in the story than Fagaly's usual style.  But Fagaly being credited for the story writing, and his solo work on scores of stories having a similar animated style, leads me to the conclusion that Fagaly drew the storyboards for this story (as was often the case for animation-driven funny animal stories back then), and that Higgins followed Fagaly's lines fairly closely in drawing the final pencils.  Furthermore, I couldn't find anything on a Dave, or David Higgins as an animator for any of the studios.

[crashryan]

By chiming in on Jolly Jingles #10 I should be caught up with the reading group. Hooray.

Despite all the stuff in this book, I must start with an unimportant feature that is driving me crazy. On "Fun for All" (our pages 11 and 58) Pinky is faced with two mazes. These mazes have no solution! Pinky not only won't find his father's hat, he'll remain lost and never find his way home. Which is okay with me since he's one of the lesser characters in this mag. But these pages may have ruined the childhoods of countless youngsters who trusted that a comic book maze would have a solution. Send the therapy bills to Jolly Jingles.

Super Duck: I agree that the artwork is lively and does a good job approximating the frantic action of a movie cartoon. The story is just a string of gags, of which more later. SD himself wavers between looking almost like Donald Duck and looking exactly like Donald Duck.

It Shouldn't Happen to a Dog: Amateurish artwork and gags that don't hook up. For instance we should at least have seen a hint on the last page that the garbage can was inside a van, not on a street corner like the first one. Judicious staging could have pulled that off. This non-story is one of the weakest in the book: dog avoids dog-catcher and dog-catcher outsmarts him. I'm also not crazy about the gimmick of addressing the reader, which is used in several stories.

The Boogie Boys apparently owe their name to a love of music, although a Conga line isn't boogie-woogie. Music is hard to pull off in a comic book! The big problem here is that the ghosts don't have individual personalities and the story's problem is solved by a nameless mouse dragged in at the last moment. What's the point of the "initiation" scene at the end? If the ghosts are boogie-woogie boys I'd expect them to do some kind of music-oriented ritual. Overall, this is a mess with just-adequate art.

Maw, Paw, and Willie makes no sense whatever. The art and even the lettering are amateurish. Ecch.

Pinky: Joe Edwards strikes again. The bare bones of a fantastical art style are here but the finishes need much more polish. I don't understand the opening with Pinky's camera. Does the camera throw him into Fantasy Land permanently? Is it just a gimmick to justify the story's photography theme? The lesson is awkward, unintentionally I presume: The way to help the angry black people is to turn them into white people. H'mm.

All for Fun: At least Taffy the cat will find her way home. I swear I've seen that how-to-draw dog somewhere before.

Baba the Black Sheep (fun name): another adequate art job with an incoherent story. If the bear (who looks like a dog) is hibernating when Baba woke him, shouldn't it be winter? If he isn't hibernating, why is he sleeping during the day? Here we have one of the comic's several references to wartime rationing.

Snowball: Oh, dear. Ignoring the obvious, as simple as the gags are the writer strains to achieve them. Example: the snake in the tree (in the tree? Is this the jungle?) dropping eggs on the bear. Why a snake and not a bird? Snake-us ex machina.

Woody the Wood Pecker (or so it seems to be spelt): Arrgh! Another story that lurches all over the place. The strangest part of this mess is when our heroes are captured by a native tribe...which usually means Africans...but they speak like comic-book Japanese without the "r" stereotype. Or are we supposed to think they're Chinese, to hook up with "If I digs any faster I'll go clean to China" on page 49? At least that'd explain the gong. But a desert island at the mouth of a Southern river? And why did the detector point to the department-store tokens since they weren't made of gold? Or were they gold? Oh, I give up.

Boo Boo and Butch: I'm about fed up with these slapdash stories. Couldn't the writer or artist at least have foreshadowed the golfer and his caddy so they don't just pop up, then vanish? And come on! Boo Boo and Butch aren't "walking on a crocodile." They're obviously walking on logs. The one crocodile is revealed when Butch slips and almost falls into its mouth. Afterward they walk on that crocodile.

Fun for All: There goes Pinky, still looking for his father's hat...

Back cover: The photo of athlete's foot is gross. It looks like something from a horror comic. Which is appropriate because the medicine is sold by Gore Products on Perdido (lost) street.

By the time I finished this comic I was feeling like an incurable grouch. I don't hate funny-animal comics, honest I don't. I just want to see structured stories with plots and climaxes and stuff.

Robb has offered some good ideas about why the writers and artists of these comics did what they did. I think one additional factor is that creators took the movie cartoon short as their model. Golden Age cartoons were almost always a breathless succession of pratfalls and gags. This worked because the characters were always in motion, with music and sound effects to intensify the comic effect. Very likely publishers and/or editors told their writers and artists to recreate movie cartoons on the comic page. The problem is that comics don't move. Even if one drew all-out animation storyboards, indicating every position of every character with separate drawings, you'd be making static drawings. Plus there wouldn't be enough pages in a comic book to give each story this treatment.

In my opinion that's what led the more memorable artist/writers like Barks and Kelly to elevate the role of plot and dialogue in their stories, and to emphasize posing and characterization in their art. They knew they'd never capture the manic frenzy of a Warner Brothers cartoon, so they looked for something else to stick in a reader's memory. In the long run it's the stories we remember rather than individual gags.

Or that's my impression anyway. Even my opinions aren't set in stone. I'd love to see a comic book musical.

[Robb_K]

By chiming in on Jolly Jingles #10 I should be caught up with the reading group. Hooray.

1) Despite all the stuff in this book, I must start with an unimportant feature that is driving me crazy. On "Fun for All" (our pages 11 and 58) Pinky is faced with two mazes. These mazes have no solution! Pinky not only won't find his father's hat, he'll remain lost and never find his way home. Which is okay with me since he's one of the lesser characters in this mag. But these pages may have ruined the childhoods of countless youngsters who trusted that a comic book maze would have a solution. Send the therapy bills to Jolly Jingles.[/i]

2) Super Duck: I agree that the artwork is lively and does a good job approximating the frantic action of a movie cartoon. The story is just a string of gags, of which more later. SD himself wavers between looking almost like Donald Duck and looking exactly like Donald Duck.

3) It Shouldn't Happen to a Dog: Amateurish artwork and gags that don't hook up. For instance we should at least have seen a hint on the last page that the garbage can was inside a van, not on a street corner like the first one. Judicious staging could have pulled that off. This non-story is one of the weakest in the book: dog avoids dog-catcher and dog-catcher outsmarts him. I'm also not crazy about the gimmick of addressing the reader, which is used in several stories.

The Boogie Boys apparently owe their name to a love of music, although a Conga line isn't boogie-woogie. Music is hard to pull off in a comic book! The big problem here is that the ghosts don't have individual personalities and the story's problem is solved by a nameless mouse dragged in at the last moment. What's the point of the "initiation" scene at the end? If the ghosts are boogie-woogie boys I'd expect them to do some kind of music-oriented ritual. Overall, this is a mess with just-adequate art.

Maw, Paw, and Willie makes no sense whatever. The art and even the lettering are amateurish. Ecch.

Pinky: Joe Edwards strikes again. The bare bones of a fantastical art style are here but the finishes need much more polish. I don't understand the opening with Pinky's camera. Does the camera throw him into Fantasy Land permanently? Is it just a gimmick to justify the story's photography theme? The lesson is awkward, unintentionally I presume: The way to help the angry black people is to turn them into white people. H'mm.

All for Fun: At least Taffy the cat will find her way home. I swear I've seen that how-to-draw dog somewhere before.

Baba the Black Sheep (fun name): another adequate art job with an incoherent story. If the bear (who looks like a dog) is hibernating when Baba woke him, shouldn't it be winter? If he isn't hibernating, why is he sleeping during the day? Here we have one of the comic's several references to wartime rationing.

4) Snowball: Oh, dear. Ignoring the obvious, as simple as the gags are the writer strains to achieve them. Example: the snake in the tree (in the tree? Is this the jungle?) dropping eggs on the bear. Why a snake and not a bird? Snake-us ex machina.

5) Woody the Wood Pecker (or so it seems to be spelt): Arrgh! Another story that lurches all over the place. The strangest part of this mess is when our heroes are captured by a native tribe...which usually means Africans...but they speak like comic-book Japanese without the "r" stereotype. Or are we supposed to think they're Chinese, to hook up with "If I digs any faster I'll go clean to China" on page 49? At least that'd explain the gong. But a desert island at the mouth of a Southern river? And why did the detector point to the department-store tokens since they weren't made of gold? Or were they gold? Oh, I give up.

Boo Boo and Butch: I'm about fed up with these slapdash stories. Couldn't the writer or artist at least have foreshadowed the golfer and his caddy so they don't just pop up, then vanish? And come on! Boo Boo and Butch aren't "walking on a crocodile." They're obviously walking on logs. The one crocodile is revealed when Butch slips and almost falls into its mouth. Afterward they walk on that crocodile.

Fun for All: There goes Pinky, still looking for his father's hat...

Back cover: The photo of athlete's foot is gross. It looks like something from a horror comic. Which is appropriate because the medicine is sold by Gore Products on Perdido (lost) street.

By the time I finished this comic I was feeling like an incurable grouch. I don't hate funny-animal comics, honest I don't. I just want to see structured stories with plots and climaxes and stuff.

Robb has offered some good ideas about why the writers and artists of these comics did what they did. I think one additional factor is that creators took the movie cartoon short as their model. Golden Age cartoons were almost always a breathless succession of pratfalls and gags. This worked because the characters were always in motion, with music and sound effects to intensify the comic effect. Very likely publishers and/or editors told their writers and artists to recreate movie cartoons on the comic page. The problem is that comics don't move. Even if one drew all-out animation storyboards, indicating every position of every character with separate drawings, you'd be making static drawings. Plus there wouldn't be enough pages in a comic book to give each story this treatment.

In my opinion that's what led the more memorable artist/writers like Barks and Kelly to elevate the role of plot and dialogue in their stories, and to emphasize posing and characterization in their art. They knew they'd never capture the manic frenzy of a Warner Brothers cartoon, so they looked for something else to stick in a reader's memory. In the long run it's the stories we remember rather than individual gags.

Or that's my impression anyway. Even my opinions aren't set in stone. I'd love to see a comic book musical.

1) Fun For All
Puzzles without a solution, tonnes of letters to the editor, and eventual threats of lawsuits may have been why MLJ wisely dropped their "Jolly Jingles" title after only 7 issues.     Then they started a new series, "Super Duck", and took his super powers away after only 2 issues of the new book, and yet he kept his now inappropriate name!     He became the suburban/domestic life version of Carl Barks' Donald Duck (Walt Disney's Comics & Stories 10-page version).  Unfortunately, he only had Donald's angry, explosive bi-polar, lazy, petty, jealous, vengeful, mischievous and practical joker/trickster qualities, and none of his admirable ones (courageous, heroic, loyal, dedicated, thoughtful, empathetic, and sympathetic). 

2) Super Duck
It was Super Duck's first appearance in a comic book, and anywhere else.  The story being just a string of gags with no introduction to the character (other than mentioning that he gets super-strong when he takes Vitamins A to Z), no setting - why is he guarding some unknown henhouse?  - and a very weak story plot.

3) It Shouldn't Happen To A Dog
Despite never being worth more than an extended and later stretched out few panel strip (mainly 3 pages or less) - this feature bounced through MLJ/Archie Series different titles as a filler story for way too many years.

4) Snowball
This clone of Walter Lantz's "Li'l Eight Ball" despite being as insulting in the racist stereotype areas, was miles behind in quality of artwork and story quality.

5) Woody the Wood Pecker 
I agree that the "desert island" seems only less than a half mile from the river's delta's meeting the ocean, so it's absurd that there is a backward "native" tribe there, which doesn't belong to Woody's and Sleepy's country.  And it's also absurd that it has a tropical climate that close to an area of temperate climate. But, in the early 1940s, very few funny animal comic story writers and artists were able to make their stories have the panel illustrations match their story's intent to be consistent with some form of realism.

[Morgus]

Super Duck REALLY reminded me of Howard the Duck...I enjoyed the art and was interested to find out about the artists in everybody's comments. (Walt Kelly has been pretty much my knowledge of funny animal genre.) Two comics ago, when we discussed another funny animal, somebody was praising the comic for actually having a plot and I keeled over laughing at that revealing compliment. Yeah, I was wondering how the Lantz team somehow missed this shot across the bow...pretty flagrant in my books..and there were lots of characters that Disney probably could have shaken these guys down for...it must have been WEIRD in court, fighting over stuff like this..."Your honour, please refer to exhibit c, and this panel from our clients' artwork...we maintain nine similarities...a clear infringement." And they probably went on for hours.

[narfstar]

I have not really found much interesting in the later more interesting Super Duck issues. His short time as a superhero were even less interesting. For some reason, not sure why, I just liked the Boogey Boys. For some reason it entertained me.

[Robb_K]

It's time I gave my assessment of the book and its stories (other than what comments I've made related to other posters' posts).  I'll have to do it in pieces, story by story.

Cover:
Drawn by Dave Higgins, the artist who drew the "Super Duck" story, inside, the book's feature story.  It is interesting enough, to announce the debut of a new character and new magazine, and a new genre of magazine for MLJ Comics.

1) Super Duck
This is one of the earliest anthropomorphic animal superheroes.  But, the character and series introduction story's writer was unimaginative in his explanation for the existence of his superhero's powers.  Worse than that, as long-term Super Duck fans later discovered, after reading the first 8 or 9 Super Duck stories, he doesn't have a high moralistic purpose to use those powers, but rather, gobbles down his vitamins in a frenzy after some low-brow agitator offends him.  Actually, his powers come to their best, and highest moral purpose in THIS first story, helping to save all the hens in Farmer Brown's henhouse from being eaten by the villainous wolf.  Most of the other 8 stories in which he still had the super powers were used for him to get petty personal revenge on a bully.  As I stated above, the animation-style artwork is very good, but the story plot is weak, and not fleshed out.  The ending is too predictable.  There should be some character development and more detailed setting in a series and character debut story. 

2) It Shouldn't Happen To A Dog
Not a very interesting plot.  A dogcatcher finally gets wise to a dog's trick, and the dog feels like he's been singled out by fate for "bad luck", and cheated because a dog shouldn't be treated that way?  No really interesting action, or clever behaviour.  It's amazing that this usually dull, 3-page filler strip lasted so long, making 37 appearances through "Black Hood". "Jackpot", "Jolly Jingles", and "Super Duck Comics", for 9 years, from 1942 through 1950.  The artwork is average, at best, and so, doesn't save this feature.

3) The Boogy Boys & Co.
This is a ridiculous story.  Ghosts live all the time in the same dimension as the living, and need money to "survive" in the living social system of the living sentient beings.  Furthermore, they NEED to EAT to keep up their energy!!!  A marauding runaway elephant runs amuck through a pig farmer's farm.  He runs to his neighbours, a gang of ghosts, to scare the elephant away, offering them lots of money!  Being empathetic, good neighbours, they accept his deal.  The elephant is winning the battle with the ghosts, and the farmer is worried, but the beast's trainer magically appears with a giant bag of peanuts, to save the day.  But the hungry ghosts eat up all the peanuts.  So, the farmer then goes to his other neighbour, a mouse-person, remembering the elephants are always scared of mice.  The elephant (a real unclothed, non-talking animal) is scared of the anthropomorphic dressed, talking, mouse-person, becomes docile, leaving with its trainer.  The farmer offers a reward of a lot of Limburger cheese to the mouse, who offers to share it with the ghosts.  The Boogy Boys (ghost gang) congratulate the mouse, and give him a trial to join their "club".  He passes, and everyone is happy.  A totally disjointed, illogical, non-connected bunch of events that resembles a surrealistic nightmare of a madman that might occur during a high fever during a bout with a deadly disease, or being in a coma, or suffering from shell shock, or being high on LSD.

4) Super Duck The One-Duck Army (text story)
I am amazed!  The 2-page text story (only thrown into the comic book so it could qualify for the much cheaper, 2nd Class postage rate, has, by far, the best story plot of any of the comic book's stories.  If this one had been drawn up into 6 to 8 pages, it would have been, by far, the best and most entertaining story in this book.  The plot of Super Duck trying to militarise the farmyard animals into setting up an early warning defence system to defend against flying predatory enemies, laughed at by the other animals, but carried out in spite of their refusal to help, gives the reader insight into the protagonist's character, and makes him likable.  With no help from his colleagues, he enlists his other friends, the bees, to provide his warning system.  When they see a gaggle of chicken hawks flying towards the farm to grab chickens, ducks, geese, and turkeys, Super Duck flies to his takeoff runway, by the pond, gulps down his super-potent vitamins, fills his big beak with hundreds of pebbles, and takes off into the air like a rocket, using his super speed, and acts like a fighter plane and dive bomber, maneuvering around and through the formation of chicken hawks, spitting the pebbles at super-sonic speed at them, knocking them out of the air, one by one.  His farmyard animal buddies below, gather up and tie up the stunned hawks.  Super Duck is hoisted onto their shoulders as they triumphantly march the villains to a makeshift jailhouse (which presumably had been set up by Super Duck in anticipation of such an event.  The bees flew above in formation. 

A coherent story plot, and a good development of Super Duck's character, giving him a worthy reason for using his super powers, which, unbelievably, never occurred in ANY of the drawn stories in which he used those powers (before that concept was dropped entirely from the series (Super Duck #3).  I would have loved to draw this story, myself.  It sounds very like an early 1940s action-driven Carl Barks story, in which Donald Duck rises to the occasion and becomes a hero, because a hero was needed, and there was no one else around to do that.

If I had been the editor, I'd have hired this text story writer to write my main drawn feature stories, and to teach my other writers what elements are needed at which stages, to make a story work.  I would also have had a little more suspense, by having one of the chicken hawks grab a baby chick and start to fly away, with its mother screaming, before Super Duck could finish with the last other hawk.  And Super Duck flies after him, assuring the mother that he will save her chick, and then the two have a battle in the sky necessarily allowing the non-flying baby chick to fall towards the ground (at a speed that would surely lead to its death upon impact.  But, after defeating the hawk, Super Duck using his super speed, swoops down and under the chick, saving him at the last second.  This all could have been shown in the 8 pages used for the Super Duck lead story.  And it would have made a MUCH better introduction to a new superhero, be defining his character, and giving him a purpose to use his super powers.  I also would have had Super Duck thinking about how fortunate he was to have been used as a guinea pig by the local crazy scientist to test his new super vitamin pills.  That could be a way to give a promo for a future story using that quirky, interesting character, and later add a prequel, origin story for Super Duck's superhero alter ego.  We would probably have had to show that the vitamins only worked that way on Super Duck because he had a mutant gene, unknown to exist in any other person. 

I am simply amazed that the young kids who wrote these stories didn't think of any of these ways to make the stories work.  But, I guess that if I had to write comic book stories at age 20, my stories wouldn't be as good as my stories written at 73.  But, even so, after having read Carl Barks for 15 years, I dare say that even at 20, my stories would have been a LOT better than the drawn stories in this book.

If this story were handed in in a trial application to start as a writer for a comic book publisher, the applicant could NOT have done a better job in ensuring that he'd NOT get the job.  The art is not good, but not the reason this story should have been rejected.  Only the superior art of one of the all-time masters, such as Carl Barks could have lifted this story into a minimum level to be accepted.  This proves that MLJ was so bent on getting in on the "gold mine" of the new trend in funny animal comics that they would accept ANY level of "story writing", at that time. 

5) Maw, Paw, and Willie
As I stated in other posts above, this so-called story is just a chain of early 1900s Vaudeville word jokes, supplemented by slapstick sight gags.  There is no coherent storyline.

6) Pinky
Another feature drawn by Joe Edwards. This one has better drawings than the dog story, and started with a possibly interesting premise.  Pinky is magically shrunken down to a size small enough for him to climb inside his camera.  Inside, he finds himself in a harshly-ruled kingdom in which the despotic king thinks he must use harsh measures to protect against the negatives (half the people in the kingdom who are totally black shadows, and act negatively).  Pinky has the king's staff build him a large machine, and lures them into running through it.  When they come out the other end, they have magically changed from "negatives" to "positives", with no explanation.  Everyone in The Kingdom is now happy, and Pinky is a hero.  It's a silly plot, which is not really enough to carry a story.  I'd have gone another way with the start of Pinky magically shrinking, and going inside the camera's "World".   All in all, not good enough to hold my interest other than with an editor's view on what is wrong with it.

7) Baba Black Sheep
Baba is a lazy, rebellious kid, who does what he wants, rather than what he and other children are supposed to do.  Because of that he gets into trouble, which he thinks is undue punishment he doesn't deserve.  He thinks fate is singling him out for punishment, when if he would do what children are supposed to do, none of that would happen.  He doesn't appreciate that he was going to be barbecued and eaten by a bear-person, and he was saved from that, and then gets home safely, and complains about having to make his own dinner and wash the dishes because he arrived home very late.  He's not a very sympathetic character.  And the story doesn't really entertain much.  It does have a moral, and teaches a lesson.  But most kids don't like being preached to on their own leisure time, and don't find that entertaining.  They get enough of that from their parents and teachers.

Snowball (poor man's "Li'l Eight Ball" clone)
As I stated above, this is dripping with 1890s to 1930s racist stereotype belittling, and with almost no redeeming features.  The artwork is okay, and better than several other stories in this book (but is still 2 or 3 levels below that of Walter Lantz's "Li'l Eight Ball".  And the latter also has a lot more NON racist stereotype humour and some human characteristics with which ANY Human can connect.  So it has redeeming value,; whereas "Snowball has very little of that.  The action is nice and animated in this Snowball story, and the kid is somewhat resourceful.  It makes a watchable cartoon, like many of the early 1940s children's comic book stories.  I actually liked it better than most stories in this book, despite HATING the racist humour of the exaggerated Black Southern speaking accent, and his exaggerated facial features, and hating the memory of my first visit to USA, seeing a sign on a public beach that said I, myself, and all those of my religion, couldn't go on that beach, all the while survivors of The Nazi death camps were living in my house the whole time of my growing up.  But, publications like this give insight into the culture of a country.  Too bad it is almost as racist now as it was back then.

9) Woody The Wood Pecker
As I stated above, the "desert island" seems ridiculously close to the river's delta's meeting the ocean, so it's absurd that there is a backward "native" tribe there, which doesn't belong to Woody's and Sleepy's country.  And it's also absurd that it has a tropical climate that close to an area of temperate climate. But, in the early 1940s, very few funny animal comic story writers and artists were able to make their stories have the panel illustrations match their story's intent to be consistent with some form of realism.  The crazy woodpecker inventor is a fun character (like Carl Barks' Gyro Gearloose").  But, he was not really exploited much in that regard.  The buried treasure detecting robot looks funny, and is a nice concept.  They find a treasure chest, and there is a reversal at the end, when they find it is filled with gold-coloured advertising tokens.  The story has some promising ideas and story elements.  But they aren't tied together in a causal way that makes a good story. 

10) Boo-Boo and Butch
Boo-Boo Dog is an absolute clone of Disney's Goofy down to his outfit and even the colour of each piece of clothing.  He acts hicky, innocent, and gullible, just like the Disney character.  It's no surprise that MLJ didn't use this character even one more time.  The so-called story is just another string of sight gags.  The attempt at the ironic ending, with the doctor prescribing them days of rest in bed is completely expected.  So, it doesn't save this dragged out string of slapstick gags that could have been an end-joke carried, one-page gag.

[Robb_K]

I think it is amazing that my analysis of a 2-page text story is much longer than that for ANY of the drawn stories in this book.  That just points out the sad condition of story-writing at the beginning of the time in the comic book industry when publishers were running out of the backlog of old newspaper strip pages, and needed newly-produced stories to fill their new comic books.

I am posting this comment in a separate post, so that this thread can go back up to the top of the order of threads because my last 7 posts have all been added as modifications of this one, containing my major analysis of this book, whereas my other posts had just been comments on what other members posted.

[The Australian Panther]

Somewhere on CB+ somebody posted the information that the two text pages were a legal requirement, that they were obliged to have in each book, a text page text article. I can't remember why. Writers always say that a short story is much harder than a novel, so to do a two page text story and make it interesting, would have been an ask.
The pay rates, I imagine, wouldn't have attracted top-of-the line writers.       

[Robb_K]

Somewhere on CB+ somebody posted the information that the two text pages were a legal requirement, that they were obliged to have in each book, a text page text article. I can't remember why. Writers always say that a short story is much harder than a novel, so to do a two page text story and make it interesting, would have been an ask.
The pay rates, I imagine, wouldn't have attracted top-of-the line writers.    

That's about as big an understatement as I've ever read - especially if you are talking about Fox Features, Charlton, or any of Robert Ferrell's publishing firms.

The all text story of at least 2 full pages was used to allow the comic book to be classed as a periodical and get the discounted 2nd class US Postal Service postage rate, which, in the 1940s was 33% less than 1st Class (regular rate for magazines not given the discount).  As I understand it, the minimum of 2 pages of all text was to meet the minimum requirements to prove that the periodical had actual reading material, which had educational, and thus, redeeming value, which all comic book-cartoon-style pages with dialogue balloons wouldn't have, by definition.  One page of text, alone, was seen as a throw-in, solely to receive the postage discount, whereas two pages was deemed barely enough to have a complete story or account of an incident, (e.g. enough to have at least some legitimate educational value).

[SuperScrounge]

The pay rates, I imagine, wouldn't have attracted top-of-the line writers.     

One on my books on Golden Age comics, mentions that there was one, apparently, well-known novelist who wrote two-page text stories for a publisher to get money his wife didn't need to know about so he could use it to make bets at the race track.    Sadly, I don't think the book identified the author.

On the other hand Mickey Spillane, just starting out as a writer, got paid almost as much as the artists.

[Robb_K]

The pay rates, I imagine, wouldn't have attracted top-of-the line writers.     

One on my books on Golden Age comics, mentions that there was one, apparently, well-known novelist who wrote two-page text stories for a publisher to get money his wife didn't need to know about so he could use it to make bets at the race track.    Sadly, I don't think the book identified the author.

On the other hand Mickey Spillane, just starting out as a writer, got paid almost as much as the artists.

Thank goodness at least SOME editors realised that good, well-written, interesting stories that help make the readers think, and get them thinking about the fantasy stories' connections with their own lives, will entertain them more than just looking at a lot of disjointed high-quality drawings, and were, at least SOME of the time, willing to pay for better quality, despite often operating on miniscule profit margins.

[The Australian Panther]

The pay rates, I imagine, wouldn't have attracted top-of-the line writers. 

Just to contradict myself, in other posts recently I have identified Theodore Sturgeon and Jerome Bixby as authors of comic book text pieces. So I imagine at least one editor had connections to SF writers and gave them the gig. But that is likely to have been the exception rather than the rule.     

[Robb_K]

The pay rates, I imagine, wouldn't have attracted top-of-the line writers. 

Just to contradict myself, in other posts recently I have identified Theodore Sturgeon and Jerome Bixby as authors of comic book text pieces. So I imagine at least one editor had connections to SF writers and gave them the gig. But that is likely to have been the exception rather than the rule.   

Ray Bradbury and several other science fiction writers got some of their short stories published in comic books.  I don't think that was their first choice of an outlet to have any of their stories published.  but if they could earn some money to pay the rent and put food on the table, and also get some exposure for a story of theirs not yet picked up by a book publisher, they were all for it.  Probably none of them took on a new Sci-Fi story-writing assignment from a Sci-Fi comic book publisher, but rather, young, less-established Sci-Fi writers offered up previously unpublished stories they'd already written to Sci-Fi comic book publishers, to earn money and get more exposure.  They probably took a handful of stories to publishers every so often, and the editors took which of the stories they wanted, and left the rest.  That is more or less how I got into the business.  I took detailed scribbles of several Barks-inspired Donald Duck stories, which were carefully drawn to almost final pencil stage, to my local Dutch editor, and he wanted to buy them all.

[SuperScrounge]

Ray Bradbury and several other science fiction writers got some of their short stories published in comic books.

And sometimes they knew about it. 

EC swiped some Bradbury stories, but Ray liked comics and discovered the theft. Rather than threatening legal action he sent them a letter commenting that he hadn't received payment for the stories. EC sent him a check, then asked permission to adapt more stories, and after receiving it they started promoting Ray Bradbury stories on the covers.

I believe Ray Cummings adapted his own Girl In The Golden Atom for a Captain America story, as well as a few more comic scripts.

Maybe well-known writers who worked in comics should be it's own thread, cause there's more than a few I know of, either starting in comics or becoming known first then doing some comic work.

[Robb_K]

Ray Bradbury and several other science fiction writers got some of their short stories published in comic books.

And sometimes they knew about it. 

EC swiped some Bradbury stories, but Ray liked comics and discovered the theft. Rather than threatening legal action he sent them a letter commenting that he hadn't received payment for the stories. EC sent him a check, then asked permission to adapt more stories, and after receiving it they started promoting Ray Bradbury stories on the covers.

I believe Ray Cummings adapted his own Girl In The Golden Atom for a Captain America story, as well as a few more comic scripts.

Maybe well-known writers who worked in comics should be it's own thread, cause there's more than a few I know of, either starting in comics or becoming known first then doing some comic work.

Yes, please do that.  That subject should be very interesting to a lot of people, and therefore, certainly worth its own thread, as it has nothing at all to do with "Jolly Jingles # 10".  Most interested members wouldn't find those comments if they were to all be posted on this thread.

[The Australian Panther]

this was supposed to have been attached to my last post on this subject.
Not sure why it wasn't.

Spillane started as a writer for comic books.[14] While working as a salesman in Gimbels department store basement in 1940, he met tie salesman Joe Gill, who later found a lifetime career in scripting for Charlton Comics. Gill told Spillane to meet his brother, Ray Gill, who wrote for Funnies Inc., an outfit that packaged comic books for different publishers. Spillane soon began writing an eight-page story every day. He concocted adventures for major 1940s comic book characters, including Captain Marvel, Superman, Batman and Captain America. In the early 1940s, working for Funnies, Inc., he wrote two-page text stories which were syndicated to various comic book publishers, including Timely Comics. At one point, Spillane estimated he wrote fifty of these "short-short stories," which were intended to fulfill a postal regulation requiring comic books to have at least two pages of text to qualify for a second-class mailing permit. While most comic books writers toiled anonymously, Spillane's byline appeared on most of his prose "filler" stories. 26 stories were collected in Primal Spillane: Early Stories 1941-1942 (Gryphon Books, 2003). When Primal Spillane was reprinted by Bold Venture Press in 2018, the new volume contained an additional fifteen stories, including the previously unpublished "A Turn of the Tide." 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mickey_Spillane
I don't think Sturgeon or Bixby were unknowns in the time period, most of the text pieces are from late 40's and 50s and Sturgeon was already published in 1938.

if they could earn some money to pay the rent and put food on the table, and also get some exposure for a story of theirs not yet picked up by a book publisher, they were all for it. 

 
Writers or Artists don't automatically turn down work, no matter where it comes from.
The fact that they were identified by a Byline indicates they didn't have a negative attitude to comic books.   

[The Australian Panther]

Here is my review of this choice.

Cover:Drawn by Dave Higgins

I like the cover a lot. it's well composed and conveys positive energy. I like the fact that Superduck is 'breaking the forth wall' and looking directly at the reader wit a cheeky grin. I also like the Masthead design, The cover is important because it is the first thing the prospective buyers sees, so the masthead should standout and be memorable. The bubbles emphasize the 'Jolly!'
SuperDuck. Disney didn't seem to have any problem with other people using that generic duck image until Howard came along. I think it was when Howard was optioned for a movie, [which I still haven't seen] that  they took notice of him. Now that Disney owns Marvel, and Howard has been briefly sighted in Marvel movies, I wonder if they'll try a movie again? James Gunn would do a good Howard Movie. But I digress!
Story one
I don't think I've seen a funny animal origin story before. This doesn't give the impression that a lot of thought went into it.
Wolf [or Fox] in the henhouse is a generic funny animal cartoon routine. Generic Wolf, dead ringer for Disney's Brer Wolf.
Just why is there a duck in the chicken coop? A good story-teller tells a story-teller that makes sense in its own reality. This doesn't, since there is no setup. Also, why are the Wolf and the Duck wearing clothes and talking, but the chickens are normal chickens? Inconsistent.  And why does Superduck at the end of the story address the chickens as 'Boys?' The mind boggles.
That said, Higgens is excellent at depicting visual action so the visuals carry us right along.
'Watch this! I saw it in the movies once!' Well, we all saw it in the [cartoon] movies, and more than once.
The level of the puzzles in the 'fun for all' page indicates that the targeted audience was very young children, and maybe we should take that into account when analyzing the book as adults.
'It shouldn't happen to a dog' Straightforward, well paced, simple story. One one comment. How did he get out of the net the first time? Inconsistency again.
The Boosey Boys. This is quite simply, a mess! Again, some animals speak to each other and some animals don't.[horses, chickens, lamb, dog.]
If I was writing a comic for childen, I might use slang or idiom but I'd be careful and again consistent about it. 'Them ghosts et up all my peanuts' from a character who speaks good english most of the rest of the time. And there is not really a character you can relate to in the whole story. The Art has been 'phoned in.'
Text piece. 'It's vitamin tablets that make him the world's greatest Superduck!"  Really?Where can I get me some of those?
Maw Paw and Willie.         
First. If this comic was aimed at children, is the Gag in the splash panel appropriate?
Again, plenty of visual energy, but visually a one-gag story. Yes there were several verbal gags.
Pinky. Were they still using flash powder to take photographs in the 1940s?
Now this one I like, Joe Edwards? A lot of creativity in the art. Also I like the photography oriented gags.
On the splash page we have a bird sitting on the camera, but its only in our heads that we hear the words, 'Watch the Birdy!' Josh Whedon eat your heart out!
Royal Flash Bulb garden, King Kandid, 'One of those darn shutter-bugs!' " I sentence you to be snapshot at dawn!'
'Come around next issue for a chuckle or two with Pinky!' and I probably would. [Haven't looked yet to see if he's in the next issue but I will!]
Baba the Black Sheep. Good art, well told, but just a series of unrelated anecdotes, not a story at all.
Snowball takes some honey from a bear.   'He just rolls along!' And yes, by currentl standards its not politically correct.   
If this is by Red Holmdale, then  he also did the Boogy Boys story. And the comments I made about that apply to this one.
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/h/holmdale_red.htm
If the example on the blog below is Holmdale, I'm going to stick my neck out and say that Snowball is not.
https://fourcolorshadows.blogspot.com/2012/02/willy-wise-guy-red-holmdale-1945.html
Woody the Woodpecker! Don't know the dates for Walter Lantz character so I don't know if it was broaching copyright or not.   
This one has a narrative and a plot and leads to a climax! Art is good. Only one question, why do the monkeys speak like cliche Chinamen?
Boo Boo and Butch. Goofy and a Koala?  Series of anecdotes again.
Fun for all. That maze is unsolvable. He can't get the hat. Ellis Chambers little joke?
These are talented men, but these stories seem to me to be all 2 dimensional variations of 5 minute animated cartoons, which are mostly a series of visual gags. It seems that many of these guys had trouble adapting to the printed page.
Thanks for the choice.       
l       

[gregjh]

Not really my style of comic so I'll wait for #228 , can we get a superhero or western?

[Electricmastro]

Not really my style of comic so I'll wait for #228 , can we get a superhero or western?

I