MORRISON MONDAYS! By BILL MORRISON In the 1940s and ’50s, most cartoon characters who starred in short theatrical cartoons also had their own comic books. Many of these were part of the Dell Four Color series, such as Disney’s Mickey Mouse, Pluto, and Goofy; Warner Bros.’ Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Daffy Duck; Walter Lantz Productions’ Woody Woodpecker, Chilly Willy, and Andy Panda; and MGM’s Tom and Jerry. Of course, Donald Duck starred in Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories from Dell, and Mickey Mouse also had his own title, separate from the Four Color series. Paramount’s Casper the Friendly Ghost and Little Audrey starred in their own Harvey comic books. Timely, St. John/Pines, and Dell all published comics starring Terrytoons’ Mighty Mouse. Even Columbia’s short-lived The Fox and the Crow series of shorts had a long run as a comic book at National (DC) Comics, lasting 108 issues from 1951 to 1968. So, it seems odd to me that Tex Avery’s most popular MGM characters, Droopy, Screwball (aka Screwy) Squirrel, the Wolf, and Red never starred in comic books during the great era of theatrical cartoon shorts. Yes, Screwball Squirrel occasionally appeared in the pages of Our Gang Comics, Tom and Jerry, and Dell Giant, as did Droopy (originally known as Happy Hound before getting renamed in the 1949 short cartoon, Señor Droopy.) But Droopy and Screwy were conspicuously absent from the covers, (though Droopy’s head did sometimes appear as a vignette on Tom and Jerry covers). DC even had a blatant Screwball Squirrel knockoff named Nutsy Squirrel who had his own self-titled book! Imagine the ignominy that Screwy must have felt when MGM didn’t even bring a lawsuit! And poor Wolf and Red never made it into comics at all during that period, not even as back-up feature guest stars. I suppose one could argue that Tex’s characters were too crazy, too sexy, too abstract for kids’ comics, or maybe that those attributes made them difficult to transition into the comic book format. Whatever the reason, it always seemed like a glaring omission to me. But with the advent of home video, Tex’s characters gained a new audience and Dark Horse Comics finally corrected this slight in 1995 by launching three miniseries that finally gave Avery’s best-known MGM characters their due. As previously mentioned in my column of...