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.
The Fox and the Crow #1
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 May 11 of this year, Dark Horse commissioned me to draw nine covers for the trio of three-issue projects: Wolf & Red, Screwball Squirrel, and Droopy.
My original plan was to illustrate all nine covers in the airbrush style I’d employed on my string of Disney movie posters in the 1980s and early ’90s, but I soon realized that my obligations as Bongo Comics’ Creative Director and cover artist made that impossible So, the cover to Wolf & Red #1 was the only one I painted myself. I drew and inked the remaining eight, and then went to my friend, Nathan Kane, in a panic to see if he could replicate the airbrush style of the first Wolf & Red cover. At the time Nathan was working as a digital colorist at Malibu Comics and had not yet been hired as Bongo’s main colorist.
Needless to say, Nathan came through with flying colors (pun intended) on the eight covers, and we continued to work together for many years, both at Bongo and on several outside projects. I covered one of those collaborations, an homage to the Infantino/Anderson Batman and Robin rooftop pinup, in last week’s column.
After the three mini-series, Dark Horse launched a fourth series, Comics and Stories, which featured various Tex Avery characters in an anthology-style format. I didn’t do any covers for the series, but I was fortunate enough to get to draw a Bad Luck Blackie story, written and laid out by my pal, Scott Shaw!
If I’m not mistaken, it’s now been 30 years since anyone has published these characters in comics, and I couldn’t tell you why that is. It took someone around 50 years to do it the first time, though. So maybe we have another 20 years to wait until some fun-loving publisher wises up and does it again!
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Want more MORRISON MONDAYS? Come back next week! Want a commission? See below!
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MORE
— BATMAN AND ROBIN ON THE ROOFTOP: There’s No Such Thing as Too Many Homages. Click here.
— Signet’s Lovable 1966 BATMAN Reprint Paperbacks Were All We Had — But They Were a Goldmine. Click here.
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Eisner winner BILL MORRISON has been working in comics and publishing since 1993 when he co-founded Bongo Entertainment with Matt Groening, Cindy Vance and Steve Vance. At Bongo, and later as Executive Editor of Mad Magazine, he parodied the comics images he loved as a kid every chance he got. Not much has changed.
Bill is on Instagram (@atomicbattery) and Facebook (Bill Morrison/Atomic Battery Studios), and regularly takes commissions and sells published art through 4C Comics.
