Back Issue #129 by TwoMorrows Publishing

COMICS’ BRONZE AGE AND BEYOND 2021

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TV TOON TIE-INS!

BONUS: SCOTT SHAW! DIGS UP CAPTAIN CARROT’S ROOTS!

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NUCLEAR ISSUE! Firestorm, Dr. Manhattan, DAVE GIBBONS Marvel UK Hulk interview, villain histories of Radioactive Man and Microwave Man, Radioactive Man and Fallout Boy, and the one-shot Holo-Man! With PAT BRODERICK, GERRY CONWAY, JOE GIELLA, TOM GRINDBERG, RAFAEL KAYANAN, TOM MANDRAKE, BILL MORRISON, JOHN OSTRANDER, STEVE VANCE, and more! PAT BRODERICK cover!

BATMAN MOVIE 30th ANNIVERSARY! Producer MICHAEL USLAN and screenwriter SAM HAMM interviewed, a chat with BILLY DEE WILLIAMS (who was almost Two-Face), plus DENNY O’NEIL and JERRY ORDWAY’s Batman movie adaptation, MINDY NEWELL’s Catwoman, GRANT MORRISON and DAVE McKEAN’s Arkham Asylum, MAX ALLAN COLLINS’ Batman newspaper strip, and JOEY CAVALIERI & JOE STATON’s Huntress!

SCI-FI SUPERHEROES! In-depth looks at JIM STARLIN’s Dreadstar and Company, and the dystopian lawman Judge Dredd. Also: Nova, GERRY CONWAY & MIKE VOSBURG’s Starman, PAUL LEVITZ & STEVE DITKO’s Starman, WALTER SIMONSON’s Justice Peace (from the pages of Thor), and GREG POTTER & GENE COLAN’s Jemm, Son of Saturn! With a Dreadstar and Company cover by STARLIN and ALAN WEISS!

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SUPERHEROES VS. MONSTERS! Monsters in Metropolis, Batman and the Horror Genre, DOUG MOENCH and KELLEY JONES’ Batman: Vampire, Marvel Scream-Up, Dracula and Godzilla vs. Marvel, DC/Dark Horse Hero/Monster crossovers, and a Baron Blood villain history. With CLAREMONT, CONWAY, DIXON, GIBBONS, GRELL, GULACY, JURGENS, THOMAS, WOLFMAN, and a cover by MICHAEL GOLDEN.

SUPERHERO STAND-INS! John Stewart as Green Lantern, James Rhodes as Iron Man, Beta Ray Bill as Thor, Captain America substitute U.S. Agent, new Batman Azrael, and Superman’s Hollywood proxy Gregory Reed! Featuring NEAL ADAMS, CARY BATES, DAVE GIBBONS, RON MARZ, DAVID MICHELINIE, DENNIS O’NEIL, WALTER SIMONSON, ROY THOMAS, and more, under a cover by SIMONSON.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY ISSUE! A galaxy of comics stars discuss Marvel’s whitehot space team in the Guardians Interviews, including TOM DeFALCO, KEITH GIFFEN, ROB LIEFELD, AL MILGROM, MARY SKRENES, ROGER STERN, JIM VALENTINO, and more. Plus: Star-Lord and Rocket Raccoon before the Guardians, with CHRIS CLAREMONT and MIKE MIGNOLA. Cover by JIM VALENTINO with inks by CHRIS IVY.

CONAN AND THE BARBARIANS! Celebrating the 50th anniversary of ROY THOMAS and BARRY WINDSOR-SMITH’s Conan #1! The Bronze Age Barbarian Boom, Top 50 Marvel Conan stories, Marvel’s Not-Quite Conans (from Kull to Skull), Arak–Son of Thunder, Warlord action figures, GRAY MORROW’s Edge of Chaos, and Conan the Barbarian at Dark Horse Comics. With an unused WINDSOR-SMITH Conan #9 cover.

Celebrates the 40TH ANNIVERSARY of MARV WOLFMAN and GEORGE PÉREZ’s New Teen Titans, featuring a guest editorial by WOLFMAN and a PÉREZ tribute and art gallery! Plus: The New Teen Titans’ 40 GREATEST MOMENTS, the Titans in the media, hero histories of RAVEN, STARFIRE, and the PROTECTOR, and more! With a NEVER-BEFORE-PUBLISHED PÉREZ TITANS COVER from 1981!

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SUPERHERO ROMANCE ISSUE! Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark’s many loves, Star Sapphire history, Bronze Age weddings, DeFALCO/ STERN Johnny Storm/Alicia Pro2Pro interview, Elongated Man and Wife, May-December romances, Supergirl’s Secret Marriage, and… Aunt May and Doc Ock?? Featuring MIKE W. BARR, CARY BATES, STEVE ENGLEHART, BOB LAYTON, DENNY O’NEIL, and many more! Cover by DAVE GIBBONS.

HORRIFIC HEROES! With Bronze Age CREATOR-OWNED COMICS! Featuring histories of Man-Thing, the Demon, and in-depth histories of MATT WAGNER’s the Creeper, Atlas/Seaboard’s horrifying Mage and Grendel. Plus other indie heroes, and Ghost Rider (Danny Ketch) sensations of the Bronze Age, including rides again! Featuring the work of CHRIS COLLEEN DORAN’s A Distant Soil, STAN CLAREMONT, GERRY CONWAY, ERNIE SAKAI’s Usagi Yojimbo, STEVE PURCELL’s COLON, MICHAEL GOLDEN, JACK KIRBY, Sam & Max, JAMES DEAN SMITH’s Boris MIKE PLOOG, JAVIER SALTARES, MARK the Bear, and LARRY WELZ’s Cherry TEXIERA, and more. Man-Thing cover by Poptart! With a fabulous Grendel cover by RUDY NEBRES. MATT WAGNER.

“Legacy” issue! Wally West Flash, BRANDON ROUTH Superman interview, Harry Osborn/Green Goblin, Scott Lang/Ant-Man, Infinity Inc., Reign of the Supermen, JOHN ROMITA SR. and JR. “Rough Stuff,” plus CONWAY, FRACTION, JURGENS, MESSNER-LOEBS, MICHELINIE, ORDWAY, SLOTT, ROY THOMAS, MARK WAID, and more. WIERINGO/MARZAN JR. cover!

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Volume 1, Number 129 August 2021 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow

Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!

DESIGNER Rich Fowlks COVER ARTIST Ray Dirgo and friends (Cover art from Charlton’s HannaBarbera Parade #10, with some character substitutions by other artists.) COVER COLORIST Glenn Whitmore COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob Smentek SPECIAL THANKS Mark Arnold Maddy Madrazo Jerry Beck Jim Main Nate Butler Dave Manak John Byrne Richard Maurizio Ed Catto Fabian Nicieza Robert V. Conte Luigi Novi Tom DeFalco Jerry Ordway Jim Engel Ross Pearsall Mark Evanier Joe Rockhead Stephan Friedt Steve Schanes Michael Gallagher Keith Scott Grand Comics Scott Shaw! Database Evan Skolnick Hanna-Barbera Merrie Spaeth Productions Joe Staton Heritage Comics Mary Vigliante Auctions Szydlowski Kelley Jarvis-Maclay Roy Thomas Mike Kazaleh Steven Thompson Stephen Keeter Greg Walker Milton Knight Mike Zeck Ed Lute

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BACKSEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Michael Eury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 OFF MY CHEST: The Secret Origins of Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! . . . . 3 Scott Shaw! hops into the rabbit hole of history FLASHBACK: Bullwinkle and Rocky . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 “I Read the Moose Today” or “What’s a Nice Squirrel Like You Doing in Comics Like This?” BACKSTAGE PASS: Underdog . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 There’s no need to fear! TTV’s canine crusader is here! FLASHBACK: The Bronze-tastic World of Hanna-Barbera . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 H-B’s comic adaptations, from Bedrock to Orbit City and beyond FLASHBACK: Gold Key’s The Hardy Boys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 The Filmation toon and tie-in comic that should have been a hit BACKSTAGE PASS: The Pink Panther . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 DePatie-Freleng’s fuschia feline, on screen and in funnybooks WHAT THE--?!: Smokey Bear and Woodsy Owl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 From public service announcements to comic-book stardom FLASHBACK: Mighty Mouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Here he comes to save the day, in a trivia- and creator-loaded comics history BACKSTAGE PASS: Battle of the Planets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 The comic-book adventures of G-Force! BACK TALK will return next issue.

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BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 112 Fairmount Way, New Bern, NC 28562. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Eight-issue subscriptions: $90 Economy US, $137 International, $36 Digital. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Ray Dirgo and friends. Fred Flintstone © HannaBarbera Productions. Other characters © their respective companies. All Rights Reserved. All editorial matter © 2021 TwoMorrows and Michael Eury. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins • BACK ISSUE • 1

by M

ichael Eury

Longtime BI readers, when surveying this issue’s contents, may notice [insert your favorite animation-inspired comic title here]?”, many the absence of a Bronze Age comic adaptation of a popular Saturday other toon-comics have been covered in previous issues. Please morning cartoon: Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. I wanted to include Gold consult the checklist that follows to find your faves. In the meantime, there are so many Saturday Key’s Fat Albert comic book, which ran 29 issues morning memories in this content-crammed throughout much of the 1970s, for the historical edition that you might be craving a bowl of sugary record, but after much consideration dropped it breakfast cereal as a snack. Indulge yourself. (But from the lineup. I’m sure you know the reason. don’t blame us for your cavities!) The groundbreaking animated series, which premiered on CBS in the fall of 1972, was one Next issue: Bronze Age Promos, Ads, and Gimmicks! of the first cartoons to feature a predominantly Who was the mystery writer of those zany Hostess African-American cast, a cast that included Comic Ads? Plus: the aborted DC Super-Stars characters that grew out of the standup comedy Society fan club, DC 16-page Preview Comics, of Bill Cosby. With Cosby’s fall from grace and the DC Hotline, Popeye Career Comics, Marvel’s prison conviction as a sexual predator, Fat Albert little-seen Quarterly Reports, and more. Featuring became a hot-button topic. Can we still love Fat MIKE W. BARR, KURT BUSIEK, MIKE CHEN, Albert and the Cosby Kids in the #MeToo world? GLENN HERDLING, PAUL KUPPERBERG, PAUL If you’re like me, you can separate the message LEVITZ, DAN MISHKIN, TOM MORGAN, MARK from the messenger, and from my perspective PACELLA, JIMMY PALMIOTTI, BOB ROZAKIS, Fat Albert remains one of the most important kids SCOTT SHAW!, TERRY STEWART, ROY THOMAS, TV shows of its era. It’s unfortunate, however, MARV WOLFMAN, and more. With a previously that Cosby’s crimes have forced us to exclude his unpublished 1979 5-Star Super-Hero Spectacular entertaining and influential body of work, and cover by DICK DILLIN and DICK GIORDANO. as such the Gold Key tie-in series is much too Don’t ask—just BI it! See you in thirty! controversial for inclusion here. Your friendly neighborhood Euryman, If you’re also scratching your head over the Wonder Woman and characters © DC Comics. Michael Eury, editor-in-chief table of contents, wondering, “Hey, where’s BACK ISSUE TM & © TwoMorrows.

TV CARTOON TIE-IN COMICS PREVIOUSLY COVERED IN BACK ISSUE This checklist will allow you to dig deeper into our backlist for more information about the comic books based upon, or the comics/TV connections to, the animated shows listed below. • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Adventures in the DC Universe: BI #99 Animax: BI #77 The Archie Show, the Archies: BI #33 (the Archies’ Ron Dante interview), 107 Astro Boy: BI #30 Batman: The Animated Series: BI #99 Bullwinkle and Rocky (Star Comics): BI #77 Camp Candy: BI #77 Chuck Norris and the Karate Kommandos: BI #77 Defenders of the Earth: BI #77 Droids: BI #77 Dynomutt and Blue Falcon: BI #97 Ewoks: BI #77 Fantastic Four: BI #74

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Firestar (Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends): BI #33 The Flintstone Kids: BI #77 Foofur: BI #77 Fraggle Rock: BI #77 G.I. Joe: BI #16, 118 (Fury Force) Gumby: BI #16, 85 Hanna-Barbera Marvel Comics: BI #59 Heathcliff: BI #77 H.E.R.B.I.E. the Robot: BI #25 Hong Kong Phooey: BI #105 The Incredible Hulk (1982 cartoon): BI #70 The Inhumanoids: BI #77 James Bond, Jr.: BI #33 Jonny Quest: BI #59 Josie and the Pussycats: BI #40 Legion of Super-Heroes (unproduced animated series): BI #5 Marvel Productions, Ltd. (animation company): BI #59 Masters of the Universe: BI #16, 77

2 • BACK ISSUE •Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Mr. T: BI #26 Muppet Babies: BI #77 Plastic Man: BI #3, 77 Sabrina, the Teenage Witch: BI #107 Sam and Max, Freelance Police: BI #124 Scooby-Doo: BI #52 Silverhawks: BI #77 Space Ghost: BI #2, 30 (Gary Owens interview), 59 Spidey Super Stories: BI #44 Star Blazers: BI #59 Star Comics (Marvel imprint): BI #77 Super Friends: BI #30, 38, 61, 83 Superman Adventures: BI #99 Swamp Thing: BI #36 Teen Titans: BI #5 (unrealized New Teen Titans cartoon), 122 Thundarr the Barbarian: BI #31 Thundercats: BI #40, 77 Transformers: BI #16 Visionaries: BI #77

[Editor’s note: While most of this issue explores Bronze Age comic books based upon Saturday morning cartoons, ye ed didn’t want to leave you superhero fans high and dry. So here he comes to save the day! Not Mighty Mouse (although the Mouse of Might does appear later this ish), but Scott Shaw!, the Emmy and Eisner Award-winning cartoonist/animator/comics historian, who’s got something he’d like to get off his chest….] by S c o t t

Shaw!

World’s Furriest Comics Circa 1982–1983, a Captain Carrot and Pig Iron sketch by our guest columnist, Scott Shaw! Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew TM & © DC Comics.

The first time I met Roy Thomas was at the 1972 San Diego Comic-Con. Roy was basking in fandom’s overwhelmingly positive reaction to Conan; I was hawking my first professional comix, “The Turd” in Ken Krueger’s Gory Stories Quarterly. The second time I met Roy was in 1977 at the American Comic Book Company in Studio City, California. Roy had recently moved to Los Angeles to work in film; I had recently moved to Los Angeles to find work in comics and animation while managing a comic shop that was conveniently near the studios, including Hanna-Barbera Productions, located right down the street from my store. Understandably, Roy didn’t recall me from our first encounter, but as Roy became a regular customer at the ACBC, we became more familiar with each other, then friends. That lead to Roy assigning me to write and draw a backup story for a new series he had recently created for Marvel. What If? vol. 1 #8 (Apr. 1978) featured “What If the Spider Had Been Bitten by a Radioactive Human?,” which introduced “Man-Spider.” (Marvel keeps reprinting it, they just stopped paying me for it, because as we all know, Disney’s broke.) Soon after (but unconnected) I also worked on many of Marvel’s line of Hanna-Barbera comics, edited through the studio’s offices. The gig directly led to me working at HannaBarbera on their SatAM cartoon shows for years. Meanwhile, Roy and I were working on a number of concepts to “pitch” to newspaper syndicates and cartoon studios. When Roy finally left Marvel for more creative freedom at DC, it wasn’t long before we were talking about developing a new concept to pitch to Roy’s new bosses. Of course, DC was eager to license their myriad IP to TV networks. That got Roy Thomas and I thinking up concepts that would be appropriate for licensing, especially because Roy’s new deal was signed during DC’s short-lived era of creator participation in certain titles. Since I had already done a number of funny-animal stories for Quack! from Mike Friedrich’s “ground-level” Star*Reach, we starting thinking about funny animals. I think that Roy must have mentioned that he and North Carolina cartoonist Sam Grainger had once co-created a rabbit superhero named “Captain Carrot” who was in the vein of Mighty Mouse. (I didn’t see Sam’s drawing until many years later.) To incite DC’s interest, Roy, his spouse Dann, and I decided to pitch a team of funny-animal superheroes based on DC heroes, “Super Squirrel and the Just’a Lotta Animals,” a parody of the Justice League of America. Our gimmick, developed over many spaghetti dinners, was a simple one: “What if Jack Kirby drew Mighty Mouse?” In other words, funny-animal superhero stories written and designed with humorous intent but told with Kirby-esque storytelling. The plots would be serious with real consequences rather than Tex Avery-style gags but scripted with plenty of comedic versions of superhero tropes. Jack was (and is) my favorite “straight” cartoonist, so I knew what to do. We submitted a premise, character designs, and two sample pages of dynamic pencil story art. DC expressed interest, but ultimately decided that although they—especially publisher Jenette Kahn—liked the concept, they wanted new funny-animal characters, not ones based on pre-existing superheroes. Back to the drawing board, literally. While designing these new characters, my primary influences were cartoonist Wallace Wood’s somewhat obscure kid-leading-a-team-ofgoofy-heroes concepts Bucky Ruckus, Goody Bumpkin, Miracles Inc., and Fearless Ferris and the Misfits. I was also a huge fan of Gilbert Shelton’s Wonder Wart-Hog [see RetroFan #15, now on sale—ed.]

Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue • BACK ISSUE • 3

The Original Captain Carrot (top) Captain Carrot, as originally envisioned by co-creators artist Sam Grainger and writer Roy Thomas. Courtesy of Alter Ego #72, via Scott Shaw! (bottom) Penciled pitch pages starring Roy Thomas and Scott Shaw!’s Super Squirrel and the Just’a Lotta Animals. Courtesy of Scott Shaw! © DC Comics.

and Marvel’s Not Brand Echh’s stories by Jack Kirby should look like. One thing was certain—the desired and Marie Severin. Animated superhero cartoons of style was nowhere near my own. Joe—the original the 1960s also influenced me: Terrytoons’ The Mighty “Sea-Monkeys” artist and the DC cover editor who Heroes (created by Ralph Bakshi); Hanna-Barbera’s would roam its bullpen shouting “Sex sells!”—never Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles; DePatie-Freleng’s worked in animation and added a lot of bulging Super 6; and Jay Ward’s George of the Jungle. (Oh, you muscles and decorative details that would add more “line mileage” and make the characters much more never noticed that all three of that show’s segments difficult to animate. He drew “Alley-Kat-Abra” are about heroes? Keep watching the pages (note the new spelling) and Yankee Poodle of RetroFan!) I kept the designs simple with much sexier bodies than I felt neither because a major aspect of DC’s interest competent nor comfortable to draw. was to animate our characters in a DC (Looking at Joe’s superfluous sketches TV series. In fact, my experience as an of Yankee Poodle, I’m convinced he animation designer was one of the was a closeted furry!) And for some reasons that Roy wanted to work with reason, Mr. Orlando hadn’t received me on this ongoing pitch-project. the memo about “original character In 1981, Roy, Dann, and I created a concepts” memo and reimagined new batch of funny-animal superheroes the super-speeding turtle (now named to replace the anthropomorphic Super “Fastback”) as the Flash! Frankly, I Friends. “The Critter Commandos” still wish DC would have allowed me consisted of Captain Carrot (revived to employ the cleaner, sleeker style in name only), Rubberduck, AlleycatSCOTT SHAW! I used on the Super Squirrel pitch. Dabra, Yankee Poodle, Blue Streak, Joe Crawford. It was not only truer to my own style Big Cheese, and Whirlibird. I added Pig-Iron. DC still wasn’t convinced. We did a makeover of cartooning, the disparity between the cartoony with a new name—“The Zoo Crew”—with a slightly designs and the Kirby layouts and posing would have different look, a few new names, and fewer teammates. been funnier. But these drawings by Joe Orlando make Around this time, DC’s creative director Joe Orlando it clear that “funny” was not DC’s goal. Apparently, became involved, probably at Dick Giordano or Jenette they wanted to “cheat” the concept and make it look Kahn’s instruction. He sent me sketches of what he as much as possible like a standard superhero comic... thought Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew and up to then, most of the print material I’d worked with so far were underground comix. I was confused (to say the least), panicked (I’d quit my gig at H-B so I could give my full attention to my new project), and felt more than a bit intimidated. I had every reason to be. Why was I being given the runaround? Or was this how mainstream comics were really created? Unknown to me, DC approached Joe (Dick Tracy) Staton to draw the book. Fortunately (for me), since I’d recently inked Joe’s contribution to Eclipse’s Destroyer Duck #1, Joe told them that he thought I was more suited to the assignment. And at some point, Joe Orlando even asked a college student with no professional experience to submit his own designs for the characters. (I only learned of that fact last year!) We finally got the green light, and with the aid of penciled Superman art by Ross Andru (one of my favorites since Metal Men and “The War That Time Forgot” in Star Spangled War Stories), inking by Bob Smith, coloring by Carl Gafford, lettering by Todd Klein, and editing by Dick Giordano and Dave Manak, the Captain Carrot preview in New Teen Titans #16 (Feb. 1982) and Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! #1 (Mar. 1982) hit the racks. We didn’t receive our contracts until we were working on the third issue, but the IP’s ownership was split four ways: 80% to DC, 5% to Roy Thomas; 5% to Gerry Conway; and 10% to me. You’ll note that the fur of “AlleyKat-Abra” (note the new spelling) made a dramatic change from white-to-black between issues. A year later, Ruby-Spears Productions pitched a Captain Carrot cartoon show to ABC, which optioned the property for two years in a row. The second version featured Wonder Woman as their token human being. R&S never contacted any of us to work on the pitches, but we did receive checks. (Since then, other than an appearance on Robot Chicken DC Comics Special in a rehash of The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s “Chuckles the Clown’s Funeral” episode, there has been no further attempt to animate Captain Carrot, Super Squirrel, or any of the other characters from the funnybook series, very possibly because WB only owns 80% of the IP.)

4 • BACK ISSUE •Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue

Evolution Shaw! and Thomas’ original “Critter Commandos” pitch art (with some characters that didn’t make the first cut), plus early character prototype sketches by Scott, all from 1981. Originally seen in Alter Ego #72 and shared with BI by Scott Shaw! Note how the characters evolved by the time the core group premiered in CCAHAZC #1. Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew and Superman TM & © DC Comics.

Stretching my abilities, I toed the line regarding the more complicated approach to the art, despite the fact that the thinking behind it wasn’t at all what we had pitched. Looking back, it was apparent that DC didn’t trust a “bigfoot” cartoonist to sell comics. Between the anatomy (at that time in my career, kinda daunting) and the George Pérez-ish detail that were expected, I was always late for deadlines and eventually lost the gig of writing and drawing the comic I’d co-created. The Zoo Crew returned in 2007 for Bill Morrison’s and my Captain Carrot and the Final Ark, featuring slightly revised costumes I designed, although a new and simpler insignia for Captain Carrot was nixed at JOE ORLANDO the last minute. Since Michael Catron. © DC Comics. then, various versions of the Zoo Crew have made infrequent appearances in DC multiverse, with a variety of iterations, costume alternations, and stylizations with which they were depicted. At least I can’t blame Joe Orlando for those! Special thanks to Roy Thomas. See BACK ISSUE #93 for our previous coverage of Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew! And Shaw! fans, there’s more from Scott in this issue’s “Bronze-tastic World of HannaBarbera Comics” article, plus he’ll be back next ish as we explore DC’s Preview Comics of the 1980s. And don’t forget his “Oddball World of Scott Shaw!” column in each and every issue of our sister publication, RetroFan!

The Zoo Crew of Earth-O Joe Orlando’s interpretations of DC’s Captain Carrot characters, courtesy of Scott Shaw! Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew TM & © DC Comics.

Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue • BACK ISSUE • 5

by S t e v e n

Thompson

jay ward

june foray

bill scott

“Get Moose and Squirrel!” Those no-goodniks Boris and Natasha are up to… well, no good in this 1989 Rocky and Bullwinkle hand-inked, handpainted scene cel originally sold at West Hollywood’s Dudley Do-Right Emporium. Also shown are creator Jay Ward, June Foray (voice of Rocky), and Bill Scott (voice of Bullwinkle), excerpted from a 1985 group photo of the three. Cel and photos courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). Bullwinkle and Rocky © Ward Productions, Inc.

When we last left our stalwart heroes, Rocky the flying squirrel and Bullwinkle Moose had been seemingly safely ensconced at Western Publishing’s Gold Key Comics. That was at the (squirrel) tail end of 1962. Suddenly, as if by some existential form of four-color magic, the dauntless duo turned up again, in—of all places—Derby, Connecticut, some eight years later, for a seven-issue run at Charlton Comics before continuing on their Western way with numbering as if nothing had ever happened! To find out what mystery caused this bizarre sidestepping, don’t miss our next episode, “I Read the Moose Today,” or “What’s a Nice Squirrel Like You Doing in Comics Like This?” Well, no mystery, actually, and you don’t really need to wait until the next episode, either. Look at it this way. If Rocky and Bullwinkle had been a comedy team in old Hollywood, they might have started their careers at the top with MGM making their classics, but then, after diminishing box-office returns, gone on to release new, if somewhat lesser quality, pictures through Monogram. Then, when the public’s fickle tastes took them up again, MGM would come calling to take them back into the fold. Not that that would last long, either, and yet even here in the 21st Century, new adventures and reprints have arisen for Rocky and his friends, both in print and in animation. What’s all the fuss about, you ask? Just who are Rocket J. Squirrel and Bullwinkle J. Moose, anyway, and why do they simply refuse to stay in the past? The answer to that lies in the waning days of the Eisenhower Administration of the late 1950s.

6 • BACK ISSUE •Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue

Kil-glorious Art (top left) The first appearance of Rocky, Bullwinkle, and pals in comics, in Dell’s Four Color #1128 (Aug.–Oct. 1960). (top right) Bullwinkle horns in as the title star in the first issue of his own ongoing comic (Nov. 1962). Both covers by Al Kilgore. (bottom) This Bullwinkle daily comic strip (from Nov. 4, 1964) may predate B I’s Bronze Age purview, but Al Kilgore’s artistic wizardry is too good not to share. Courtesy of Heritage. © Ward Productions, Inc.

al kilgore

WOSSAMOTTA U’s BULLWINKLE HISTORY 101

The middle initial “J” in both characters’ names stands for Jay Ward. Ward and Alex Anderson, who had earlier teamed on early cartoon hero Crusader Rabbit, created Rocky and Bullwinkle as part of an unproduced TV series concept called The Frostbite Falls Review, about animals running their own television station. Ward and former Looney Tunes writer Bill Scott refined the characters and Ward’s company, Jay Ward Productions, created and produced Rocky and His Friends for ABC-TV beginning in 1959 and The Bullwinkle Show for another four seasons on NBC after it was determined that viewers felt more empathy for the big, dopey moose than for the plucky little squirrel. As noted, Rocky was a flying squirrel, seen perpetually in an aviator’s cap. Unlike real-life flying squirrels that can merely glide short distances, Rocky was a flying fool. He could buzz around like Superman and was, in fact, described in the show’s original opening as a “supersonic speedster.” In those days of sonic booms all over America, “supersonic” was quite the buzzword. Rocky was a boy scout type, a do-gooder, a moral compass, and a pretty smart young lad. In other words, although a heroic role model, he was actually kind of a dull character. This is why Bullwinkle, the lovable doofus with his own portable hat rack, became the favored POV character. A character biography credited to Jay Ward and Bill Scott states, “Despite his obvious sophistication, Rocky still retains his squirrel’s penchant for collecting nuts, as witness his partner, Bullwinkle.” Bullwinkle is the everyman character, seemingly not quite all there and yet a goodhearted and lucky soul, a loyal, goofy friend with a penchant for stumbling into adventures, many of which pitted him against spies. At the time of the series’ debut, the world was in the throes of the Cold War with the Soviets, and it seemed like spies were everywhere. Spies were especially big in popular fiction of the 1950s such as Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Thus it was that Jay Ward’s fictional Frostbite Falls also had antagonistic spies, in the person of diminutive Communist-type Boris Badenov, his taller female sidekick, Natasha

Fatale, and sometimes their more Nazi-like fearless leader, Fearless Leader. Basic good vs. evil adventures… with lots of puns and occasional breaking of the fourth wall. Every episode of the TV series was structured like an old-timey Vaudeville act, with a short, serialized, farcical adventure chapter with our main characters followed by brief “on-stage” shtick, then one of several hilarious backup features such as Dudley Do-Right, a dead-on sendup of the once-popular adventure genre that included O’Malley of the Mounted, Renfrew of the Mounted, and Sgt. Preston of the Yukon. The Do-Right segments proved to be popular enough that Dudley got his own spinoff TV series and eventually his own spinoff comic-book series as well. Amongst the other well-remembered backup features were Fractured Fairy Tales (narrated by the great character actor Edward Everett Horton), Aesop and Son (with Aesop played by Hollywood star Charlie Ruggles and Junior by Daws Butler), and Peabody’s Improbable History, featuring cartoon dog genius Mr. Peabody and his “pet boy,” Sherman. Without really trying, Ward and his multitalented writer-director Bill Scott, who also voiced Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, Mr. Peabody, and other Ward characters, created a slow-building mini-phenomenon. Their cartoon series proved to be immensely popular with kids, of course, but eventually intrigued and attracted the college-age and adult audiences that were appreciative of the humor of Nichols and May, Ernie Kovacs, Stan Freberg, and MAD magazine. The show’s writing, led by Scott and future MTM writers Chris Hayward and Allan Burns, was the key, with satirical silliness and puns being the order of the day. Equally important, though, were veteran radio performers June Foray, Paul Frees, William Conrad, Hans Conried, and Walter Tetley providing most of the other voices alongside Scott. Actress June Foray portrayed Rocky so well and in so many projects for so many years that her 2009 autobiography, Did You Grow Up With Me, Too? (for which I, myself, did transcription work!), features her squirrely alter ego posing with her on its front cover.

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Paul Frees was, in the long run, arguably the most successful voiceover artist of them all, doing everything from dubbing Godzilla movie characters into English to providing the computer voices in the movie, Colossus: The Forbin Project, and helping to bring to life beloved ad mascot Poppin’ Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy, in hundreds of TV commercials over a 20-year period beginning in 1965. Hans Conried was one of the great ham actors, and was known for both voice acting and live-action appearances such as starring roles in 1950s movies like The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T and The Twonky. On television, he was a semi-regular as “Uncle Tonoose” on Danny Thomas’ Make Room for Daddy, but also memorably guested on The Monkees, Gilligan’s Island, and many other television programs of the 1960s and 1970s. He was also the host of Jay Ward’s surreal silent comedy series, Fractured Flickers. Finally, we come to William Conrad. Conrad was unquestionably one of the greatest radio actors, able to play both gangsters and heroes so well that sometimes he was cast as both in a single episode of some series! His deep, commanding voice was perfect for his longest-lasting role as Marshal Matt Dillon in the original radio version of the perennial Western favorite, Gunsmoke. The problem was that he was kind of short and always rather hefty, thus his prospects in live-action roles were limited. By the 1970s, when gimmicky detectives were in, William Conrad finally became a star as the fat detective, Cannon. After that, he also played the portly literary detective Nero Wolfe, and I’ll let you guess which character he played on another hit series, Jake and the Fat Man. In between his radio and TV successes, though, Conrad was also the all-important mile-a-minute narrator of Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons!

FROM FROSTBITE FALLS TO FOUR COLOR

Dropping in At Derby (top) Charlton’s Bullwinkle and Rocky #1 (July 1970). (bottom) This fan club ad ran in Charlton’s Bullwinkle comics. © Ward Productions, Inc.

Why should you care about who did the voices when we’re supposed to be talking about comic books? Because the quickest way to determine if a Jay Ward comic book is well-done and successfully reflects its source material is to decide if you can “hear” the TV voices as you read along. The amazing voice work supplemented the self-aware writing and made the limited animation come off as charming rather than cheap. At the height of the show’s original TV success, the moose and squirrel appeared on the cover of a 1962 issue of the magazine TV/Radio Mirror. By that point, they had already appeared in comic books, popping up first at Dell, in that company’s legendary Four-Color Comics series, along with several tie-in spinoffs such as The Bullwinkle Mother Moose Nursery Pomes and Rocky and His Fiendish Friends. Along with children’s books and coloring books, there was also a surreal and memorably inventive Bullwinkle newspaper strip by Al Kilgore with humor that seemed aimed more at teens and grown-ups. It even featured guest appearances by Uncle Creepy and Cousin Eerie from the Warren Publishing black-and-white horror mags! Just prior to Western Publishing’s split with Dell Comics, which led to Western’s continuation as Gold Key Comics, Dell published one issue of Bullwinkle in his own title (July–Sept. 1962). Gold Key retained the license in the divorce case and published two more issues of Bullwinkle immediately following the split. Rocky and Bullwinkle also popped up in a couple issues of the long-running shoe store giveaway, March of Comics, also packaged by Western, but then the publisher retired the characters, even before the TV show went into syndicated reruns. It was those endless reruns, though—as well as General Mills cereal print ads, TV commercials, and the ever-present and beloved giant Bullwinkle hot air balloon in the annual televised Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade—that kept the characters in the public consciousness. Throughout the remainder of the 1960s, however, Jay Ward was represented in the comics format only in a series of Cap’n Crunch promotional mini-comics, a similar series featuring his other cereal mascots Quake and Quisp [see RetroFan #11], and two Gold Key issues headlining Ward’s last great cartoon character, George of the Jungle [see RetroFan #17, coming in October 2021], and George’s TV co-features, Tom Slick, and Super Chicken. (Hoppity Hooper, Ward’s 1964–1967 follow-up series to Bullwinkle, never made it into comics at all!) It was toward the end of the 1960s when the notoriously cheap Charlton Comics, thinking that the trend had passed, cancelled all of its original superheroes—Captain Atom, Peacemaker, Thunderbolt, etc.—and, instead, began surprisingly paying for various licensed characters such as Beetle Bailey, Underdog, Popeye, Snuffy Smith, and, yes, Bullwinkle and Rocky. The company even took out an ad in the trades, touting its new tie-in titles for “New Explosive Profit Power in the ’70s.” Being from Charlton, which was notorious for not paying its writers and artists very well, it goes without saying that those tie-ins varied widely in quality, with the cover gags often being the best parts of any issues. The very first thing one notices about the Charlton run of Bullwinkle and Rocky is that it suffers from a distinct lack of William Conrad. As noted, the voices were all-important to the series. Granted, there’s also no sign of Foray, Scott, or Frees, but it’s still easy enough to read all the characters’ dialogue in their familiar voices anyway. But Conrad’s rapid-fire narration can’t even be heard in the reader’s head as there simply aren’t many omniscient narrator captions anywhere to be found.

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The very first tale in Bullwinkle and Rocky #1 (July 1970) does open with a caption but it’s a simple, non-descript caption just to set the scene: “Rocky and Bullwinkle have been summoned to the Metropolis Museum by Professor Fossal, a famous archaeologist…” Try hearing that in Conrad’s frenzied voice. Doesn’t work. There are only five more captions in the entire issue. They didn’t even try. Still, character voices are a different story. The reader has no problem whatsoever being able to hear the comic dialogue in the stories in the voices of the show’s stars. Bill Scott IS Bullwinkle, Paul Frees IS Boris Badenov, and June Foray IS Natasha Fatale and Rocky! Best of all, the dialogue is so fun that presumably one could enjoy it even without ever having seen or heard an episode of the TV show. According to Greg Walker, son of Mort Walker and currently one of his Beetle Bailey newspaper strip creators, it was he who wrote some issues of Bullwinkle and also Dudley Do-Right for Charlton. Around that same time, Greg was also doing work on other Charlton titles including the Flintstones spinoff Barney and Betty Rubble and—naturally—the Beetle Bailey spinoff title, Sarge Snorkel, for which he was the main writer/artist throughout its entire run. Greg wasn’t able to access his records to find out exactly which Bullwinkle issues he did but told me, “I wrote a few scripts for the comic books. I don’t know who drew them.” He suggested that cartoonist Frank Johnson, who was doing a lot of work for Charlton at that time, as well, may have done at least one with him. (A few later stories, drawn in a more detailed style, were signed by Paul Fung, Jr.) When asked if he had received any guidelines at all from Jay Ward Productions or was left to his own devices, Greg replied, “I had no direction from Jay Ward on the scripts.” Bullwinkle in particular is better drawn at Charlton than he had been in some of the earlier comics. There, artists seemed to have real trouble getting his antlers consistently the right size, with some making them so small as to make the character look silly. Well, even sillier than he’s normally meant to look. Others even gave him what looked almost like a moose attempt at a pre-Beatles moptop, a look he had actually had in the original concept art by Alex Anderson. Most of the Charlton stories pit our heroes against Boris and Natasha and simply change the settings. They’re in a museum, in a park, in a play, in a zoo, in a cave, or in a barbershop, always with Boris and Natasha there attempting to capture our friends or do them in.

Surprisingly, sometimes Dudley Do-Right’s nemesis, Snidely Whiplash, is there as well! In three separate stories, in fact, Snidely and Boris are working together to nefarious ends. In issue #3 (Nov. 1970), Rocky stumbles on them at an auction house. After giving them the once over at the bottom of one page, he’s conked on the head by Natasha at the top of the next. In one of the few Charlton instances of “meta” of the type that abounded in the cartoon, Snidely asks, “Why didn’t you join us one page earlier?” Snidely turns up next in Bullwinkle and Rocky #5 (Mar. 1971) in a story called “The Frivolous Fish,” drawn by Paul Fung, Jr. He can also be seen in Fung’s “Gold Giving Gadget” in issue #6 (June 1971), albeit only in six panels and never mentioned by name. He’s nowhere to be seen at the end as the villains are captured. I suspect he may have been added in as an afterthought for some reason. He was definitely more than an afterthought to Dudley Do-Right, though, and appeared regularly in Dudley’s own Charlton title.

GOTTA DO-RIGHT

There are five major characters in the Do-Right cartoons. Dudley (voiced by Bill Scott) represents the ultimate stereotype and cliché of the boy scout-ish Canadian Mountie, although he is very much a world-class coward at heart. Dudley’s commanding officer is Inspector Fenwick (Paul Frees, also generally the narrator of Dudley’s adventures), whose daughter Nell (June Foray) is the apple of Dudley’s eye. Nell, however, consistently prefers Dudley’s horse, Horse. (Please don’t go there. This is a family magazine.) Meanwhile, the evil—and you know he’s evil because he dresses all in black with a big ol’ twirly mustache—Snidely Whiplash (Hans Conried) is the bane of Dudley’s existence and Snidely’s dull-witted minion, Homer (Scott again), is the bane of Snidely’s. Although Dudley Do-Right had appeared in his own stories in many of the Dell Rocky and Bullwinkle-related titles, they were always drawn in a strange, almost expressionistic style. Oddly enough, his Charlton stories, by adhering more to the TV model, would have to be described as better drawn. Cartoonist Frank Johnson signed all the Dudley Do-Right covers and most likely did the interiors as well (with a few non-Ward filler strips by the likes of George Wildman and the Nicholas/Alascia team).

Yukon Count on Me (left) Charlton’s first issue of Dudley Do-Right (Aug. 1970). Cover by Frank Johnson. (right) Dudley Do-Right foil Snidely Whiplash drops in to join Boris Badenov in making trouble for our intrepid heroes. From Charlton’s Bullwinkle and Rocky #3 (Nov. 1970). Pencils by Paul Fung, Jr. © Ward Productions, Inc.

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Back at Gold Key After Charlton’s shortlived run, Bullwinkle and Rocky returned to Gold Key and resumed Bullwinkle’s numbering with issue #3 (Apr. 1972), but the series reprinted old Dell covers and stories. With this issue, Bullwinkle #8 (July 1973), the title featured all-new covers and stories (for a while). Note that while its cover logo is “Bullwinkle and Rocky,” the title was officially named Bullwinkle. © Ward Productions, Inc.

The reason that Dudley even got his own comic book here was undoubtedly because he had his own cartoon series at that time as well. Based on the continued popularity of the character in syndicated reruns of The Bullwinkle Show, ABC revived the early ’60s Bullwinkle spinoff series The Dudley Do-Right Show for one year in its 1969–1970 Saturday morning season. After that, the show went into perpetual syndication with newly edited episodes. Charlton’s bimonthly Dudley Do-Right comic book also ran one year, from issue #1 (Aug. 1970) to issue 7 (Aug. 1971), and every story in every issue was a direct adaptation of one of the TV episodes. One can’t help but think that “Flicker Rock,” the first story in the first issue, was purposely chosen first out of a perverse desire to use the word “flick,” long frowned upon in comic books (but, despite rumors to the contrary, never actually banned) lest the ink run or a dark speck of wood grain be embedded in the printed page between the “L” and the “I.” This, of course, would prompt unsuspecting parent readers to see it… then say it! The almost word for word adaptation—with lots of appearances of “flick” and numerous variations thereof— seems to have run out of space toward the end as the final page rushes to its anticlimactic punch line in an entirely different setting than that of the episode as aired. As with their sister book, every issue of Dudley Do-Right was rounded out with a number of poster pages and coloring pages. Black-and-white 17x22 posters for coloring were even offered through mail order. Never known for their all-out marketing efforts, Charlton made an exception when it came to their licensed titles at that time, going so far as to set up separate official fan clubs for both Bullwinkle and Rocky and Dudley Do-Right. For $1.50, new members of each club could get a ring, a membership card, and a T-shirt “manufactured by a top maker!” For 75 cents more, a fan could choose to instead get a sweatshirt with a different character image.

THE ROCKY RETURNS OF MOOSE AND SQUIRREL

Presumably both clubs died out when Charlton let the license lapse, most likely due to less-than-expected sales in spite of their efforts. Barely missing a beat, though, Gold Key once again picked up the license that the publisher had dropped nearly a decade earlier and the first new quarterly issue of Bullwinkle, #3 (Apr. 1972), hit the stands featuring reprints from the earlier Dell comics. Rocky gets billed in a smaller font on the covers, but not at all in the official title. The cover art for that first issue is reprinted from the characters’ first comic book, Four-Color #1128 (Aug.–Oct. 1960), and the entirety of the contents also come from that issue. The main story features Gidney and Cloyd, the Moon

Back at Gold Key… Again! After a hiatus, Bullwinkle returned to Gold Key with issue #20 (Apr. 1979). Courtesy of Heritage, shown here is the original art to that issue’s cover, by an unnamed artist, guest-starring popular Jay Ward drop-in characters Gidney and Cloyd. © Ward Productions, Inc.

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Moose and Squirrel at Mighty Marvel (left) Bullwinkle and Rocky #1 (Nov. 1987), part of Marvel’s Star Comics imprint. Art by Ernie Colón and Jacqueline Roettcher. (right) Series writer Dave Manak was illustrating the title by the end of its run. Page 1 from issue #9. © Ward Productions, Inc.

Men who appeared from time to time in the cartoon, attempting to use magnetism to bring popular TV moose, Bullwinkle, to the Moon. While the Grand Comics Database credits the late, great Al Kilgore with most of the writing, they are quick to point out that he did not always do the artwork in spite of speculation to the contrary. Reprints from the long-ago Dell comics continued in the Gold Key series until issue #8 (July 1973), when readers were greeted by two new Bullwinkle and Rocky stories and two new Dudley Do-Right stories. All of them were very traditional, with the only thing close to a modern reference being Natasha making a recycling joke. After that there were more all-new but not particularly memorable issues and then Gold Key dropped the title once again with issue #19 (Mar. 1978). Apparently, Western Publishing still held onto the license, though, as Bullwinkle #20 (Apr. 1979) showed up on the stands about a year later, only to sputter to a quick and final halt after only four more issues of early 1960s reprints by Kilgore and others. With Gold Key Comics as a publisher following to its own demise soon afterwards, and Charlton, too, giving up the ghost, it seemed as though Bullwinkle and Rocky were being put out to pasture for good. But the original, hip Jay Ward cartoons were still in syndication and new audiences, young and old, continued to discover and rediscover them. Something else that was rediscovered in the 1980s was the concept of 3-D comics, drawn with red-andblue linework that pulled together when viewed under special red-and-blue glasses to give the effect of panels bursting right off the printed page. The trend had originally caught on in the 1950s, pioneered by Joe Kubert and Norman Maurer at St. John Publishing. It became a major craze throughout the industry but quickly ran its course and was largely forgotten. Although DC Comics released a 3-D Batman title at the height of Batmania in the mid-1960s, the craze never caught fire again and was relegated to the history books until the 1980s. But then along came Blackthorne. Blackthorne Comics was a short-lived publisher that rose from the ashes of Pacific Comics, one of the earliest publishers of the 1980s independent comics boom. Blackthorne typically specialized in licensed properties, most famously Dick Tracy, which they

offered in a series of regularly published trade paperbacks as well as a comic-book reprint series popular enough to go weekly at one point. While most of the company’s original material was forgettable, they did hit it big briefly by cashing in on the 1980s 3-D revival. Blackthorne combined its licensing with its 3-D books and put out 3-D editions of Kull, Star Wars, Sheena, Transformers, Sad Sack, the Flintstones, the California Raisins (their biggestselling and longest-lasting 3-D title!), and, yes, two issues of our old Moose and Squirrel friends. The first, 3-D Bullwinkle and Rocky #1 (a.k.a. Blackthorne 3-D Series #18), is dated March of 1987 and is written by Blackthorne editor John Stephenson and drawn by Kubert School graduate Jorge Pacheco. “Bullwinkle and Rocky holds a special place in my heart,” says Pacheco, who adds that that first 3-D issue was also his first major professional job. “I did all the artwork, including hand lettering. I also colored the covers by hand with Doc Martin dyes/watercolors.” I asked the artist what it was like to start out having to draw in 3-D and he replied, “There was no difference in drawing in 3-D than non-3-D. However, I did try to think three-dimensionally. I was still very green/young in my career. I’d just graduated from the Joe Kubert School and was very excited to work on the books. I was a fan of the Bullwinkle and Rocky cartoon, and the style of the show truly fit my emerging style.” Stephenson must have been a fan as well, as he does an impressive job of adapting the TV series’ most famous (or perhaps “infamous” as there was a lawsuit at the time) storyline, the story of the “Kirward Derby,” to fit the comics format.

“JUST LIKE DOING THE SHOW AGAIN!”

Less than a year after Blackthorne’s 3-D one-shot, another Bullwinkle #1 (Nov. 1987) turned up as part of Marvel’s short-lived Star line of kids’ comics [see BACK ISSUE #77]. Writer Dave Manak tells BACK ISSUE, “Bullwinkle and Rocky hold a very special place in my heart.” He opens his first story with a very Conrad-esque caption that is interrupted by Rocky and Bullwinkle breaking the fourth wall. “I could hear Conrad in my head when I wrote it,” Manak says. “I was channeling the whole show!” Sure enough, seven pages later, after no less than 21 captions,

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the story ends on a cliffhanger, with the narrator giving us two possible titles for the next episode, just like on the cartoon. Before that next episode begins, we even get a Fractured Fairy Tales and a Bullwinkle’s Corner, again mimicking the TV show’s format. Manak successfully captures all the familiar character “voices” right out of the gate. He throws in puns and little off-plot asides just like the series, too. In fact, the only disappointing factor in this reboot of Bullwinkle and Rocky is its artwork. The great comics artist Ernie Colón was certainly no stranger to children’s comics, having been the main artist associated with Richie Rich for many years by that point. His simple, stylish penciling had also enlivened sci-fi and horror tales at Warren as well as DC’s Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld. As inked here by longtime Harvey Comics inker Jacqueline Roettcher (and by Al Milgrom in later issues), his Bullwinkle and Rocky are given a less traditional, if still recognizable, look. “I’d known Ernie for years,” says Manak, “and had as much respect for him and his art as anyone. Ernie had his own slightly different version of the Ward style, but he could practically pencil and ink a whole story in one night! I really couldn’t complain about it a bit!” According to Manak, it was Ernie Colón who was behind his ending up on the new Bullwinkle and Rocky title at Star Comics in the first place. “I left my editorial job at DC after three years, not because I didn’t like it but because I wanted to start freelancing again. At Ernie Colón’s urging, I met Sid Jacobson, who was running Star Comics for Marvel, with the intent of starting a writing career. After showing my writing mettle on some other Star titles. Sid mentioned to me that Star was getting the rights to do Bullwinkle. I jumped at the chance to write it! Rocky and His Friends was absolutely my favorite show way back when! “For the most part,” he continues, “we did ‘visual scripts’ which were literally storyboards of each comic page, so we got quick feedback from anyone who had to give approval. After seeing my first script, Peter Piech—Rocky’s TV producer at the time for Ward and in charge of our Bullwinkle comic—told Sid that it was just like doing the show again!” The various side features also turn up again, of course. Dudley Do-Right returns in “The Return of Dudley Do Right Snidley Whiplash” in Bullwinkle #3 (Mar. 1988), written and drawn by Manak (with Milgrom inks) and again so true to its source, one can almost hear the old-timey silent movie music accompanying the story. The head scratcher, though, is why Snidely’s skin is colored such a dark green throughout. While his skin had always been a bit pale and tinted in the cartoons (if not always in his earlier comics appearances), here he looks as if he had wandered in from a Munsters story! After the first two Star Comics issues, the remaining seven simply had “Marvel” in the corner box, even though the stories inside continued to say, “Star Comics Presents” or “A Star Comics Presentation.” By the end of the too-brief nine-issue run, Manak himself was doing the art as well as the writing. Even before the end of the Star/Marvel run, though, a second 3-D issue surprisingly appeared from Blackthorne! Also by Stephenson and Pacheco, this one was 3-D Bullwinkle for President #1 (a.k.a. Blackthorne 3-D Series #50, Fall 1988) and is a follow-up to the team’s earlier “Kirward Derby” adaptation. It features the return of that spectacular

Was There Russian Election Interference? And you thought Howard the Duck’s run for the Oval Office was nutty! Photo cover to Blackthorne’s 1988 one-shot 3-D Bullwinkle for President #1, with art insert by Jorge Pacheco. © Ward Productions, Inc.

chapeau (named after the largely forgotten comedian Durward Kirby) while introducing the reader to a more up-to-date punny hat, the “Pia Fedora” (named after controversial but now-forgotten starlet Pia Zadora). Although the fact that it was in 3-D no doubt scared many fans away, the 28-page story found in the 3-D Bullwinkle for President issue turns out to be the most accurate and familiar portrayal to date of Ward’s now legendary characters in the comic-book format! The story opens with the Narrator leading us into the White House, with Bullwinkle already occupying the Oval Office. When his Veep, Rocky, asks what’s on the day’s agenda, the President replies, “First we have to do one of those nifty flashbacks so’s the readers will know how we got here.” The disappointed Narrator says, “I was supposed to say that.” And away we go, with all the familiar tropes, all the good and bad guys, puns and in-jokes galore, an epic plot, and Waldo-like full-page panels. Disappointingly, no more Bullwinkle comics were forthcoming from Blackthorne, but Marvel’s Bullwinkle and Rocky comic continued on until issue #9 (Mar. 1989), which featured Manak’s funny take on Bullwinkle as the superhero the Masked Avenger. After that, it seemed once again that the Ward characters were perhaps played out and would finally be retired. Still to come, though, were DVD releases of the classic episodes, two live-action feature films (Boris and Natasha in 1992 and The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle in 2000), author (and later Bullwinkle voice himself) Keith Scott’s bestselling book, The Moose That Roared: The Story of Jay Ward, Bill Scott, a Flying Squirrel, and a Talking Moose, several well-received new cartoon shorts, June Foray’s autobiography, and a rebooted, modernized streaming series, as well as tradepaperback reprints of the original Bullwinkle and Rocky comic books and finally all-new stories featuring the venerable Jay Ward properties—some even drawn once again by Jorge Pacheco! Hokey smoke! But all that’s behind us now, and retirement once again seems eminent. Ah, but to quote the immortal words of Rocket J. Squirrel, himself, “That trick never works!” STEVEN THOMPSON is Booksteve of Booksteve’s Library (http://booksteveslibrary.blogspot. com) and a dozen other blogs. He has written for Fantagraphics, TwoMorrows, Yoe Books, Bear Manor Media, and Time Capsule Productions.

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by M

TTV or Total TeleVision productions was created as an answer to Jay Ward Productions in Hollywood in 1960. Jay Ward had begun as an advertising vehicle for General Mills and its initial offering was Rocky and his Friends, starring Rocky, the flying squirrel and his pal, Bullwinkle Moose. The series premiered in 1959, and although popular, was not exactly what General Mills was really looking for in regard to a cartoon show to advertise its cereals. They were expecting a cute and kid-friendly funnyanimal show, and instead they got a show that featured hard-hitting satire of the Cold War and espionage. The people at General Mills’ advertising agency, Dancer Fitzgerald Sample or DFS, were in a quandary. They didn’t want to upset what Ward Productions was doing in Los Angeles, but at the same time, they didn’t trust some of the stuff they were doing. Indeed, some of the story ideas that Ward had come up with like Truthpaste were soundly rejected, and others that did go through, like the idea of counterfeit box tops, was not greeted well by General Mills, for fear that people might do the same with their box tops for promotions.

ark Arnold

THERE’S NO NEED TO FEAR, TTV IS HERE

Not plane, nor bird, nor even frog, just little ol’ me… …Underdog. And the series’ main cast and crooks, as illustrated by Jim Engel for an issue of Spotlight Comics’ Underdog series that went unpublished. Courtesy of the artist. Underdog © Classic Media, LLC.

So, TTV was formed in New York, with four principals who had advertising backgrounds, three of whom came from DFS. Their initial offering was a show called King Leonardo and His Short Subjects in 1960, which contained three segments. The first was The King and Odie, where King Leonardo and his handler Odie Cologne were constantly at odds with the King’s sibling Itchy Brother and his mob boss, Biggy Rat. The second segment was The Hunter, about a detective dog out to capture the Fox and stop him from doing his latest crime and inadvertently defeating him and sending him to jail with the help of Officer Flim Flanagan. The third segment was of Tooter the Turtle, a meek turtle who consistently wished he was something he wasn’t like an astronaut or a baseball player. Tooter would go visit Mr. Wizard the Lizard, who would grant him his wish, but always warn him of consequences. Tooter would invariably get himself in trouble in his new guise and always call out, “Help! Mr. Wizard!” for Mr. Wizard to rescue him and bring him back home. King Leonardo and his Short Subjects was syndicated as The King and Odie Show. Similar to how The Rocky Show was syndicated from Rocky and His Friends, The King and Odie Show was designed to be shown in either a 15-minute or a half-hour format. Early in the series’ NBC run, selected Columbia Pictures theatrical cartoons were aired on the program, some featuring The Fox and the Crow and Li’l Abner. These shorts were added to fill time when production of the early shows was delayed. The Columbia cartoons were featured during NBC showings of Hanna-Barbera’s Ruff and Reddy, but not included in subsequent syndicated versions of the series. Another segment of the original King Leonardo show was Twinkles (an orange elephant), which simultaneously appeared as a feature on Jay Ward’s Rocky and His Friends. The title character served as the mascot of Twinkles Cereal, a product of the show’s chief sponsor, General Mills. The 90-second Twinkles segments continued to air in syndication during the 1960s, and were presented in a 15-minute format under the title

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The King and Odie, but later phased out after a firefighter character THE UNDERDOG SHOW replaced the elephant as the cereal’s mascot. The segments also During Tennessee Tuxedo’s success, TTV was able to sell their third appeared during some NBC network rebroadcasts of Underdog. hit series. At first they weren’t sure what they were going to do King Leonardo was a hit show and did become a comic-book series for another encore. DFS and General Mills gave TTV a cryptic clue. and was heavily merchandised in many other ways. Two issues Gordon Johnson of General Mills said that “TTV’s next series had appeared under the Four Color banner (#1242 [inset] and 1278), an better be super and also to stay away from frogs.” TTV creators issue with no number from 1962, and then a four-issue series that Buck Biggers and Chet Stover weren’t sure what they meant, but was issued during 1962 and 1963. for a grand total of seven issues. they eventually discovered that Jay Ward’s next series after Rocky After King Leonardo ran its course in 1963, TTV sold its second and His Friends and The Bullwinkle Show had run its course was to series, titled Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales. This featured be a series called Hoppity Hooper, starring a frog! Ironically, some of the same old segments, plus the new segment Jay Ward’s Hoppity Hooper is the one Ward show that featuring Tennessee Tuxedo, a penguin, and his walrus most closely resembles a TTV show in style and tone, pal, Chumley, who are constantly trying to escape from despite the fact that they were created on opposite the Megapolis Zoo or invent some sort of get-richcoasts of the country. They did still share the common quick scheme or find an easier way to do assignments bond of being animated at Gamma Productions in given by Zookeeper Stanley Livingstone. Mexico City. When Tennessee and Chumley did get into some As for the super part, they figured that a supersort of fix, which usually happened at the midpoint hero should be their next offering, but a super what? of each two-part episode, they almost always escaped Chet Stover explained that he was in the room when the zoo in order to seek out the advice and help of a rerun of the I Love Lucy episode came on that featured Mr. Whoopee, the man with all the answers. Whoopee George Reeves as Superman. Inspiration struck him would explain their problem on the 3DBB, or three-dimensional blackboard. Tennessee and joe harris Chumley would then leave prematurely because they thought they had enough information. Other times, when they did heed Whoopee’s warnings of “But wait!”, they came up with an intelligent solution to their problems. Amazingly, there was never a Tennessee Tuxedo comic book, even to this day, although the concept would lend itself well to a comic. Even American Mythology, which has published new Underdog comic books in recent years, has never issued a Tennessee Tuxedo book, although Tennessee has appeared on occasional covers. New short episodes of Tennessee Tuxedo and Chumley were created in 2014 for YouTube by Chuck Gammage Animation in Toronto and Cartoon Lagoon Studios in New York. While creating these episodes, in 2013 the studio took a stab at a new Underdog episode called Underdog: The Adventure Continues. This episode was not completed, but one can view the results on YouTube.

“There’s no need to fear… Underdog will soon be here!” (top) Our courageous canine crusader is interviewed by Sweet Polly Purebread in this undated original illustration by Underdog character designer Joe Harris. Also shown are character sketches, storyboard drawings, and production materials related to the development of the TV show. Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions and iCollector. © Classic Media, LLC.

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as he watched to go with the opposite of a super man, and instead to a dog, an under dog. Underdog! That was it! Underdog character designer Joe Harris explained further in an interview that was published in Created and Produced by Total TeleVision productions, “My partner Chet was watching television one night. I Love Lucy was on. Desi Arnaz had just told Lucy that he was inviting George Reeves over for dinner. George Reeves was the man who did Adventures of Superman on television. So Lucy said, ‘Oh, my God,’ and immediately made a Superman costume. Later, she walked out on the fire escape so that she could come back through the window and surprise George Reeves. She never got in because the window was locked, and she was out there all night. As I said, my friend and partner Chet Stover saw the episode, and he never watches television. He just happened to watch it that night. The next day he said, ‘We’ve just got to create a superhero. A dog, and we have to animate him into these stories. It’s the perfect idea. So, he conceptualized the idea for Underdog. We all loved it, and started to do the production.” The Underdog Show turned out to be TTV’s most successful series, originally running for three years from 1964– 1967, and then reruns on Saturday mornings through 1973. The show debuted at 10 a.m. on October 3, 1964, on NBC. For its third season, Underdog switched networks to CBS, beginning on September 10, 1966, through September 1, 1968. It then returned to NBC, in reruns, from September 7, 1968 through September 5, 1970, and again from September 9, 1972 to September 1, 1973, ending an incredible nine-year run, even though no new episodes were produced after March 1967. As with Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales, the series almost didn’t happen. General Mills only greenlit each succeeding show if the proceeding show was a success. So, if King Leonardo and His Short Subjects was a flop, there would have been no Tennessee Tuxedo. Likewise, if Tennessee Tuxedo was a flop, there would have been no Underdog Show. Original Underdog Shows from 1964–1966 consisted of two Underdog segments each week, a Go Go Gophers segment, a World of Commander McBragg segment, and a Hunter segment each week. For the 1965 summer rerun months, there were two Underdog segments each week, a Jay Ward Aesop and Son segment, a Commander McBragg segment, and a Hunter segment each week. The 1966–1967 season consisted of two Underdog segments each week, a Go Go Gophers segment, a Commander McBragg segment, and a Klondike Kat segment each week. When Underdog went into reruns beginning in Fall 1967 through 1970, the show consisted of four Underdog episodes to form a complete story. Presumably, a repeat Commander McBragg was also part of the show. Go Go Gophers featured the two remaining gopher Indians on a reservation. Colonel Kit Coyote and Sergeant Okey Homa were in a constant battle with them over territory rights. Chief Running Board had to constantly translate Ruffled Feather’s gibberish talk for the Colonel and Sergeant. The Colonel was based upon President Theodore Roosevelt shouting “Bully!” as often as possible. The World of Commander McBragg was loosely based upon British actor C. Aubrey Smith, particularly in his role in the 1939 film The Four Feathers. Smith specialized in portraying rotund and pompous English military leaders. The idea behind McBragg’s propensity to lie or exaggerate came from The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. McBragg’s disinterested guest “really must be going,” but McBragg always coerces his guests

Look! Up in the sky! Underdog soars over the awestruck populace in this undated photo from New York City’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade… with a certain noteworthy cartoon Moose on his tail. to stay to listen to McBragg’s tall tale. After the tale is told, the guest says a punny summation of the story, to which McBragg responds with a subtle “Quite.” These segments also aired on Jay Ward’s shows. Klondike Kat gets its cues from Jay Ward’s Dudley Do-Right, who was also a Canadian Mountie who “always gets his mouse” and loudly proclaims, “I’ll make mincemeat out of that mouse!” The mouse is Savoir Fare, who in turn loudly proclaims that “Savoir Fare is everywhere!” Fare’s mute assistant is a dog named Malamutt. Klondike Kat’s superior is Major Minor, who gives Klondike his assignments. Following all of this, the 62-episode syndicated Underdog Show series that ran from approximately 1973 through 1995 through the DFS Program Exchange. This version also incorporated Tennessee Tuxedo episodes, plus added the originally unaired pilots of Gene Hattree and Cauliflower Cabby from 1964 and the three Singalong Family segments that originally aired on The Beagles.

UNDERDOG FLIES HIGH

Underdog was definitely TTV’s biggest hit, so much so that a gigantic balloon was commissioned to debut at the 1965 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, along with an accompanying float, plus the premiere of a brand new Thanksgiving themed four-part Underdog episode debuted after the parade that same day. Bill Smith, who works with the balloons and is a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Historian, contributed much valuable information about the balloon for the upcoming book, The TTV Scrapbook. In an interview excerpt, Smith said, “The project originally began as NBC television (who held broadcast rights to the Macy’s Parade) was also the network which broadcast the animated series The Underdog Show. “In the spring of 1965, conversations began with NBC and TTV about the prospect of Underdog becoming a balloon. Upon negotiating a deal, TTV artist Joe Harris submitted a series of drawings and a model sheet of the pose that would lend itself well from an aerodynamic standpoint, while capturing the spirit of the animated cartoon character, the flying pose. “Macy’s sent the artwork and some color renderings of the character over to Goodyear at the end of June 1965. The mechanical drawings were done and approved on July 25, 1965. Goodyear Engineer Sid Smith added the final touches and on July 29, 1965, the balloon began its production at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company’s Rockmart, Georgia, facility. Two and a half months later—the finished canine superhero was packed in a large wooden crate and trucked to Akron, Ohio, and the waiting hands of Goodyear. “Underdog [was] completed and ready for his first helium test flight at the Goodyear Wingfoot Lake blimp hangar in Akron, Ohio… held on Monday, October 11, 1965. It was a sunny yet windy morning and Underdog was inflated inside the very same hangar which was home to the Goodyear Blimps. A private inflation with all parties present and Goodyear’s photographers and film crew on the scene, Underdog awakened from the hangar and like a dog emerging from

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a colossal doghouse, and Underdog sailed out into the sunshine for his ‘test flight’ [with] 31 strong volunteers, many the production crew and Goodyear employees. “A vast amount of footage was shot in color and from this extensive footage, approximately one minute was edited for a film that would be distributed by the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company to NBC and other media sources and Macy’s for pre-parade publicity. “Underdog the balloon flies around the airfield and then returns to the hangar, where he is deflated and packaged for his big trip to New York for the his big day, as Underdog will become the 85th balloon constructed by Goodyear for the 39th Annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on November 25, 1965. “Underdog made his debut in the parade joined by other Goodyear balloons of Sinclair Oil Company’s Dino the Dinosaur, Borden’s Elsie the Cow, Bullwinkle, Donald Duck, Linus the Lionhearted, Popeye the Sailor Man, and the Happy Dragon. Eight balloons in all.” The balloon was so popular that it appeared on the cover of The New Yorker magazine the following year, and made appearances in such TV shows as Friends, movies such as Woody Allen’s Broadway Danny Rose, and a later TV commercial for Coca-Cola. The balloon was in the parade virtually every year until 1984. Some swear that they’ve seen the balloon in more recent times in the parade, but it isn’t true. Sadly, the balloon no longer exists.

UNDERDOG IN COMICS

Et tu, Brute? (top left) TTV’s The Colossal Show never made it onto the air, but that didn’t stop this Gold Key tie-in from being published! Cover to issue #1 (Oct. 1969). (top right) Hanna-Barbera’s similarly themed The Roman Holidays was aired, and got its own tie-in comic, which launched with this issue, #1 (Feb. 1973). (inset) A costume-change conundrum for Shoeshine Boy on artist Frank Johnson’s cover to Charlton’s Underdog #1 (July 1970). (bottom) Charlton’s Underdog Fan Club page, from inside. The Colossal Show © Classic Media, LLC. The Roman Holidays © Hanna-Barbera Productions. Underdog © Classic Media, LLC.

Strangely, no Underdog comic-book series would appear during the series original run, but the merchandising for TTV shows was done by a man named Peter Piech of P.A.T. He also did the merchandising for the Jay Ward shows, and after King Leonardo and Rocky and His Fiendish Friends and Bullwinkle, comic books were apparently off the agenda as no comic books appeared for Hoppity Hooper or, as stated before, Tennessee Tuxedo. Comic-book fortunes were to change for Jay Ward when two issues were attempted for their next series, George of the Jungle, but this series had nothing to do with General Mills or DFS or Gamma Animation. Ward had freed himself from all of those restraints, and after George had much success and comic books of various Quaker cereal characters including Cap’n Crunch and Quisp and Quake. TTV meanwhile, continued with General Mills, DFS, and Gamma, and produced The Beagles, their first flop. Precious little merchandise came out from this series, much less a comic book. About the only merchandise that saw the light was a soundtrack album and 45 RPM single. Bizarrely, TTV’s final sale ended up only being issued as a comic book. The Colossal Show was scheduled to become TTV’s next series, and before the order to produce a comic book was cancelled, the TV series was, and so the comic book is the only piece of evidence that the series even existed. A pilot film was supposedly made through New York’s Terrytoons studios as opposed to Gamma, but to date this film has never surfaced, either lost in the vaults or possibly destroyed. There are four main Colossal Show stories in the comic book: “The Emperor’s Birthday” (10 pages), “A Day in the Life of…” (4 pages), “The Banquet” (6 pages), and “The Sport of Emperors” (6 pages). Judging from the four stories, The Colossal Show probably would have been a colossal dud, as it’s not particularly funny and relies on the G-rated cliches of the Roman Empire showing how Mr. Colossal would book acts to see in the Colosseum. The acts were typically impersonations of 20th Century celebrities. Mr. Colossal was supposed to be a Sgt. Bilko con artist type, but without the snappy dialog, it just falls flat. The comic book must have sold well, as plenty of copies are available for sale and it doesn’t command that high of a price, so if you want to check out what almost was, it’s fairly easy to get. To see what an animated show might have turned out like, one can check out Hanna-Barbera’s Roman Holidays, which suspiciously crept onto the Saturday morning schedule three years after The Colossal Show fizzled. There was also a Gold Key comic book for this series as well.

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Simon Says… (top) Original Frank Johnson cover art to Charlton’s Underdog #8 (Sept. 1971). (bottom) Original pencil layout for the cover of Gold Key’s Underdog #1 (Mar. 1975). Artist unknown. Courtesy of Heritage. (inset) Note that there were considerable alterations made to the rendering of Underdog and the position of the phone booth on the final, published cover. © Classic Media, LLC.

Then, an amazing thing happened. Although new TV series were not being produced by either Jay Ward or TTV, their reruns were doing exceptionally well in the ratings. So much so that P.A.T. took it upon themselves to merchandise the characters much better than they ever did during each series’ original airings. Underdog #1 debuted with a cover date of July 1970 from Charlton Comics. The series lasted for ten issues through January 1972. The stories were taken from original TV scripts by Buck Biggers and Chet Stover and drawn by Frank Johnson. Johnson is best known for his lengthy run on Mort Walker’s Boner’s Ark comic strip, and was well-suited to draw the Underdog characters. As Underdog’s popularity continued to grow, a second series, this time through Gold Key Comics, was issued. A Kite Fun Book starring Underdog was given a test run in 1974, and the success of this led to a new series that began with the issue cover-dated March 1975, which ran for 23 issues through February 1979. Four Underdog issues of March of Comics also appeared during this period. The majority of these issues were written by Steve Skeates or John Albano. Art was mostly by George Wildman, especially on the later issues. Skeates explained his involvement with the title in highlights from an interview with John Schwirian from BACK ISSUE #33 (Apr. 2009): “I may have been indulging in a bit of hyperbole when I suggested that Underdog was my favorite of all the characters I’ve ever written for, but then again, the characteristics of this humble superhero had so much to offer—a gentle character, gentle stories, short tales, and a foregone conclusion, and best of all, the rhymes! It was so obvious that I was having so much fun here that Steve Gerber (who was in the group I was palling around at the time) created in his Howard the Duck book the character Winky-Man, so that he too could experience the fun of writing someone who spoke in rhyme. “Furthermore, the relative shortness of these stories combined with the rhyming-ness to make each adventure into a poem.” Though Skeates was having fun with the series, he explained why he left. “There were occasional downsides to this series as well. The main reason being a certain amount of editorial dumbheaded-ness with editorial changes would affect the poetry I was shooting for, like (for example) in ‘Antler’s Away’ in Underdog #22 (Dec. 1978), a tale in which our hero actually grows antlers and where Underdog is supposed to say, ‘Simon and Cad are going to jail! It’ll be some time before they get loose! It’s great to be Underdog again! For a while there I looked like Under Moose!’ Some brilliant editorial blockhead decided to change the word ‘loose’ to ‘out.’ Do you see what that does? That one still stings!” Two new issues of Underdog appeared in 1987, produced by the shortlived publisher Spotlight Comics. There was supposed to be a third issue that was advertised, but it was never published. Spotlight editor Jim Main discusses how they obtained the rights: “Spotlight acquired the Total Television package simply by purchasing the rights to use the characters. [Publisher] Richard Maurizio met with those in charge of the company and showed what Spotlight was doing with the Terrytoons characters and they liked what they saw. The package was good for a two-year period, with the option to renew. Sadly, it only lasted for two issues. There may have been stories in development for the next couple issues.” Artist Jim Engel adds his experiences while freelancing for Spotlight: “I don’t actually know how Underdog ended up at Spotlight. I can’t even Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue • BACK ISSUE • 17

Spotlight on Underdog (top) Courtesy of artist Jim Engel, his original cover art to Spotlight’s Underdog #1 (1987). (bottom) Engel’s art for the cover to Spotlight’s Underdog #3 appeared in this ad, which announced the renumbering of the series to a new #1, but Spotlight folded before it could see print. Ye ed was slated to script at least one story in this unrealized issue. © Classic Media, LLC.

UNDERDOG BRONZE AGE COMIC CHECKLIST

recall how I got connected with them, though I think they approached me, and I was thrilled. What really appealed to me was doing cover art for comics featuring theatrical and (particularly) TV cartoon characters I’d grown up with. Some of them (mostly the TV ones), in my view, had never been in comics that were drawn very well, and I felt my style could enhance them. I was also totally free to come up with whatever I wanted to draw for the covers.” Main continues by explaining his duties on the series: “If memory serves, I believe I scripted one of the stories for the second issue that had Underdog meeting up with Fearo again. I liked the character and since I’m a big classic King Kong nut, I enjoyed doing that. I believe that I had editorial duties at that point with issue #2 as well. Much of my position at Spotlight was traffic control—seeing that assignments were on time... pairing creative teams… checking out submissions and that sort of thing!” Engel adds, “I did the cover for Underdog #1 (which was jim engel published), and also for #3, which wasn’t (though they ran my final art for #3—uncolored—as a teaser ad in #2). For what it’s © Jim Engel. worth, I hated the ‘coloring’ on my Spotlight covers. I’d supplied color guides for all of them, but… “I also did the cover to Mighty Heroes #1, which was published, and the cover for #2, which wasn’t. I painted a color cover for the Mighty Mouse and Friends Christmas Special, which was published. I did the covers for Heckle & Jeckle #1 and Tom & Jerry and Friends #1 (neither of which were published; I’d also penciled T&J #2’s cover).” So, what happened to Spotlight Comics? Even Main doesn’t completely know. He recalls, “I wish I knew the answer myself! The company was expanding too quickly! Just prior to this Spotlight was greenlighted to bring the MGM cartoon characters into comics under its banner! I was excited to get a chance to script Droopy and Screwy Squirrel! I just think the bottom line was that funds were being dispersed to pay three different companies, Viacom, ITV, and now MGM or whoever owned those characters then, and not realizing what the repercussions would be. “I was proud though to see books I was involved in available in various newsstands and comic shops! It was a dream come true for this old fanboy!” Engel adds, “As to why Spotlight folded, I don’t know. I do know there are people who were owed money for stories and art and never got it, and/or didn’t get art returned. I’m pretty sure I was paid for everything I did, but I was very tenacious about getting my never-published originals back, and I did.” [Editor’s note: Spotlight Comics publisher Richard Maurizio discusses the company’s rise and demise in this issue’s Mighty Mouse article.] Blackthorne released an Underdog in 3-D one-shot in 1988 (with art by Jorge Pacheco), reprints of the Charlton Comics series appeared under the Harvey Comics banner in the early 1990s, and in recent times, American Mythology has reprinted both the Charlton Comics and Gold Key Comics series, along with some brand new stories. American Mythology even published a story originally intended for the unpublished Underdog #24 from Gold Key. The success of Underdog lives on, with the character even appearing in a live-action film from Disney in 2007. If you ever think that the memories of Underdog are on the wane, have no fear, Underdog is here!

• Underdog (Charlton) #1 (July 1970)– 10 (Jan. 1972) • Underdog (Gold Key) #1 (Mar. 1975)– 23, (Feb. 1979) • Kite Fun Book (1974) • March of Comics #426, 438, 467, 479 • Underdog (Spotlight) #1–2 (1987) • Underdog in 3-D (Blackthorne) #1 (June 1988)

Note: Later Underdog comic books were published by Harvey and American Mythology, but they fall outside the scope of this article.

MARK ARNOLD is a pop-culture historian with over 15 books to his credit on subjects ranging from The Monkees, The Beatles, Underdog, Pink Panther, Cracked, Disney, Dennis the Menace, and more. He is currently at work on another Disney book and a book on the history of MAD.

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by M i c h a e l

Eury

Anyone who attempts to produce a comic book based for Ruff and Reddy, the first of what would become upon a Hanna-Barbera television cartoon is working a legion of Hanna-Barbera Productions cartoon from a deficit, as H-B’s cartoons are as distinguished series for television. Curtin’s snappy music blended by their audio tracks as much as they are their iconic perfectly with Bill and Joe’s lyrics, inciting viewers to “Get set, get ready, here come Ruff and Reddy.” characters and limited animation. As the H-B family of shows grew, their sing-along Hanna-Barbera sound effects are legendary. If I mention “Kabong,” “Scrambling Feet,” themes wisely identified their stars for the kids of the 1960s growing up in front of the tube: “Falling Object Whistle,” “Bugle Charge,” “The biggest show in town is Huckleberry or “Bongo Feet and Zip,” chances are Hound for all you guys and gals. The you will “hear” those sounds and biggest clown in town is Huckleberry remember specific scenes from old Hound with all his cartoon pals.” cartoons, even though these sound “Yogi Bear is smarter than the effects were often interchangeable average bear. Yogi Bear is always in among H-B series. the ranger’s hair.” Equally important, if not more “Flintstones. Meet the Flintstones. so, are the Hanna-Barbera theme They’re the modern Stone Age family. songs. While their later show themes From the town of Bedrock they’re a might not be as well remembered, page right out of history.” each of the earlier H-B toons Everything you needed to boasted a theme song that you know about these characters was simply cannot forget. Most were hoyt curtin laid out for you in song. And while composed by the late, great Hoyt The Adventures of Jonny Quest’s Curtin, who was scoring music for television commercials when he was tapped in 1957 theme had no lyrics, none were necessary thanks to by animation pioneers Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera, Curtin’s jazzy score, with its pulse-pounding drum who had just left MGM and their Academy Award®- and trombone intro that screamed, “Excitement winning creation Tom and Jerry, to score their lyrics awaits ahead!”

From the Stone Age to the Bronze Age (left) Charlton’s The Flintstones #1 (Nov. 1970). Cover by Ray Dirgo. (center) Marvel’s The Flintstones #1 (Oct. 1977). Cover by Roger Armstrong and Joe Prince. (right) Blackthorne’s The Flintstones 3-D #1 (1987). Cover by Jorge Pacheco. Who did it best? That’s up to Yabba Dabba You. TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions

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Smarter Than the Average Barbera (and Hanna, too) (left) Animation pioneers William Hanna (seated) and Joseph Barbera (standing) meeting with some of their fabled toon titans in a publicity photo from the ’60s. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions (www.ha.com). (right) The first Hanna-Barbera comic book, Four Color Comics #937 (Sept. 1958), starring Ruff and Reddy. Art by Harvey Eisenberg. TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

And the voices! From the main characters—often a takeoff of an established television or film star—to the incidental characters, and even the hilarious asides from The Flintstones’ prehistoric beasts doubling as household appliances, no speaking part on an H-B cartoon, always performed by A-list voice talent, was miscast or wasted. Their witty dialog was courtesy of top-notch writers like Charles Shows, Tony Benedict, Warren Foster, and Mike Maltese, which, according to cartoonist Scott Shaw!, “was essential to all those scenes where characters were only moving their mouths and eyelids.” Sure, it’s easy to take potshots at the produced-on-ashoestring budget of these early H-B toons (really, how many times is Dino going to chase Fred past that same living room chair and window?), but each character’s respective world—from the homey cave dwellings of The Flintstones to the cloud-piercing domiciles of The Jetsons—conveyed a universe among itself of smartly designed figures and creatures (where most males, including animals, had five o’clock shadows) and their environments. H-B cartoons may not have been as lushly animated as Disney’s opulent theatrical releases, but from the cactus-dotted prairies of Quick Draw McGraw to the colorful aquatic park of Squiddly Diddly to the mind-blowing galaxies of Space Ghost, each H-B toon was packed with eye appeal. And let’s go ahead and address the elephant (or, in The Flintstones’ case, the wooly mammoth) in the room: Many have criticized Hanna-Barbera for their appropriation of live-action sitcoms and other media as subject matter for their series (The Flintstones = The Honeymooners, Top Cat = Sgt. Bilko, Quick Draw McGraw’s El Kabong = Zorro, Scooby-Doo = The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and the list goes on and on). What some consider a lack of inspiration was, in my estimation, a brilliant modus operandi: adapting a concept familiar to adults to a medium that catered to kids, thereby attracting a dual demographic. Like the theatrical Looney Tunes shorts that preceded them, the early H-B toons were watched by both children and

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adults, particularly programs like The Flintstones, The Adventures of Jonny Quest, and The Jetsons, which were originally produced for primetime, nighttime viewing. No wonder the world of comic books came calling, especially once H-B’s TV properties became popular in the early 1960s. But was it a fool’s errand to attempt to translate these sensory-stunning cartoons into the quiet confines of the four-color world, where the only sound produced by a comic book is the rustling of a page turn?

H-B COMICS IN THE SILVER AGE

Before we begin with our roundup of the Bronze Age’s Hanna-Barbera comics library, let’s detour back to the Silver Age, where Joe and Bill’s babies first ventured onto magazine racks when comic books were bountiful in newsstands, drugstores, and grocers (oh, how we miss those days). Discounting MGM’s Tom and Jerry, the first comic book published to feature Hanna-Barbera characters was Dell’s Four Color #937 (Sept. 1958), starring Ruff and Reddy. And what a beautiful comic it was, thanks to the artwork of Harvey Eisenberg, who had come from the world of animation, originally hired by Joe Barbera himself at the MGM cartoon studio. In rendering Ruff and Reddy’s encounters with funny animals ranging from a pink elephant that’s run away from the circus to a big brown bear bullied by a baby-sized bruin, Eisenberg’s artistry was a sheer delight, illustrating the characters perfectly on-model and employing a range of camera angles and brisk storytelling that replicated the often-frenetic pace of your typical H-B TV toon. Over the next few years, as Bill and Joe rolled out new characters on the tube, those TV funny animals quickly followed in Ruff and Reddy’s pawsteps to the pages of comic books, including Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, Top Cat, and Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks. The modern Stone Age family joined in on the fun when the Flintstones debuted in comic books in Dell Giant #48 (Sept. 1961) and soon spun off into their own title. Each comic

GO FLY A KITE! From the late 1950s through the 1970s, Western Publishing produced numerous Kite Fun Comics, miniature (seven-by-five inch) 16-page fullcolor comic books about kiting that starred licensed television and movie characters, and in a few cases, historical figures. These were giveaways by major utilities companies and included images of spokes“person” Reddy Kilowatt. Kite Fun Comics’ stars were varied, including Ben Franklin and Thomas Edison, Disney’s Donald Duck and Brer Rabbit, the Fonz, Bugs Bunny and the Road Runner, Underdog, Pink Panther, the Brady Bunch, Popeye, Smokey Bear, and Eight Is Enough. At least eight Hanna-Barbera Kite Fun Comics were produced: Ruff and Reddy (1957), Huckleberry Hound (1961), Yogi Bear (1962), Top Cat (1963), Magilla Gorilla (1964), Mr. Jinks, Pixie, and Dixie (1965), Secret Squirrel (1966), and Dastardly and Muttley (1969).

Eye-Catchers

Early Gold Key Hanna-Barbera releases employed flashy cover graphics and colors to capture readers. TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

featured multiple short stories, some starring the headliner and others featuring other H-B properties such as Augie Doggie, Yakky Doodle, and Snooper and Blabber. Instead of being stilted by the soundless, static medium of comic books, the H-B critters and cutups thrived in their Dell Comics adaptations. But you really can’t thank Dell itself for that. In BACK ISSUE in #52’s Scooby-Doo and #59’s Hanna-Barbera at Marvel Comics articles, writer/interviewer Mark Arnold reported that the editorial content for Dell’s H-B books (and Dell’s other animation-inspired comics such as the Disney and Warner Bros. franchises) was produced by Western Publishing and Lithography. As explained by comics and cartoon writer (and pop culture historian extraordinaire) Mark Evanier on his News From Me blog (www.newsfromme.com/iaq/iaq07/), Western obtained the animation licenses and produced the comic books from their Los Angeles and New York offices. Shepherding the production of the H-B comics was Western’s West Coast editor, the legendary Chase Craig. In the mid-1940s Craig segued from working at Warner Bros. Cartoons to Western Publishing and began a long career writing and editing for the company, until retiring in the mid-1970s. Much of what comic collectors herald as the best animation-based comic books of the Golden and Silver Ages, including Carl Barks’ lauded Disney Duck tales, were produced under Craig’s editorial guidance. Western Publishing’s L.A. office afforded Craig access to the same writers and artists known for producing the cartoons themselves, including the aforementioned Harvey Eisenberg, whose beautiful work on everything from Ruff and Reddy to The Flintstones epitomized him as the premier artist of Hanna-Barbera comic books. “Harvey gave all of the characters volume and weight, important but very difficult to do,” says Scott Shaw! Other animators, such as Kay Wright, Pete Alvarado, Phil de Lara, and Tony Strobl, also produced H-B comic book stories during the 1960s. As Mark Evanier told Mark Arnold in BI #52, “Western Publishing often would employ a guy who wrote on a TV show to write the comic book and, money aside, I think move of them preferred the comics. They didn’t have the network overseeing everything and making them change this or that. They didn’t have… the Hanna-Barbera story unit decreeing how the show would be done. They didn’t have the animation restrictions.” Those freedoms at times unshackled the Hanna-Barbera pantheon from its traditional settings, and under the Dell Comics banner readers would see specially themed H-B comics (in the pages of Four Color or Dell Giant) such as Huck and Yogi Winter Sports and Yogi Bear Birthday Party. Another interesting example is Four Color #1349 (Jan. 1962), titled Yogi Bear Visits the U.N. Its cover is a mash-up of an illustration of the smarter-than-the-average bear wolfing down a sandwich (from a briefcase, but probably pilfered from a pic-a-nic basket) while seated in front of a photo of New York’s United Nations building. Inside, Yogi petitioned the U.N. for sovereignty for Jellystone Park as the nation of Bearsylvania.

A financial dispute led Dell’s president Helen Meyer to sever ties with Western Publishing and Lithograph in 1962, the results being Dell’s establishment of its own comics editorial department and Western Publishing’s launch of its Gold Key Comics imprint. With Western maintaining the licenses for most of the animation powerhouses, Dell introduced other cartoon properties to its line, such as Larry Harmon’s Laurel and Hardy (predating the HannaBarbera-produced Laurel and Hardy TV cartoon), Alvin, and Millie the Loveable Monster. Meanwhile, the Hanna-Barbera (and Warner Bros., and soon, Disney and other television properties) comics

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New TV Shows, New Comics Among the final Hanna-Barbera titles published by Western (Gold Key): Wacky Races, Scooby-Doo… Where Are You!, The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan, and The Funky Phantom. TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

H-B’s FANTASTIC FOUR AND SUPER FRIENDS Are Space Ghost and Birdman Hanna-Barbera’s most famous superheroes? Original ones, perhaps, but let’s not forget H-B’s forays into the Marvel and DC Universes. First came Hanna-Barbera’s Fantastic Four, which premiered in ABC’s Fall 1967 Saturday morning lineup and stuck around for years in reruns and syndication. Alex Toth streamlined Jack Kirby’s characters for television, nicely complementing Toth’s other H-B “Super Adventure” characters. No comic book was published based upon the FF TV series, outside of a Stan Lee/Kirby truncated reprint tying in to Fantastic Four © Marvel. Super Friends © DC Comics. the show’s debut in the 1967 one-shot comic book America’s Best TV Comics. Toth and Hanna-Barbera adapted DC’s Justice League of America into its long-running Super Friends, adding teenage heroes in training (Wendy and Marvin, the Wonder Twins) and H-B-mandated cute pets (Wonderdog, Gleek) to the mix. Super Friends premiered in 1973 and continued in several incarnations through 1985. DC published a Super Friends tie-in comic from 1976 through 1981, where writer E. Nelson Bridwell, notoriously a stickler for continuity, interwove the Hanna-Barbera and DC Comics concepts. 22 • BACK ISSUE •Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue

transitioned from Dell to Gold Key, with ongoing titles maintaining their existing numbering. The cover designs of Gold Key’s new H-B titles often differed from the gag-oriented covers previously released by Dell. Splashy uses of colors, altered titles and graphics, and inventive layouts attracted the eye to these funnybooks amid the crowded racks. Occasionally, a superbly illustrated painted cover would grace one of the H-B books. Gold Key’s H-B line quickly expanded, with oneshots or ongoing titles such as The Jetsons, Yakky Doodle and Chopper, Snagglepuss, Pebbles Flintstone, Lippy the Lion and Hardy Har Har, the anthology Hanna-Barbera Bandwagon, and Magilla Gorilla added (how many of you remember Magilla’s presidential bid, against opponent Yogi Bear, in 1964?). Obscure H-B concepts (failed show pitches, actually) such as the Flintstonesish Cave Kids and spooky, kooky, Charles Addamsinspired Mr. & Mrs. J. Evil Scientist also headlined comic titles (Mr. and Mrs. J. Evil Scientist did manage a few appearances in H-B shorts, starting with Snagglepuss). And interestingly, Warren Publishing, best known for its horror magazines Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella, had the World’s Fair comic-publishing license in 1964 and released a Hanna-Barbera one-shot, The Flintstones At the New York World’s Fair, although its editorial contents were created by the Western/Gold Key office. As Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera developed new series for television, Gold Key continued to adapt their adventures in print. In the mid-1960s, HannaBarbera Productions twice partnered with other companies to produce syndicated cartoons featuring new, kid-friendly adventures of two classic comedy duos from a previous generation—and both series inspired spinoff comic books. H-B joined forces with Larry Harmon, the man behind Bozo the Clown, to produce 39 episodes of The Laurel & Hardy Show for the 1966–1967 season, with several animated shorts comprising each episode. Harmon himself voiced whimpering Stan Laurel, while Jim MacGeorge voiced grumpy Oliver Hardy. (Harmon and MacGeorge would later reprise those roles on another H-B series when Laurel and Hardy guest-starred on The New Scooby-Doo Movies.) David L. Wolper Television Sales distributed the show. Gold Key Comics produced two issues of a Laurel and Hardy tie-in comic in late 1966 and mid-1967, with Pete Alvarado among the series’ artists. Neither issue featured the Hanna-Barbera legend on its cover,

FANTASY TEAM-UPS Ross Pearsall’s excellent blog Super-Team Family… The Lost Issues (braveandboldlost.blogspot.com) features a different fantasy cover each and every day, teaming characters from different companies. In the fall of 2020, for “issue” #3100 (!), Ross united Silver Age Marvel characters with Hanna-Barbera’s Super-Adventure heroes for this amazing cover, headlined by a Galaxy Trio/ Fantastic Four combo!

Characters © HBP/Marvel. Courtesy of Ross Pearsall.

instead bearing Larry Harmon’s name, although the artwork was clearly Hanna-Barbera-inspired. Fast forward to 1972, when DC Comics picked up the license and produced one issue of a Laurel and Hardy comic, produced by John Albano, Mike Sekowsky, and Henry Scarpelli. A second issue (its Joe Orlando-drawn cover guest-starring Superman) and a digest were planned by DC but were not published. Hanna-Barbera Productions also partnered with RKO and Jomar Productions to produce 39 episodes of the syndicated The Abbott and Costello Cartoon Show, which first aired during the 1967–1968 season, each episode featuring a collection of shorts. Bud Abbott voiced his straight-man character, with Stan Irwin screaming “Aaaaa-bbott!” as the voice of loveable bumbler Lou Costello, since Costello himself had passed away. Charlton Comics picked up the Abbott & Costello license in 1967—predating its licenses for the classic Hanna-Barbera properties, which you’ll read about shortly—and published 22 issues of the series, concluding in 1971, branding the comic “A Hanna-Barbera Production” on its covers (see above). Then-fledgling writer Steve Skeates was the series’ original writer and provided scripts that some considered funnier than the TV cartoon, to the delight of original editor Dick Giordano. Artists on the comic included Henry Scarpelli, Bill Fraccio, Tony Tallarico, and Frank Johnson. America’s fascination with caped crusaders in the mid-’60s inspired the creation of numerous superhero cartoons, followed by Gold Key one-shots of Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles, Atom Ant, and Secret Squirrel. A beloved Gold Key series among superhero collectors was Hanna-Barbera Super TV Heroes, an ongoing anthology featuring short stories of Space Ghost, the Herculoids, Birdman, Mighty Mightor, Young Samson, Shazzan, and the Galaxy Trio. The superhero craze was followed by H-B Saturday morning action/adventure series, some animated, some a hybrid of animation and live-action. As a result Gold Key released a New Adventures of Huck Finn one-shot and two issues of Hi-Adventure Heroes, an anthology starring the Three Musketeers, the Adventures of Gulliver, and the Arabian Knights. Other H-B Gold Key titles premiering in the late 1960s were The Banana Splits, Wacky Races, and the anthology Hanna-Barbera Fun-In (home of Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines, Penelope Pitstop, Motormouse and Autocat, the Harlem Globetrotters, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kids, and more). Amid these new properties, several H-B stalwarts continued throughout the late 1960s under the Gold Key imprint, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Yogi Bear, Top Cat, Huckleberry Hound, and Magilla Gorilla. It’s unlikely that the little kids just discovering those books realized it, but their new content, including cover art, was disappearing, with reprints from earlier issues filling their pages.

ZOINKS! IT’S THE BRONZE AGE!

As the calendar turned to 1970, beginning what we now call the Bronze Age of Comics, at first it seemed like business as usual for Western’s Hanna-Barbera titles at Gold Key. The success of Saturday morning’s Scooby-Doo… Where Are You!, which debuted in 1969, created a wave of H-B (and other) Saturday morning TV shows featuring ghost-chasing young people solving not-too-scary mysteries. Gold Key’s line reflected this craze, adding on December 18, 1969 the first issue of the comic book Scooby-Doo… Where Are You! (retitled Scooby-Doo… Mystery Comics with issue #17), which ran for 30 issues (before being revived elsewhere, time and again). Later joining Scoob and his far-out friends in the Gold Key lineup were the H-B properties The Funky Phantom in 1972 and The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan in 1973. Funky Phantom cribbed unabashedly from ScoobyDoo, adding a Revolutionary War-era poltergeist to its cast of trouble-tackling teens, and Chan Clan was H-B’s updating of the classic enigna-buster of novels and movies, Charlie Chan, where the venerable Asian sleuth (voiced in the cartoon by veteran actor Keye Luke, who played Number One Son way back when in those old Charlie Chan movies) was joined by his large family of with-it teenage and preteen offspring. All three comics adeptly translated their source material to the four-color pages thanks to the efforts of creative personnel including Phil de Lara, Jack Manning, Frank Hill, Warren Tufts, Dan Spiegle, and Mark Evanier. As he explained in BACK ISSUE #52, Evanier had just started writing cartoon comics for Western editor Chase Craig when he was tapped to script the first issue of Chan Clan. Before long, the Scooby-Doo assignment landed in his lap, where he was first paired with Dan Spiegle, with whom Evanier would often collaborate in the years to come. “The [first Scooby] story I wrote was called ‘Scream Star,’” Evanier said in BI #52, which appeared in Scooby-Doo #21 (Oct. 1973). “Scream Star” featured the gang’s encounter with old-time horror actor Winston Shocket—a character that, 11 years later, would resurface in another Evanier/Spiegle collaboration, Crossfire #3 and 4. Evanier wrote the majority of the remaining Western Publishing Scooby stories, all illustrated by Spiegle. BACK ISSUE readers familiar with Dan Spiegle’s reality-based comic-book art on features such as Blackhawk (with Evanier), DC Comics’ “Nemesis” (the Brave and the Bold backup scribed by Cary Burkett), and the aforementioned Crossfire, as well as Hollywood adaptations on everything from TV’s The Green Hornet to the Disney sci-fi film The Black Hole, might be scratching their heads over the choice of Spiegle to draw Hanna-Barbera comic books. As the artist himself confessed to Mark Arnold in BI #52, he had reservations when Chase Craig assigned him Scooby-Doo. “…When I was asked

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Shocket Theater (top) Evanier and Spiegle’s Winston Shocket, the creepy antagonist in their “Scream Star” story in Gold Key’s Scooby-Doo… Mystery Comics #21 (Oct. 1973), was resurrected in (bottom) their creator-owned series Crossfire #4 (Aug. 1984), from Eclipse Comics. Scooby-Doo © Hanna-Barbera Productions. Crossfire © Mark Evanier and Dan Spiegle.

to do Scooby, I said, ‘I am not a real cartoonist!’ They said it was semicartoony and that I’d be fine”… and “they” were right. Spiegle’s Scooby-Doo adroitly walked the line between the realistically drawn environments you’d expect from the illustrator and his softer interpretations of principal and incidental characters, although at times his renderings of Scooby and the gang were somewhat off-model. Other H-B tie-in titles published by Gold Key in the early 1970s were The Harlem Globetrotters (a CBS co-production significant for being both a Saturday morning TV series and a comic book starring an African-American cast), Help… It’s the Hair Bear Bunch! (a riff on Hogan’s Heroes set in a zoo), The Roman Holidays (an Ancient Rome twist on The mark EVANIER Flintstones), and The Addams Family (based upon Hanna-Barbera’s animated version of Gage Skimore / Wikimedia Commons. the classic Charles Addams cartoons and live-action series). And let’s not forget Where’s Huddles, a made-for-primetime animated sitcom by Hanna-Barbera which aired for ten episodes in 1970 as a summer replacement series. This toon about the family life of a professional quarterback managed a three-issue Gold Key run. Each of these titles admirably brought their characters to life thanks to stories and arts by seasoned talent including Don R. Christensen, Frank Hill, Bill Ziegler, Roger Armstrong, and the versatile Dan Spiegle. Despite the humor and wholesomeness of these as-seen-on-TV American funnybooks, dan spiegle events were transpiring overseas that would soon threaten to dramatically alter the world of Hanna-Barbera on your neighborhood spin rack and newsstand shelf.

THE GOLD KEY HANNA-BARBERA LOCKOUT

Eagle-eyed readers might have noted signs of an impending change in the winter months of early 1970. The only fresh H-B material released by Gold Key appeared in the newer titles, Banana Splits, Scooby-Doo, and Fun-In. No kid buying The Flintstones #60 in mid-June 1970 had an inkling they were holding in their hands the final Gold Key issue of the series. Even if they had been informed of its cancellation, they would have little time to mourn, as The Flintstones #1 premiered on July 2, 1970. But this was no renumbering or reboot… this was a jump to an entirely different publisher: Charlton Comics. The Flintstones #1 was joined that week by the release of Charlton’s Top Cat #1 and Yogi Bear #1. The next week, Charlton released Huckleberry Hound #1, The Jetsons #1, Magilla Gorilla #1, and Quick Draw McGraw #1. Seven classic Hanna-Barbera series with all-new material, from a publisher in Derby, Connecticut, that was best known for its perpetually operating in-house printing press and its quickly produced music-lyrics rags—excuse me, mags. Curiously, after Charlton’s July ’70 Hanna-Barbera rollout, a pair of remaining issues of series’ previous Gold Key incarnations trickled onto the racks. Less than a month after their Charlton premieres, Gold Key’s Huckleberry Hound #43 and Jetsons #36 were released, concluding those books’ original runs. Yet that same month, Gold Key came out with Hanna-Barbera Fun-In #4, followed in September by Scooby-Doo #4 and in October by Banana Splits #5, with more H-B product following, amid the releases of the second and subsequent issues of Charlton’s H-B titles. Different Hanna-Barbera properties 24 • BACK ISSUE •Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue

Globetrotters! Oh Oh, Yeah! Hanna-Barbera and CBS-TV’s Harlem Globetrotters cartoon made Saturday morning stars out of the popular basketball players—(left) and hitmaker Don Kirshner brought them to the charts with this LP. (right) Gold Key’s Harlem Globetrotters was the Bronze Age’s first ongoing comic with a predominantly black cast, and issue #1 (Apr. 1974) hit the stands over two months before Marvel’s Luke Cage, Hero for Hire! Cover art by Dan Spiegle. © CBS/Hanna-Barbera.

simultaneously published, by two different comics houses? How odd, when considering that Western Publishing had previously been the sole producer of Hanna-Barbera-inspired comics, first through Dell and later through Gold Key. How did Charlton land the classic H-B licenses, when Western had done such an admirable job on the properties for over a decade? We return to Mark Evanier for the story. As he told Mark Arnold in BACK ISSUE #52, “In a manner not dissimilar to the Disney foreign comic-book department, HannaBarbera was making a lot of money selling stats [of comics stories] overseas,” Evanier said. “Every time Gold Key had a new issue of Scooby-Doo [or other H-B series], Hanna-Barbera would receive stats of the material and they’d sell copies of those stats to Peru to reprint, and to France to reprint, and to Mexico and Luxembourg and I don’t know where else, but it was an enormously lucrative source of income for the studio.” As Evanier explained, Hanna-Barbera pressured Western/ Gold Key to increase its H-B comic-book output for exploitation in the foreign market, but “the folks at Gold Key kept saying no. They were having massive problems at the time with distribution and sales were falling and they couldn’t sell any more H-B comics than what they were then publishing.” This led an executive at parent corporation Taft Broadcasting, which had acquired the H-B studio at the end of 1966, to shop around the H-B licenses elsewhere, to other comics publishing houses. “Charlton was willing to put out a lot of [Hanna-Barbera comics] and, of course, to have Charlton writers and artists produce all these pages,” Evanier said. So goodbye Harvey Eisenberg, Pete Alvarado, and Phil de Lara, and hello, Joe Gill, Ray Dirgo, and Frank Johnson. This came at a time when Charlton was undergoing a rapid expansion of its comic-book line, augmenting its existing line of cowboy, romance, war, and hot rod clones with licensed titles. In 1968 it had acquired from King Features publication rights for Popeye, The Phantom, Beetle Bailey, and Blondie. “On top of this coup, in 1969 we also landed the rights to produce the comic books featuring the Hanna-Barbera characters from the Screen Gems organization—The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Top Cat, The Jetsons, Huckleberry Hound, etc.,” Charlton editor/cartoonist George Wildman told interview Jud Hurd in CARTOONIST PROfiles #12 (Dec. 1973), reprinted in TwoMorrows’ Comic Book Artist #12 (Mar. 2001). “Screen Gems, incidentally, handles all of the merchandising of the Hanna-Barbera creations,” Wildman said. “These acquisitions opened a lot of distributors’ doors for us.” The transition of Hanna-Barbera properties between publishers wasn’t instantaneous. Gold Key continued to publish issues of Scooby-Doo, Fun-In, Harlem Globetrotters, Funky Phantom, and several other additional H-B titles through the early 1970s, the final Gold Key Hanna-Barbera release being The Addams Family #3, which went on sale on January 9, 1975. After that, Charlton Comics controlled the H-B properties (for a while).

Dueling Hucks Charlton’s Huckleberry Hound #1 and Gold Key’s Huckleberry Hound #43 were on the stands at roughly the same time. If you had only 15 cents in your pocket, which would you buy? TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

YABBA DABBA DOO! FROM DERBY TO YOU

While Charlton might be dubbed “The House of Borrowed Ideas” because of its exploitation of popular trends, it is unique in the industry in that it managed every aspect of the trade (editorial, production, printing, and distribution) under a single roof spanning over six acres (and including its own bowling alley). Charlton even once owned its own paper mill! As one-time Charlton artist/editor Dick Giordano told me for my 2003 TwoMorrows biography Dick Giordano: Changing Comics, One Day at a Time, the formation of Charlton had its roots in a criminal enterprise. In the 1930s, New York bricklayer John Santangelo, who founded the company, “met and fell in love with a woman who said to him that she had to buy sheet music to get the lyrics for her favorite songs,” prompting Santangelo to print quickly produced magazines featuring unauthorized lyrics from copyrighted music. He was convicted of copyright infringement and served one year and one day behind bars, where he met a disbarred lawyer, Edward Levy. Santangelo and Levy, upon their release, partnered in 1942 to launch the long-running magazine Hit Parader—which published song lyrics

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H-B Hit Parade A sampling of Charlton’s early Hanna-Barbera comics. Note that Ray Dirgo’s cover art to Hanna-Barbera Parade #10 was repurposed, with alterations, as the cover for this edition of BACK ISSUE. TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

26 • BACK ISSUE •Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue

with permission. Following in 1945 was their establishment of Charlton Publishing in Derby, Connecticut, and a long publication history that would stretch to 1986, with hundreds of issues of music magazines, comic books, coloring books, puzzle mags and books, and other periodicals following. Santangelo was a shrewd businessman who was, according to Giordano, “a great gambler, a numbers man.” George Wildman agreed, crediting Santangelo’s craftiness for the establishment of Charlton’s all-in-one-house publishing setup. In an interview with Jon B. Cooke in Comic Book Artist #12 (Mar. 2001), Wildman said of Santangelo, “[H]e soon figured, why pay all this money out to distributors, to wholesalers, to sales people, to engravers, to printers, to outsiders—so he thought along the lines of Henry Ford. ‘I’ll get all of my own equipment and I won’t have to pay anything to anybody.’” From the get-go Santangelo established as a cost-cutting measure that implemented some of the industry’s lowest page rates for artists, writers, and colorists. As a result, over the decades Charlton generally became a training ground for new talent hungry enough to work for lower pay. Conversely, george wildman Charlton offered creative freedom an artist might not find at the bigger publishers like DC and Marvel, and as such it became an occasional oasis for talent like Steve Ditko, most famously in the mid-1960s when he departed Marvel’s hottest new title, The Amazing Spider-Man, for Charlton… where he worked with editor Dick Giordano. Ditko’s Captain Atom was part of Giordano’s celebrated “Action Heroes” line that one might argue revolutionized the comics medium as a whole by its eventual inspiration of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ 1986 opus Watchmen (check out BACK ISSUE #79 for the Bronze Age history of the Charlton Action Heroes at their second publisher, DC Comics). Sal Gentile was the company’s managing editor in 1970 when Charlton began releasing its Hanna-Barbera comics. As part of the company’s aforementioned expansion, books like Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, Bullwinkle and Rocky, Underdog, Hee Haw, and Ronald McDonald were also joining the Charlton lineup. Charlton’s seven Hanna-Barbera titles launched in July 1970 were among 28 titles released by the company that month, quite an output for a small publisher! With Charlton’s first Hanna-Barbera releases, a discerning eye could note that… well, something was a little off. The characters didn’t quite look the way they were supposed to and some of the situations seemed abnormal (since when did Pixie and Dixie become pestering sidekicks to Huckleberry Hound?). Complicating matters were the books’ often-poor production values. Even the most ardent Charlton supporter will admit that the production quality of the company’s comics paled in comparison to DC, Dell, and Gold Key comics of the era, the result of the publisher’s crank-’em-out mentality and its mandate to keep its printing press rolling 24 hours a day (it cost more to stop and restart the presses, hence their perpetual operation). Sloppy color registration, crooked pages, and misaligned staples were common in

Flintstones, Meet the Flintstones Promotional poster for Charlton’s The Flintstones (a.k.a. The Flintstones and Pebbles), 1972. Art by Ray Dirgo. 11.625 x 17.875 inches on heavy textured stock, printed black with red spot color; signed in green marker by Dirgo. Courtesy of Michael Ambrose. TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

THE “OTHER” HANNA-BARBERA COMIC BOOKS Once Filmation Studios made Riverdale’s favorite teens Saturday morning superstars beginning in 1968 with The Archie Show—with Don Kirschner turning the bubble-gum pop group The Archies into a hit-making sensation—Hanna-Barbera Productions followed suit with a partnership with Archie Comics when premiering Josie and the Pussycats on CBS-TV in 1970, repurposing Archie Comics’ Dan DeCarlo-created Josie title into a Scooby-Doo-like series featuring a rock band pulled into mystery adventures. The show gave Archie’s Josie comic a much-needed shot in the arm. (Two years later, H-B reimagined the toon as Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, with the girls’ long tails and ears for hats boldly going where no cartoon rock band had gone before… until 1974, when Hanna-Barbera was at it again with The Partridge Family 2200 A.D.) Animation historian Mark Arnold points out of few other instances where comic books were publishing during the periods Hanna-Barbera was producing animation series based upon established characters. “Gold Key published Popeye when H-B did Archie Comics Publications. their series, The All-New Popeye Hour [see RetroFan #12—ed.], and Harvey published Casper and Richie Rich when H-B did those cartoons [Casper and the Angels, Casper’s First Christmas, Richie Rich, and The Richie Rich/Scooby-Doo Show],” all in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue • BACK ISSUE • 27

Was This a Boo-Boo? (top) Sample story page from Charlton’s Yogi Bear #2 (Jan. 1971), with Yogi in particular quite off-model. (bottom) The always-industrious Charlton also hawked H-B fan clubs and products, as seen in this example from Yogi Bear #2. TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

Charlton books—although to many collectors these flaws have become part of the company’s charm. What started as a sweetheart deal soon broke some hearts at Hanna-Barbera. According to Mark Evanier, as he told Mark Arnold in BI #52, “The guy at Taft thought they were going to make a fortune [selling comics stats to foreign publishers], and they might have except that the foreign publishers didn’t like the Charlton material and many of them refused to buy it. They felt the characters were off-model, that they didn’t look right, and they didn’t like a lot of the scripts. Many of the foreign publishers decided that for what they were being charged for this Charlton material, they could hire local artists who would do a better job and be more faithful to the cartoons, and some of them did.” Scott Shaw! remarks to BACK ISSUE, “Most of the scripts and artwork for the Charlton stuff seems as if the people creating them never saw the source material. It’s especially obvious in the Flintstones-related titles and The Jetsons.” Charlton historian Michael Ambrose, publisher of the fanzine Charlton Spotlight (www.charltonspotlight.net), agrees with Evanier and Shaw! Ambrose tells BACK ISSUE, “I get the impression H-B was less than pleased with Charlton’s treatment of their characters and, I would guess, less than pleased with the often indifferent printing of the titles.” Who were the creators that produced the material that earned the dissatisfaction of Hanna-Barbera’s overseas clients? Since the many of the early Charlton H-B comics were uncredited it’s difficult to be definitive, but the lion’s share of scripts have been attributed (and some credited) to longtime Charlton staff scribe Joe Gill, the indefatigable workhorse with the smoking typewriter, renowned for his prodigious body of work. Gwen Krause’s writing credit also appeared in some of Charlton’s early H-B issues. Ray Dirgo, this issue’s cover artist, was the primary artist for Charlton’s early Hanna-Barbera titles, producing stories and covers for the majority of the books. A Bridgeport, Connecticut, advertising artist and one-time editorial and sports cartoonist for his hometown newspaper, the Bridgeport Sunday Herald, Dirgo’s body of comic-book work was almost exclusively relegated to Charlton’s Hanna-Barbera series of the early 1970s, although he completed a few non-H-B jobs for Charlton (Sick, Popeye). Dirgo also drew a Mighty Mouse story for Spotlight Comics in 1987. Illustrating Huckleberry Hound was Frank Johnson, famous for his comic-strip work including assisting Mort Walker and his own strips, most notably Boner’s Ark. Aside from Huckleberry Hound he produced art for some of Charlton’s other H-B books as well as the company’s Underdog, Tiger, and Dudley Do-Right licensed series. And the aforementioned George Wildman’s work can be found in issues of Quick Draw McGraw. While the artwork of Dirgo, et al. was kid-friendly and generally nicely rendered, its adherence to the established Hanna-Barbera style was inconsistent. For example, sometimes Dirgo’s Flintstones covers and stories were close to being spot-on model, while at times they were way off the mark, perhaps the result of less-than-generous deadlines and Charlton’s lackadaisical policing of character models. Two particularly egregious covers appeared on Flintstones #6 (Sept. 1971) and 10 (Jan. 1972), where their figures of Pebbles and Fred Flintstone are, to be charitable, amateurish. Gill’s stories sometimes suffered, skewing so specifically into generic kid lit that they lacked the not-so-secret ingredient that made the first decade of Hanna-Barbera’s television cartoons so magical: they were conceived to be enjoyed by both children and adults. An adult reader other than a H-B or Charlton fanatic might be hard pressed to appreciate most of the early stories in Charlton’s H-B library.

THE FLINTSTONES: BIGGER AND BOULDER

In addition to his work on Quick Draw McGraw, George Wildman had established himself at Charlton as the artist of its Popeye title. In 1971 he took a desk job as assistant editor to Sal Gentile, while still drawing for Charlton (and other publishers). Before long he rose up the ranks to head Charlton’s editorial department, hiring Nicola (Nick) Cuti as his assistant, a gung-ho 28 • BACK ISSUE •Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue

Stone Age and Future Families Courtesy of Heritage, Ray Dirgo original cover art to (left) The Flintstones #11 (Feb. 1972) and (right) The Jetsons #11 (July 1972). Note that the Jetsons cover was planned for issue #10, but actually published two months later as issue #11. TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

young editor/writer who had previously worked with the amazing Wally Wood. “[Wildman] and I didn’t always get along, but I think that was more my fault than his,” Cuti told interviewer Jon B. Cooke in Comic Book Artist #12. “George was very businesslike and liked to have everything done properly. And I, unfortunately, was the brash young kid. … I had worked for the great Wally Wood, and Charlton, at the time, was a comedown, and I kind of acted that way. So, unfortunately, the rifts between George and I were, I would say, 90% my fault. Because any person who has to put up with a brash young kid has to put up with a brash young ego. And that I had. Eventually, George and I came to a good understanding.” In late March 1971, Charlton released a new H-B book, HannaBarbera Parade, issue #1 cover-dated September 1971. This anthology series allowed lesser-known characters a chance to appear in stories, with the Flintstones anchoring the festivities in a short story. While Parade shone the spotlight on B-characters such as Touche Turtle, Wally Gator, and Peter Potamus, perhaps its most significant contribution was its stories written and illustrated, or scripted for another artist, by Phil Mendez, an animator known for his work for Hanna-Barbera, DiC, and Marvel Productions, Ltd. A decade later, Mendez would create the cartoon shows Kissyfur and Foofur. Hanna-Barbera Parade #3 (Summer 1971) can be puzzling to collectors, as it bears a different logo, Hanna-Barbera Summer Picnic. However, it retains the Parade numbering while bumping up its page count to a 52-page giant priced at 25 cents, at a time when the traditional 32-page comic was increasing its price from 15 to 20 cents. This issue went on sale in July 1971, when DC Comics had similarly upped its page counts and prices, fleshing out new lead stories with carefully curated reprints, in an effort to make their titles more profitable for news dealers; Marvel followed suit shortly thereafter but sucker-punched DC a month later by reverting to the 32-page format and undercutting DC by selling its books for 20 cents each. In addition to the random selection of H-B tales, Hanna-Barbera Summer Picnic included a selection of coloring book and activity pages, most of which appear to be the work of artist Ray Dirgo. These pages were in conjunction with a line of Hanna-Barbera coloring books released by Charlton, which featured the work of artists Tony Tallarico and Ray Dirgo.

Meanwhile, Bill Hanna and Joe Barbera produced the first Flintstones television spinoff, The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show, for the 1971–1972 Saturday morning TV season. Appearing on CBS, the show fast-forwarded the Flintstones’ timeline to star teenaged versions of Pebbles (voiced by All in the Family’s Sally Struthers) and Bamm-Bamm (voiced by former Dennis the Menace Jay North), and their pals Penny, Moonrock, Wiggy, Cindy, Fabian, and the unlucky Schleprock; like the Archies, a success story in Filmation cartoons, top 40 hits, and Archie comic books, the teens had their own pop band, the Bedrock Rockers. This also began a spate of Flintstones Saturday morning series—The Flintstones Comedy Hour followed the next season, with other permutations rolling in and out of the schedule through the 1970s. Charlton debuted a (Teen-Age) Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm series in October 1971 (issue #1 cover-dated Feb. 1972), with art by Frank Roberge and other uncredited cartoonists. It was a vast improvement over the earlier Charlton H-B titles, being closer in tone and look to the Saturday morning cartoon show. Additionally, its focus on teenage antics allowed it to comfortably straddle the line between the cartoon and Archie audiences. The success of Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm was followed by the expansion of Charlton’s Flintstones franchise. Television’s second most famous couple next door (after Fred and Ethel Mertz) got their own book in November 1972 with the release of Barney and Betty Rubble #1 (Jan. 1973). Six months later, in May 1973, two unlikely Flintstones supporting cast characters received their own titles—no, not Mr. Slate and Joe Rockhead, but the Flintstones’ loveable pet dinosaur, Dino, and extraterrestrial little green man, The Great Gazoo. Hiram Walker, Richard Reichert, and Fred Himes were among the artists on the Barney and Betty and Dino books amid this slew of mostly uncredited stories. Flintstones diehards might have appreciated the quantity of Bedrock books to collect, but as the overall comics market was embroiled in a war for shelf space, with Marvel and DC in particular increasing their output in an attempt to crowd each other off the racks, this glut of material began to stumble into distribution blockades and stretch the wallets of fans.

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CHANGES COME TO CHARLTON

Changes were afoot in Charlton’s editorial offices that would favorably affect the quality of the company’s final wave of Hanna-Barbera product. George Wildman assumed an editorial administration role, and the young and enthusiastic Nick Cuti began an infusion of improved quality to the Charlton line. Long-running romance titles bit the dust in 1973, affording the comics division more time to devote to other products. While the company continued to milk popular trends, the latest one being mystery titles, a wave of new talent including artists John Byrne, Joe Staton, and Mike Zeck entered the fold. As revealed in detail in BACK ISSUE #100, a group of fans-turned-pro (Bob Layton, Roger Slifer, and Roger Stern), the CPL (Contemporary Pictorial Literature) Gang, produced the in-house zine Charlton Bullseye, in the vein of similar self-promotional magazines from Marvel (FOOM) and DC (The Amazing World of DC Comics). New titles such as Cuti and Staton’s E-Man, Joe Gill and Warren Sattler’s Yang (followed by Sanho Kim’s House of Yang), and Byrne’s Doomsday + 1 gave Charlton a much-needed shot in the arm. Cuti left staff in 1975 to freelance, and Bill Pearson—an illustrator and art teacher perhaps best known for his work with Wally Wood on witzend and elsewhere— replaced him in the editorial department. Things continued to buzz at Charlton: Don Newton was hired as the artist of The Phantom, and popular television series Emergency!, Space: 1999, and The Six Million Dollar Man became Charlton titles, published in both comic-book and magazine formats. This energy spilled over onto Charlton’s Hanna-Barbera series. The final Gold Key H-B books had trickled onto the stands and were followed by a new wave of H-B books at Charlton: Scooby-Doo… Where Are You! and Valley of the Dinosaurs in January 1975; Hong Kong Phooey, Korg: 70,000 B.C., Speed Buggy, and Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch in February 1975; and a latecomer, The Great Grape Ape, premiering in June 1976. Readers disenchanted by the off-model renderings of the majority of Charlton’s previous Hanna-Barbera output couldn’t help but be impressed with these new titles, as each either better mirrored the looks and subject matter of their host television series or featured extraordinary artwork by seasoned professionals or talented newcomers. Scooby-Doo, written by Joe Gill (and a few others) with art by Alfred O. “Bill” Williams, ably tread the TV show’s not-too-scary mystery terrain, with the easily frightened Great Dane and his pals encountering vampires, mummies, skeletons, ghosts, lost gold mines, and the like. Artist Williams’ whimsical style nicely fit the book, although his Scooby was a bit off-model at times and his Velma several pounds overweight. Future Marvel Comics editor-in-chief Tom DeFalco was one of those “other” writers on Scooby-Doo, and other Charlton Hanna-Barbera books, and shares his recollections with BACK ISSUE. “My memory is always untrustworthy, but I think I started writing for them somewhere around the summer of 1974,” DeFalco says. “I was working on staff at Archie Comics and also doing some freelance writing for them. I seem to remember getting into some goofy tiff with [Archie] editor Richard Goldwater—we often squabbled in those days and quickly made up. Writers and editors have a grand tradition of butting heads. Anyway, I decided to reach out to Charlton and sent them some samples. I soon heard from George Wildman, who offered me eight bimonthly titles—the biggest assignment I had ever been given. The titles were Scooby-Doo, Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch, Flintstones, Dino, Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm, Hong Kong Phooey, Speed Buggy, and Valley of the Dinosaurs. That’s the good news. The bad news was, they were paying about $5 per page, about a third of what I was getting at Archie. (By the way,

Hanna-Barbera Hullaballoo (top) Original cover art for Charlton’s Hanna-Barbera Parade #1 (Sept. 1971), penciled by Phil Mendez and inked by George Wildman. Courtesy of Michael Ambrose. Charlton also produced a variety of coloring books featuring Hanna-Barbera characters. (bottom left) Original Tony Tallarico art for the cover of the Hanna-Barbera All Star Coloring Book, the only Charlton H-B project to include Jonny Quest. (inset) Covers for Jetsons and Yogi Bear coloring books, with Tallarico cover art. TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

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Hit and Miss

George Wildman seemed like a great guy and a fun editor. We may have only spoken a half dozen times while I was working for him. We had much longer conversations years later while I was at Marvel.)” DeFalco’s writing assignments helped Charlton, and its main scribe Joe Gill, manage their growing H-B line, but for the writer they posed a timemanagement challenge. “I had to script one book a week for Charlton,” DeFalco recalls. “I also had a fulltime job working in Archie’s editorial department, plus I had made up with Richard so I had my regular Archie scripting assignments, plus I had a few non-comic-book assignments. Yeah, crazy days, but not my craziest.” In addition to managing his workload, DeFalco had to juggle different scripting methods. “At that time, Archie scripts were done storyboard style—the writer would sketch out the story and add the balloons so that the artist had a visual guide for the story. (I know Harvey also used the storyboard style.) Charlton employed full scripts—the writer would describe the action and dialogue in prose. When I first began writing for Charlton, I’d sketch out a quick storyboard and then translate it into a full script—a technique I used when I started scripting for DC Comics a few years later. I later translated those storyboards to plots when I went over to Marvel—a technique I occasionally still use today.” Amid this mound of work, DeFalco also had to squeeze in his personal life. “I set up my schedule so that I would write my Charlton stuff on Saturdays and Sundays before the Jets game,” he says. “I dealt with other assignments after the Jets game and at night during the week. Sleep was a precious commodity in those days. “I planned to get married in the summer of 1975 and had to double my output for a few weeks so that I could take some time off for a honeymoon,” DeFalco adds. “I remember working like mad the day before my wedding, finishing my final Charlton script (I think it was a Hong Kong Phooey) and dropping it off at the post office on my way to my wedding rehearsal. Like I said, crazy days. I eventually had to give up my Charlton work, but still remember those days with a lot of fondness.” Valley of the Dinosaurs, a short-lived (16 episodes) H-B Saturday tom defalco morning cartoon from the fall of 1974, later returned in syndication for © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. a few years but scored a Charlton tie-in that premiered not long after the TV show’s last episode aired. Its premise was basically Swiss Family Robinson meets Dino Boy, with the contemporary Butler family being whisked via a bizarre whirlpool into the Stone Age, where they are befriended by… no, not the Flintstones, but a family of Neanderthals. The Mexican-born Fred Himes, who directed and animated TV advertisements before writing and drawing for Charlton (Fightin’ Marines, Ghost Manor, and even Top Cat), was the writer/artist of Valley, although as mentioned earlier Tom DeFalco contributed some stories to the run (possibly issue #1 and 11). Himes’ clean, crisp work on this title was Alex Toth-like in its effective storytelling and simplicity.

From the Heritage archives: (top left) Fred Himes’ rendition of Betty on this original art page from Charlton’s Barney & Betty Rubble #12 (Mar. 1975) is inconsistent. (top right) The unattributed artist (possibly Henry Scarpelli, according to Heritage) of this cover art for Charlton’s Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm #19 (Feb. 1974) is much more on-model. (inset) Note the background added to the published cover. (bottom) The CPL Gang! From the 1975 fanzine Charlton Bullseye #3, a convention panel photo taken by Hilarie Staton. (left to right) Charlton’s Bob Layton (standing), Roger Stern (leaning on table), Joe Staton, and Nick Cuti, plus Paul Levitz and Marv Wolfman. Flintstones TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

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MASONRY’S THANKSGIVING PARADE …make that Macy’s, since we’re not living in the decided not to fund the project.” Shown here is a sketch Stone Age. for a proposed float connected to the project, originally Back in 1974, Charlton’s George Wildman attempted to provided to Charlton Spotlight by Bill Pearson but shared broker a deal with New York with BACK ISSUE courtesy City’s legendary department of Mr. Ambrose. store to promote Charlton’s Unrelated to the Flintstones comic book Charlton proposal, the in a special float that Flintstones finally made it would appear in Macy’s to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Thanksgiving Day Parade Parade in 1978, with that year. As Michael a “walk-around” Fred Ambrose reported in Flintstone and Barney Charlton Spotlight #7, Rubble, as well as Yogi Bear. “According to parade A Hanna-Barbera Christmas balloon historian and float appeared in Macy’s designer Bill Smith, the idea 1983 parade, followed by Flintstones TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions. a Hanna-Barbera’s only got as far as detailed cost proposals from Macy’s, which were then presented Scooby-Doo Celebration float in 1984. Macy’s featured a to the powers at Hanna-Barbera, who ultimately Fred Flintstone balloon in its 1993–2000 parades.

Comin’ Alive in ’75 Improved H-B titles began appearing from Charlton in 1975, including (top) Scooby-Doo… Where Are You! and Valley of the Dinosaurs, followed by (bottom left) Hong Kong Phooey. (bottom right) The Great Grape Ape, bowing in 1976, was Charlton’s last H-B book. Scooby and Grape Ape covers by Bill Williams, Valley cover by Fred Himes, and Phooey cover by Paul Fung, Jr. TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

Hong Kong Phooey, a superheroic martial-artist hound voiced by Scatman Crothers, premiered on Saturday mornings in the fall of 1974. (See BACK ISSUE #105 for Mark Arnold’s history of the TV show, with interviews with animators Willie Ito and Jerry Eisenberg, and details about the Charlton comic.) Its straightforward setup of police-station janitor Penrod Pooch transforming to the “Number One Super Guy” by zipping into a file cabinet, was nicely mined by Charlton’s writers and artists. Bill Crouch, Jr., Michael J. Pellowski, and Tom DeFalco were the series’ writers, with covers and some interior artwork by Paul Fung, Jr., a former actor and advertising artist with a long history (following in his father’s footsteps) as a comic-strip artist and art assistant for King Features. Other Hong Kong Phooey artists were Frank Roberge (whose art was described in BI #105 by Nick Cuti as being “very slick and professional”) and Jim Hanley. Korg: 70,000 B.C. was a rarity for Hanna-Barbera, a live-action television series, although H-B produced several others, including The Banana Splits, Danger Island, and The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, as well as the Adam West-starring, infamous Legends of the SuperHeroes, which we covered in BI #25. Unlike Valley of the Dinosaurs, which thrust contemporary people into a primitive age, Korg explored the travails of a family of Neanderthals (Korg, Mara, Bok, and Tane) during the Ice Age. As Mark Arnold (him again!) reported in his Korg article in BI #43, the series was filmed in the hills of the Palos Verdes Peninsula in California in early to mid-1974, and aired 19 episodes on ABC during the 1974–1975 season (the animated Valley of the Dinosaurs aired on CBS). 32 • BACK ISSUE •Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue

Producing Charlton’s Korg series was Pat Boyette, a Charlton artistic mainstay who got into the comics field in middle age after working as a radio and television broadcaster, comic-strip artist, and filmmaker. Boyette painted the covers for Korg’s nine issues, and wrote, illustrated, and lettered the interiors. Korg was one of Charlton’s better H-B efforts thanks to Boyette, the overall effect being reminiscent of Howie Post’s Anthro for DC Comics, without Post’s humorous flair. Speed Buggy was H-B’s hybrid of Disney’s The Love Bug (while in development, the show’s original title was “Speed Bug”) and H-B’s own Scooby-Doo. Speed Buggy itself, or “Speedy” (with apologies to Green Arrow’s sidekick and a certain Alka-Seltzer TV pitchman), was intelligent and could talk, and was voiced by the amazing Mel Blanc. The “Shaggy” to Speedy’s “Scooby” was mechanic/ driver Tinker, and the Fred and Daphne-like Mark and Debbie comprised the rest of the mystery-solving gang. Speed Buggy was produced by H-B legend Iwao Takamoto. Sixteen episodes ran during the 1973–1974 season before spinning their way into syndication. With its history of producing hot rod comics, Charlton was the perfect comics house for Speed Buggy, and the show translated well to comics, mostly thanks to the fluid, fun artwork of Bill Williams, over scripts by Joe Gill and Tom DeFalco. Hanna-Barbera’s Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch (another Iwao Takamoto production) was a bit bolder in its appropriations from Disney’s The Love Bug, as its star, Wheelie, who “spoke” in automotive sound effects, like Disney’s Herbie, was clearly a Volkswagen Beetle (although not identified as such); he had a car girlfriend, Rota Ree. H-B also cribs from Hollywood’s The Wild One, the real world’s Hell’s Angels, and America’s fascination with motorcycles, (Easy Rider, Then Came Bronson) in Wheelie’s high-octane “villains,” the Chopper Bunch, a trio of trouble-making two-wheelers fronted by the Frank Welker-voiced Chopper (Hi-Riser and Scrambles were the other two). Amid these speeding buggies were a police car and bumbling police motorcycle often in hot pursuit. Charlton’s adaptation of Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch is most famous for being among the earliest work of John Byrne, who wrote and drew issues #2 and 3. Byrne politely declined my request to pen a guest editorial for this issue (“Oh! Too long ago!”), but told Jon B. Cooke in Comic Book Artist #12, “Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch is what I consider my first ‘full book’—entire issues with nothing but my work on the main pages. It was the most work Charlton was able to offer at the time (a short while before Doomsday +1), and I took it with the intended approach that, if I was john byrne going to do a book like this, then I would be the Carl Barks of Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch! Self-caricature from Charlton Bullseye #2. Unfortunately, H-B thought my drawings were too ‘scary’ (they were published unchanged in my first issues, so judge for yourself), and insisted that Charlton order me to tone it down. That kinda sucked the fun out of the book, and I became very robotic in my approach, just drawing the pictures and not really putting anything into them. I found myself unable to work that way, and quit the book to concentrate full time on Doomsday, which was in the offing by then.” Gill and Staton, who produced the first issue, returned with issue #4, and Tom DeFalco scripted later issues. Regarding the “scariness” of Charlton’s Wheelie comic, artist Joe Staton observes, “Some of those motorcycles were pretty threatening.” Of Charlton’s main writer, Joe Gill, and his ability to script Hanna-Barbera tie-ins as well as… well, just about any genre imaginable, Staton says, “Just more proof of Joe Gill’s amazing ability to write anything at the drop of a hat.” Joe Staton has fond memories of Charlton’s Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch for two reasons: “For a long time, Wheelie was the best-paying job I’d done, per hour. That’s even with Charlton’s rates. I penciled, lettered, and inked at least one issue over a weekend. [And] Wheelie was my mother’s favorite of my books. For years after, she’d ask me if I was ever going to draw those ‘cute cars’ again.” The summer of 1976 saw the release of Charlton’s final Hanna-Barbera tie-in, The Great Grape Ape, based upon an H-B comedy-adventure toon that premiered during the 1975–1976 season then continued for a few more seasons, sometimes packaged and co-billed with other characters. Its star was a gentle, simpleminded, inadvertently dangerous 40-foot purple gorilla (voiced by Bob Holt) who tended to terrify just about everyone he encountered because… well, he was a 40-foot purple gorilla. Great Grape Ape’s confidant and sidekick was a dog named Beegle Beagle (voiced by Marty Ingels), and the pair took off on their roaming exploits in a van driven by Beegle, with the series’ super-sized

Those Meddling Kids (top) Original Bill Williams art to the title page from one of Scooby-Doo #1’s stories. (bottom) Original art page from Speed Buggy #6 (May 1976). Possible artist: Frank Roberge. Both, courtesy of Heritage. TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

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star sitting on top. The two issues of Charlton’s Great Grape Ape feature no creator credits, but their delightful artwork might be the work of Bill Williams. Some sources have credited artist Mike Zeck for his contributions to Charlton’s Hanna-Barbera comics, but as the talented illustrator tells BACK ISSUE, he never drew any H-B characters for Charlton… although his artwork did appear in Charlton’s H-B (and other cartoon) titles! Confused? As Zeck shares with BI, “My illustrations for the Charlton Comics’ animated titles are my first professional color comics work. The Charlton editorial crew, George Wildman, Nick Cuti, and Bill Pearson, saw potential in my art when I peddled my portfolio during the early ’70s. Each issue in the Charlton animated line featured an interior two-page text story with accompanying spot illustrations. Those spot illos were my first assignments, and I imagine the editors were considering those as something of an audition before moving me into sequential art for their horror titles. The experience I gained at Charlton was instrumental in prepping me for a long career in the comics industry.” Zeck collectors can find his spot illos in these Charlton H-B books: Barney and Betty Rubble #11, 16; Dino #12, 13; The Flintstones #36, 40, 41; Great Gazoo #14; Hong Kong Phooey #2, 3; Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm #26, 29; Scooby-Doo #4; Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch #2, 3; and Yogi Bear #28. A Charlton subscription ad running in the company’s late 1976 titles including listings for Dynomutt (listed as “Dyno-Mutt”) and Jabberjaw (listed as “Jabberjaws”), indicating that the company was planning titles based upon those then-popular Saturday morning cartoons. Since this announcement came shortly before Charlton’s loss of the Hanna-Barbera license, it is unclear if the publisher actually had earlier agreements with H-B for those new titles, or if Charlton actually produced any Dynomutt or Jabberjaw material. “Odd that they’d include the titles in a sub ad without actually having anything in the pipeline,” Charlton Spotlight publisher Michael Ambrose remarks, adding, “I’ve never to my recollection seen any unpublished Charlton art of those characters, and I’ve made it a habit for many years now to monitor as much Charlton original art passing through the marketplace as I can. Of course, there’s no accounting for what might be in private hands. For that matter, some work could have been commissioned by George Wildman, but cancelled.”

Born to Be Wild (top) Korg: 70,000 B.C. #5 (Feb. 1976) original cover painting, by Pat Boyette. Courtesy of Heritage. (bottom left) John Byrne original cover art to Charlton’s Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch #2 (Sept. 1975). (bottom right) Joe Staton original art (with story by Joe Gill) from Wheelie #4 (Jan. 1976). Both, courtesy of Heritage. TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

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SCOTT SHAW! ON CHARLTON’S HANNA-BARBERA COMICS I Got You, Babe With this one, Charlton got it right. A funny, nicely rendered page from Great Grape Ape #2 (Nov. 1976). Art by Bill Williams. TM & © Hanna-Barbera.

Did Marvel Comics, who would soon pick up the Hanna-Barbera comics licenses and would indeed publish a Dynomutt title, inherit from Charlton any unpublished Dynomutt or Jabberjaw material? Mark Evanier, who wrote and edited much of Marvel’s H-B output, tells BACK ISSUE, “I have no idea. I certainly never saw anything.” Whether or not Charlton actually produced any material for those books, their Dynomutt and Jabberjaw were not meant to be. Charlton Comics was in trouble during this period, suffering from weak sales and distribution woes, and many of its titles were being cancelled in the mid-1970s, including some of the H-B tie-ins. “Charlton’s boss, John Santangelo, Sr., directed that all comics production be halted around September 1976, and what came out after that was either already too far along in the process to stop or already on its way out of the plant,” says Michael Ambrose. “The last H-B title to appear was Flintstones #50 (Feb. 1977).” The publisher temporarily suspended its comics line for much of 1977. And at Hanna-Barbera Productions, dissatisfaction with the quality of Charlton’s handlings of their properties was leading to a major change.

STAN LEE PRESENTS… BILL HANNA AND JOE BARBERA

Marvel Comics was beginning to take licensed comics seriously in 1977—that was the year the publisher launched its long-running Star Wars title, after all—but to many fans at the time, the House of Ideas becoming the bedrock (excuse the pun) for Hanna-Barbera comic books seemed to be a stretch that even the elongating Reed Richards would consider a long reach. Yet in the summer of ’77, The Flintstones, Scooby-Doo, Yogi Bear, and Dynomutt became the first four titles in a short-lived, but fondly remembered, run of Hanna-Barbera comics bearing the “Marvel Comics Group” banner. The books’ cover graphics made no secret of their television heritage, with each issue number and cover date month being boxed inside the shape of a TV set, and each cover being bordered by an illustrated filmstrip showcasing headshots of the H-B pantheon, from familiar faces like Quick Draw McGraw to fresher ones like Jabberjaw. The art looked slicker and more on-model than much of Charlton’s output, and the characters were once again acting like their classic selves, as evidenced on the first page of The Flintstones #1 (Oct. 1977) where Fred, atop his work-brontosaurus at the rock quarry, slides down the beast’s tail (just like in the classic opening of the cartoon show!), and belts out a buoyant “Yabba Dabba Doo!,” after apparently striking it rich. Sidekick Barney Rubble quickly appears, and in a mere three panels on page 1, Marvel’s Flintstones #1 series is truer to form than some entire issues of Charlton’s books. It’s almost as if Hanna and Barbera themselves had personally sanctioned these comics. And in a manner of speaking, they did.

Cartoonist/animator/RetroFan columnist Scott Shaw! (www.shaw-cartoons.com) is certainly no stranger to Hanna-Barbera properties, from his childhood fascination with H-B TV shows to his professional forays illustrating H-B comic books, cartoons, advertising, and merchandising. What did he think of Charlton’s H-B books? “Although I collected a lot of off-the-rack Charlton comics, and had a fascination with most of the classic HannaBarbera characters, I felt a mild revulsion to a lot of Charlton’s H-B output when the comics were on newsstands, due to the scott shaw! crude and poorly planned © Scott Shaw!/Shaw cartoons. artwork of Ray Dirgo and others on The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Yogi Bear, and other funny animals, including the stars of the HannaBarbera Parade anthology series. I think that the editor must have assumed that it was somehow easier to draw the cast of biped critters. It was their low quality of material that caused Charlton to lose the H-B license that was turned over to Marvel. “Oddly, their results on then-recent H-B cartoon properties were somewhat better: Hong Kong Phooey by the versatile ghost-artist Paul Fung, Jr.; Dino, The Great Grape Ape, and teen-age Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm were drawn by Frank Roberge in a style that (for once) actually aped H-B’s; and Wheelie and the Chopper Bunch, first drawn by John Byrne (who has made the crackpot assessment that Wheelie was better conceived than Pixar’s Cars), followed by the great Joe Staton. Two of Charlton’s H-B titles were based on more realistic properties: the live-action show Korg: 70,000 B.C. by Pat Boyette and the animated Valley of the Dinosaurs by Fred Himes (who seemed to enjoy drawing prehistoric creatures) were both quite well-executed. “But for me, the standouts are the genuinely funny Abbott and Costello stories written by Steve Skeates and drawn by Henry Scarpelli (all early issues) and the outstanding cartooning of Bill Williams on Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! and Speed Buggy (two H-B properties I don’t even care for very much). Williams did a lot of great work with the great John Stanley, and although the writing in these books don’t match up, Williams’ artwork rivals that of Warren Tufts on Gold Key’s Scooby-Doo... Where Are You! It’s also noteworthy that some of the Charlton H-B books’ ‘filler’ pages feature early artwork by fan artist Alan Hanley and future animation designer Phil Mendez.

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As Mark Arnold explained in BACK ISSUE #59, in his highly recommended and detailed examination of Marvel’s H-B comics line (which includes a checklist, with story titles and credits, of every Marvel H-B book published), Hanna-Barbera Productions, dissatisfied with both the quality of Charlton’s comics based upon their properties and the foreign market’s rejection of Charlton stories for licensed reprints, toyed with starting its own comic-book publishing wing, Hanna-Barbera Comics. Taft Broadcasting, H-B’s owner, commissioned former Western Publishing editor Chase Craig to consult about reshaping the content of Charlton’s H-B books, but Craig reportedly felt they were beyond repair. So Taft hired Craig to oversee a new line of H-B comics… which were rejected from the distribution network controlled by the major comics publishers. So a deal was brokered to have Marvel publish the H-B-produced books and include them in their distribution system. With his mentor once again at the helm of H-B funnybooks, Mark Evanier was drawn back into the picture. “I got to write Scooby-Doo [reuniting the writer with artist Dan Spiegle], Dynomutt, Yogi Bear, and even The Flintstones,” Evanier said in BI #59. “And then they decided they wanted to increase the number of comics to have a Laff-A-Lympics comic. Chase didn’t want to work that hard, so he asked me, ‘Why don’t you be the editor of this?’” Evanier’s editorship of the newly launched Laff-A-Lympics, based upon the ’70s H-B toon (a Battle of the Network Stars lampoon) pitting the company’s pantheon against each other in athletic competitions and related adventures, soon expanded to his overseeing the entire line when Craig Chase retired. Marvel’s H-B books cross-promoted each other by including a two-page preview of one of the other books, plus one-page “Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera” text features that shared animation trade secrets and histories. This was the era of Marvel Treasury Editions (see BI #61), and a trio of Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera treasuries were published. Two additional titles, both anthologies, were added by editor (and main writer) Evanier in 1978. Hanna-Barbera Spotlight allowed the classic characters to shine, with Huckleberry Hound headlining issue #1, Quick Draw McGraw in #2, the Jetsons in #3, and Magilla Gorilla in #4. Spotlight included short backup stories that brought back old friends like Hokey Wolf, Snooper and Blabber, and Yakky Doodle. (Spotlight #4 featured a fun crossover between Snagglepuss and Huckleberry Hound, written by Evanier, penciled by Scott Shaw!, and inked by Carol Lay.) Hanna-Barbera TV Stars was the other anthology book, mostly but not exclusively starring newer H-B characters then on the air. Issue #1 starred Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, #2 starred the C.B. Bears, and #4 featured the Clue Club. Particularly noteworthy is TV Stars #3, a Superhero Special co-starring Dynomutt, the Herculoids, and Space Ghost, the latter in a tale by future Comico Space Ghost scribe Mark Evanier (keep reading) and drawn by the character’s creator, the legendary Alex Toth. Evanier’s office even produced stories featuring Jabberjaw and other H-B characters for the foreign market, stories that were not published by Marvel. Back in BI #59, cartoonist Scott Shaw! called Marvel’s Hanna-Barbera books “very smart-looking” and remarked that they “are now highly sought-after by both HannaBarbera and ‘classic’ Marvel fans, and now command a premium price, especially the Scooby-Doo series for their excellent Mark Evanier/Dan Spiegle stories and the treasurysized Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera for their scarcity.” Among the stellar talent recruited for the books by Chase Craig and Mark Evanier, in addition to the aforementioned Lay, Shaw!, Spiegle, and Toth, were a mix of animation and comic-book greats, some at the time newcomers, including Pete Alvarado, Dick Bickenbach, Pat Boyette, Don R. Christensen, Reg Everbest (a pen name of Steve Gerber), Jack Enyart, Carl Gafford, Fred Himes, Willie Ito, Jack Manning, Will Meugniot, Paul Norris, Mike Royer, Art Scott, Dave Stevens, Tony Strobl, and Kay Wright (see BI #59 for a complete creator list, with credits). Not quite two years into the venture, Marvel Comics delivered the “Ka-Bong!” to the Hanna-Barbera titles. Despite being told by Marvel that the H-B books were performing well and earning royalties, “The people at Marvel told us they sold terribly,” editor Evanier said in BI #59. “I wouldn’t stick to that because those people didn’t like Marvel publishing comics that were not using their talent pool anyway.” For whatever reason, however, the Marvel H-B books ended with issues cover-dated early 1979.

The Way to Yabba-Dabba-Doo-It (top) Marvel heroes welcome HannaBarbera characters in this page from Marvel’s Flintstones #1. (bottom) The opening page from Marvel’s Flintstones #1 (Oct. 1977) was truer to form than the Charlton efforts. Script by Mark Evanier, pencils by Roger Armstrong, inks by Joe Prince. Marvel characters TM & © Marvel, except Red Sonja © Red Sonja LLC. Hanna-Barbera characters TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

A BRIEF RETURN TO MARVEL

In 1982, Marvel published a three-issue Smurfs miniseries, adapting Hanna-Barbera’s 1981 popular Saturday morning cartoon based upon the internationally popular comic feature by Belgian artist Pierre “Peyo” Culliford. Marvel’s Smurfs featured a mix of new stories illustrated by Dan DeCarlo and Marie Severin and vintage Peyo work. As reported by Mark Ciemcioch in BACK ISSUE #77, our “When Comics Were Fun” issue, from the mid- to late 1980s, Marvel produced its Star Comics line. Helmed by former Harvey Comics editor Sid Jacobson, Star Comics was a mixture of adaptations of then-popular children’s television and mass-media properties (including Ewoks, Fraggle Rock, Muppet Babies, Heathcliff, and Strawberry Shortcake) and Marvel creations in the vein of Harvey characters (Planet Terry, Royal Roy, etc.), with Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham (who had earlier premiered in the one-shot Marvel Tails) tossed in for good measure. The line evolved to include such books as Masters of the Universe (He-Man’s second outing in comics, after a short-lived earlier run at DC Comics), Defenders of the Earth (gathering King Features’ heroes), and Bullwinkle and Rocky (detailed elsewhere in this issue).

36 • BACK ISSUE •Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue

Marvelous Comebacks (left) Scooby-Doo #1 (Oct. 1977). Cover by Dan Spiegle. (center) Yogi Bear #1 (Nov. 1977). Cover by Pete Alvarado and Scott Shaw! (right) Charlton’s loss was Marvel’s gain: Dynomutt #1 (Nov. 1977). Cover by Paul Norris. TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

Joining the Star line in 1987 was Flintstones Kids, based upon the heavily merchandized H-B Saturday morning cartoon featuring the childhood adventures of Fred, Barney, Wilma, Betty, and their pint-sized pals. This TV toon was produced during a time when baby versions of established characters were in vogue (Super Jrs., anyone?). Michael Gallagher and Tony Franco wrote the Flintstones Kids comic, which featured artwork by Harvey expatriates Ernie Colón and Warren Kremer. Another latecomer to the Star firmament was 1987’s Foofur, based upon the 1986–1988 cartoon starring a blue bloodhound, created by Phil Mendez, formerly a contributor to Charlton’s H-B line. Television’s Foofur was co-produced by Hanna-Barbera and SEPP International S.A. Marvel’s Foofur featured scripts by Gallagher and Franco of Flintstones Kids acclaim, with art by Ben Brown and Jacqueline Roettscher. Honorable mention must be made of Marvel’s six-issue “As seen on TV!” Fish Police miniseries of 1992, a tie-in to a Hanna-Barbera/CBS Television partnership adapting Steve Moncuse’s indie comic book to animation targeting an older viewership (sort of an early toe in the Adult Swim waters). Despite its stellar voice talent lineup including John Ritter as Inspector Gill and Ed Asner as Chief Abalone, TV’s Fish Police sunk in the ratings and was deep-sixed after three episodes. It was too late to stop Marvel’s hopeful tie-in, which reprinted Moncuse’s 1980s Fish Police comics.

TEMPORARY LODGING IN NORRISTOWN

The next Bronze-tastic appearance of Hanna-Barbera comic books appeared at Comico (pronounced Ko-mee-ko) the Comic Company, the Norristown, Pennsylvania, independent publisher that produced a range of creator-owned and licensed titles throughout the second half of the 1980s, including Matt Wagner’s Grendel, Bill Willingham’s Elementals, Mike W. Barr’s The Maze Agency, and licensed Robotech comics (see BACK ISSUE #2 and 125 for more Comico history). Administrative director Bob Schreck and editor-in-chief Diana Schutz, then a couple, were the powerhouses behind Comico during its brief but celebrated heyday. As Schreck explained in BI #59, Comico co-publisher Phil LaSorda mentioned his fondness for Hanna-Barbera’s Jonny Quest cartoon, the Jack Armstrong-inspired 1964 primetime series (which ran for only one season in its original incarnation, but was shown in reruns and syndication for years) about the titular boy hero, his scientist father Dr. Quest, their bodyguard Race Bannon, and Jonny’s friend Hadji—and let’s not forget the H-B-mandated loveable dog, Bandit, a character added to the show despite the protestations of Doug Wildey, the artist who developed the characters and original TV series. Bob Schreck shared LaSorda’s love of Jonny Quest, and the company obtained the rights to produce an ongoing monthly JQ title. William Messner-Loebs, then known for his American frontier indie title Journey, voiced interest in writing Jonny Quest once news broke about Comico’s acquisition of the license, and editor Schutz, a fan of Messner-Loebs’ writing in Journey

Dig That Crazy Zoo Crew Opening page from Marvel’s Laff-A-Lympics #4 (June 1978), written by Mark Evanier, penciled by Jack Manning, and inked by Scott Shaw! Courtesy of Heritage. TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue • BACK ISSUE • 37

The Adventures Continue (left) This gorgeous Doug Wildeyillustrated poster from 1986 promoted Comico the Comic Company’s Jonny Quest ongoing series. (right) Original artwork (sans copy) from Comico’s Space Ghost one-shot of 1987. Pencils by Steve Rude, inks by Willie Blyberg, and colors by Ken Steacy, from a script by Mark Evanier. TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

(which Messner-Loebs also drew), thought he would be perfect due to “Bill’s historical knowledge and aptitude for research—both of which were essential to a series like Jonny Quest, which takes place in exotic locales, often using the myths and legends of those locales as a starting point for the development of a given story,” Schutz said in BI #59. Editor Schutz’s suspicion was correct, as Messner-Loebs proved the perfect writer for Jonny Quest, also providing character development and backstories to the title, which launched with a June 1986 coverdated first issue. Diana Schutz recruited JQ show creator Doug Wildey for a painted wraparound cover for issue #1 and to write and illustrate its 12-page lead story, which was accompanied by a 12-pager scribed by Messner-Loebs and drawn by Steve Rude (a huge fan of H-B cartoons) and Mike Royer, colored by Matt Wagner. The first issue featured JQ pinups, by Rude, Marc Hempel and Mark Wheatley, and Bill Willingham and Terry Austin. What an array of talent! Schutz and Comico continued to attract comics luminaries to its new Jonny Quest series, which with its second issue began featuring rotating artists to illustrate Messner-Loebs’ full-length tales. Issue #2, drawn by Wendy Pini and Joe Staton under a Steve Rude cover, is memorable for its poignant revelation of the story of Dr. Benton’s Quest wife, Jonny’s late mother. Dave Stevens illustrated #3’s cover, and the issue was drawn by the Hempel/Wheatley team. Other all-star artists, including Dan Adkins, Adam Kubert, Dan Spiegle, and Carmine Infantino, illustrated early issues, but deadline concerns led Comico to abandon the popular but difficult-to-manage rotating-artist formula. Beginning with issue #14 (July 1987), the Hempel/Wheatley duo became Jonny Quest’s regular art team and produced the majority of the series’ issues. Fan-favorite Jonny Quest ended its run with issue #31 (Dec. 1988), a cancellation forced by declining sales not warranting the book’s licensing fees. Along the way, Comico published supplemental miniseries: three issues of Jonny Quest Classics, with Doug Wildey adapting three of the TV series’ episodes to comics; a Jezebel Jade miniseries, starring the series’ supporting cast member (and Race Bannon love interest), which was explored in BACK ISSUE #90; and two issues of Jonny Quest Special, inventory stories penned by sci-fi scribe Arthur Byron Cover that were published when Comico knew its JQ license was about to expire. All of these comics were edited by Diana Schutz with the exception of Jonny Quest Special #2, edited by the author of this article. (Please see BI #59 for a detailed history of Comico’s Jonny Quest, and ye ed’s other TwoMorrows magazine, RetroFan #7, for Will Murray’s Doug Wildey interview about the original animated series.)

Comico’s other venture into Hanna-Barberadom was the prestige format one-shot Space Ghost #1 (Dec. 1987), written by Mark Evanier with Steve “the Dude” Rude (and a Darrell McNeil plot assist), penciled by Rude, inked by Willie Blyberg, and colored by Ken Steacy. This was a labor of love for Rude, whose sci-fi indie title Nexus, which he co-created with writer Mike Baron, was inspired in part by the Dude’s affection for Space Ghost. The story gathers Space Ghost’s rogues gallery to challenge the intergalactic caped crusader and his young allies Jan and Jace (and, of course, space-monkey Blip), and its lush, vibrantly hued artwork evokes the look of the original television series (you could almost hear those H-B sound effects in this tale!). As revealed in a “Greatest Stories Never Told” feature in BACK ISSUE #2, a followup was planned which would team Space Ghost with the Herculoids, written by McNeil, penciled by Rude, and edited by yours truly. The project was tabled when Rude was hired to pencil DC’s World’s Finest miniseries, then died once Comico declined to renew its Hanna-Barbera licenses. (See Max Romero’s excellent “Space Ghost in Comics” article in BI #59 for more information about this ghostly guardian.)

YABBA DABBA DOO, THREE DIMENSIONS FOR YOU

The final stop on our tour of the Bronze-tastic World of Hanna-Barbera Comics is Blackthorne Publishing, the comics house of the mid- to late 1980s that was primarily known for its reprints of Dick Tracy and other classic comic strips and its widely distributed line of 3-D comics, featuring 3-D adventures of a range of properties including California Raisins, Rambo, Bullwinkle and Rocky, Red Sonja, Star Wars, and… …Hanna-Barbera’s The Flintstones. Blackthorne, headed by Steve Schanes (formerly of Pacific Comics) and wife Ann Fera, released in 1987 and 1988 four issues of Flintstones 3-D, adapting episodes of the classic Flintstones TV series (including the birth of Pebbles, in issue #4) to black-and-white comics, with 3-D effects. Scripts were by Blackthorne’s editor-in-chief, John Stephenson (not to be confused with the voice actor of the same name who played Mr. Slate and other characters on The Flintstones and in its later iterations). The Flintstones 3-D artist was Jorge Pacheco, a children’s book author also known for his comics work on Hollywood tie-ins including Slimer, Beetlejuice, and Saved by the Bell. “I had just graduated from the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon Art,” Pacheco recalls to BACK ISSUE, “and I was looking for work when I found out there was a small comic-book publisher in my hometown of El Cajon, California. I grew up in El Cajon and went in for an interview at Blackthorne Comics, showed the ‘editors’ my portfolio, and walked

38 • BACK ISSUE •Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue

out with my first professional job, a book called Laffin’ Gas, and was soon given my very first whole book to illustrate, which was Bullwinkle & Rocky [covered elsewhere in this issue—ed.]. Then, after that, I illustrated four issues of The Flintstones. I was truly in heaven given these incredible, famous licensed characters, and well-known books to illustrate. I colored all these comic-book covers by hand, with Dr. Ph. Martin dyes, long before computer coloring was the thing. I remember the staff and editors saying about me: ‘Jorge walked off the streets and is now one of our top artists.’ “I must admit, I was very flattered by all the praise, but not everyone was a fan of my Flintstones work. At one of the San Diego Comic-Cons, I ran into Scott Shaw!, ‘the king’ of the Flintstones. He told me, ‘I loved your Bullwinkle & Rocky work, but your Flintstones books were sh*t! [laughs] I’m not sure what my reaction was since this was in the late ’80s, but the funny thing about all of that was that Scott contacted me a few years later when I was the staff artist at Harvey Comics. He asked me if I would ink a couple of Jetsons mini-comic books he was drawing for Denny’s Restaurants. Then, another few years later, I helped Scott get a job at Harvey Comics drawing dozens of new covers of the H-B reprint books Harvey was publishing, including The Flintstones and The Jetsons, just to name a few.” Obviously, Shaw!’s assessment of Pacheco’s Flintstones in 3-D books did not tarnish their relationship. “By the way, Scott and I are good friends now, and I never took his early criticism badly,” Pacheco says. “All I know, I was so fortunate to illustrate The Flintstones for Blackthorne Comics. Those books truly helped launch my career and helped me get the biggest break in my career, which was to get the staff artist position at Harvey Comics. The H-B characters have been a big part of my career when I worked on books such as Jonny Quest, Space Ghost, Scooby-Doo, The Jetsons, and, of course, The Flintstones. I grew up watching H-B cartoons. Never could I have imagined that I would become a small piece of the H-B world.”

Coining a Catchphrase (top) Hanna-Barbera returned to Marvel, via its kid-friendly Star Comics imprint, with The Flintstone Kids #1 (Aug. 1987). Cover art by Ernie Colón and Al Milgrom. (bottom) Original Jorge Pacheco cover art to Blackthorne’s The Flintstones 3-D #4 (Mar. 1988). TM & © Hanna-Barbera Productions.

Hanna-Barbera comic books didn’t die with the Bronze Age or early Copper Age. In the 1990s, Archie Comics published The Flintstones and other H-B books, under the watchful editorial eye of Sid Jacobson. A highlight jorge pacheco of the Archie H-B run was the anthology Hanna-Barbera Presents; superhero collectors should note that Atom Ant and Secret Squirrel co-starred in HBP #1 and Frankenstein, Jr. and the Impossibles teamed up in HBP #8, the final issue. Once company acquisitions brought the Hanna-Barbera characters under the same corporate umbrella as DC Comics, DC began publishing Cartoon Network-inspired material in the 2000s, including, of all things, the insanely hilarious Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, and conversely, a realistic, and violent, Space Ghost miniseries revealing the character’s origin, scripted by Joe Kelly and featuring gorgeous painted art by Ariel Olivetti. In 2016, DC began an ambitious initiative to update classic H-B material for contemporary readers, intriguing some readers and critics but alienating many diehard fans of the classic toons. Series included an adult-oriented The Flintstones by Mark Russell and Steve Pugh, a gathering of H-B’s action stars and superheroes in Future Quest by Jeff Parker and Evan “Doc” Shaner and other artists, and The Ruff and Reddy Show by Howard Chaykin, which featured the lead duo as has-been TV stars. Certainly the most controversial of these short-lived H-B re-imaginings was Mark Russell and Mike Feehan’s Exit, Stage Left!: The Snagglepuss Chronicles, wherein the star was a outrageously gay playwright. There were even a series of DC/H-B crossovers branded as “DC Meets Hanna-Barbera,” including the logical (Green Lantern/Space Ghost, Adam Strange/Future Quest) and the way-out (Suicide Squad/ Banana Splits, Black Lightning/Hong Kong Phooey). Wherever Hanna-Barbera’s time-honored stable of characters next end up in comic books is anyone’s guess, since, at this writing, no plans have been announced for new H-B comics. And with the comics market A tip of the Water Buffalo Lodge hat to the helpful Michael Ambrose, Mark reeling, like so many other businesses, from the coronavirus pandemic, Arnold, John Byrne, Tom DeFalco, Mark Evanier, Ross Pearsall, Scott Shaw!, one might consider the prospects for new H-B comics to be slim. But in Joe Staton, and Mike Zeck. Yabba Dabba Doo to each of you! this era of real-world doom and gloom, maybe the antics of a modern Stone Age family or a pic-a-nic basket-thieving park bear are just what BACK ISSUE editor-in-chief MICHAEL EURY edited Comico’s Jonny Quest Special #2 and wrote Flintstones and Atom Ant stories for Archie and DC we need to bring a smile to our faces again. Comics. He and his wife have decorated their bedroom with Flintstones Cue “Bongo Feet and Zip,” I’m outta here! original art and collectibles. Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue • BACK ISSUE • 39

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It should have been a huge hit. After all, it had everything going for it. The effort was based on a long-running property that was loved by generations. The original books were bestsellers in the field of juvenile fiction. The characters had even appeared on the screen before, so non-readers would know them. These characters were ready for their renaissance with a hip update. They looked “now” and they looked “wow,” with current fashions and haircuts. The cast was broadened to include an independent woman and the first black character on a Saturday morning program. Most importantly, they followed the animation studio’s successful formula. Just as Filmation Studios had done with their hit Archie program [see BACK ISSUE #107—ed.], they took well-loved characters, made them hip, and injected bubble gum music into the mix. This effort provided the opportunity to learn from past mistakes. They developed a plethora of merchandise (toys, Halloween costumes, board games) for store shelves coordinating with the show’s debut. And another correction: a real band would be ready and available to record and tour to capitalize on the program’s success. But then… something happened. All these plans of pop-culture supremacy were undone by a stoner, his dog, and his three best friends. What happened? Why didn’t the show click? Why isn’t Gold Key’s The Hardy Boys comic lovingly collected and revered today? How did it instead become just a footnote, a curiosity, and a perennial pop-culture trivia question? Like the characters themselves, let’s solve the mystery of The Hardy Boys’ Gold Key Comics!

C’mon, Get Happy Gold Key’s groovy first issue cover to The Hardy Boys #1 (Apr. 1970), featuring Dan Spiegle art. © Filmation Associates.

The Hardy Boys were created by Edward Stratemeyer for his Stratmeyer Syndicate. It’s hard to understand the impact of this publishing house by today’s standards, but suffice it to say that they brought juvenile fiction, a precursor to today’s Young Adult/YA trend, to the forefront of American pop culture. Stratemeyer published numerous series, including Tom Swift, The Bobbsey Twins, The Rover Boys, and The Hardy Boys. And from The Hardy Boys template came Nancy Drew. The Hardy Boys were also rebooted many times. Periodically, the book series would be updated. The Hardy Boys characters came to life on screen on Disney’s The Mickey Mouse Club. There was an ABC pilot that debuted in September of 1967, but it failed to gain traction. Meanwhile, Filmation Studios was enjoying success with their adaptation of Archie comics. It’s not unimaginable to surmise that Filmation thought that The Hardy Boys would simply be their next big hit. The Riverdale teenagers were similar to Joe and Frank Hardy and their friends. But did the studio really put enough effort into it? So much of the animation production and rotoscoping was repurposed from their Archie show. And The Hardy Boys cartoon program employed an astonishingly small company of vocal talents— notably Byron Kane, Dal McKennon, and Jane Webb. Each would play several parts in every episode. In some ways, Filmation tried to do new things, learning lessons from Archie. While the Archie gang would always exist only as comic characters or cartoons, or as Don Kirshner-controlled studio musicians, Filmation created a live touring band version of The Hardy Boys. Lookalike actors were hired to play the characters in the opening and closing credits of the show and to perform at live concerts. The “real” Hardy Boys were Jeff Taylor as Joe and Reed Kailing as Frank. Bob Crowder, the drummer, had played with several groups, including the Shirelles. Norbet (Nib) Soltysiak was the brothers’ friend Chubby, and Devin English, a former Playboy Club Bunny, became the live incarnation of the band’s female dancer.

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HARDY HISTORY

THE MYSTERY OF THE GOLD KEY

Gold Key’s The Hardy Boys series debuted with an April 1970 cover date. This short-lived series, just four issues, was written by Don R. Christensen. More than just a writer, Christensen was an animator working for studios such as Walt Disney, Warner Bros., Hanna-Barbera, and DePatie-Freleng Enterprises. His comics work included Magnus Robot Fighter, Daffy Duck, and Uncle Scrooge. He also adapted other Saturday morning heroes to the comics, including Space Ghost, the Herculoids, and Moby Dick, in the pages of Gold Key’s Hanna-Barbera Super TV Heroes. Dan Spiegle, a fantastic artist with an enduring career, never seemed to miss a beat. Spiegle started on adaptations of screen favorites like Hopalong Cassidy, Maverick, Sea Hunt, and The Untouchables. Like Christensen, he also was assigned to comics featuring Saturday morning cartoons, such as Space Ghost. Known for his ability to draw ordinary people in adventurous situations, Spiegle was the perfect choice for Gold Key’s Hardy Boys series. He was able to draw any setting and even the gang’s car, a vintage 1912 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, never looked better. Spiegle had an uncanny ability to populate every page with myriad unique characters, without it ever looking crowded. And with all this, somehow Spiegle was able to channel the signature Filmation style into the Hardy Boys comics. He also did the very same thing when he illustrated other cartoon characters from other studios. Spiegle’s version of Space Ghost, for example, looked like the Hanna-Barbera cartoon. It was subtle. In 1970 few readers would have ever even noticed or vocalized his craftsmanship. Enjoying the art from the vantage point of today, one can only have more respect for the talented Mr. Spiegle.

OH, BOY, WE’RE HAVING A PARTY

The cast was a classic group of friends. They were all affable and upbeat. Memorable? Well… that’s for you to decide. Brothers Joe and Frank Hardy were the sons of “famous” detective Fenton Hardy. They often dropped his name to gain credibility with and access to the adult community. In issue #2’s “The Mystery of the Catacombs,” Joe meekly told the beleaguered owner of an amusement park, “Sir… y’see, our sideline is the detective business!” Wanda Kay explained further, “Their Dad is Fenton Hardy!” “Fenton Hardy!?” exclaimed the man. “Then you’re those Hardy Boys!” But unlike any other brothers in America, they never fought or bickered. And the teen friends were all very collaborative in creating music, making decisions, and solving mysteries, although the brothers led the gang.

Musical Mystery Tour (top) The “real” band, the Hardy Boys, made a blip on the bubblegum charts in 1970. (bottom) Man of mystery Fenton Hardy and his boys, and their band, on page 1 of Gold Key’s Hardy Boys #1. Story by Don R. Christensen, art by Dan Spiegle. © RCA. © Filmation.

Wanda Kay Breckenridge was a platinum-haired beauty, even though actress Devin English, who played the real-life version, clearly was a brunette. Wanda Kay was a part of the gang, although often relegated to the role of the quintessential damsel in distress. While undeniably the hot chick of the band, her musical contribution, beyond dancing, was unclear. Of note: Wanda Kay had so much marketable potential she earned her own action figurine (from Corgi) and a Collegeville Halloween Costume. Pete Jones, the drummer, was a smart and competent friend of the Hardy Boys. This trailblazing character was the first African-American cast member on a Saturday morning Show. Chubby Morton, based on Chet Morton from the book series, was the comic relief. He was the upbeat but often cowardly group member.

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CHICKS DIG THE CAR It’s seems that everyone, fans and non-fans alike, loves Batman’s Batmobile and James Bond’s Aston Martin. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the titular car from a story also written by 007 author Ian Fleming, is also a favorite. The engine roar of the Green Hornet’s Black Beauty was first heard on the radio in the 1940s and is fondly remembered. These were all part of the Corgi diecast car toy line, which featured many cars from movies and TV programs. So how is it that the mostly forgotten Hardy Boys’ 1912 Rolls Royce Silver Ghost is one of the most collectible of all Corgi cars? In the Gold Key comic and in the Filmation cartoon, the Hardy Boys zoomed from mystery to mystery in a vintage, albeit refurbished, Rolls Royce. It seems that originally they were to be driving a mini-van, à la Scooby-Doo’s Mystery Machine, but the creators shifted gears at the last minute. The comic series’ artist Dan Spiegle was skilled at rendering cars (one could say he was skilled at rendering everything and not be wrong). Spiegle’s depictions were always spot-on. It should be noted that the car was often miscolored through the comic, without the gaudy hues of the cartoon or the Corgi toy. In “The Headless Horseman” (Hardy Boys #3, Oct. 1970), the car plays an important role in the unmasking of the villain. “All because we drive a snazzy, ancient car with good heavy seat cushions,” noted Chubby.

joe hardy

frank hardy

UK-based Corgi created their version of the Hardy Boys’ 1912 Roll Royce during the TV series’ marketing blitz. The company based the design on their previously released Silver Ghost but added “pop-art-sy” colors to the car. Corgi also included small figurines with musical instruments, although they were slightly out-of-scale. (The “wrong scale” bothered me to no end as a boy.) Sales of this toy were lackluster for Corgi. Only 40,000 units were reportedly sold in a two-year period, rendering it the lowest-selling entry in the Corgi line. Ironically, an ad for Mighty Miniatures by Corgi appears in The Hardy Boys #1. It features several cars, including Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the new Corgi Junior set with the Batmobile, 007’s Aston Martin, and the missilefiring Man from U.N.C.L.E. car. Even the Monkees’ Monkeemobile made the scene. Sadly, the Hardy Boys’ vintage Silver Ghost didn’t make the cut for this ad page. Talk about a cross-marketing missed opportunity. Bummer, man.

wanda kay breckenridge

In “Secret Mission” (The Hardy Boys #2, July 1970), it seemed as though a waitress likes Chubby. She passed him a note— a plea for help—on the check. “Looks like you’re her favorite, Chubby!” teased Frank. The adventures would often end with a gag featuring Chubby. Sometimes in the Gold Key series, Chubby was portrayed against character, as clever and competent. In “The Guise of Medusa” (The Hardy Boys #4, Jan. 1971), Chubby said, “I’m getting a detectivetype inspiration!” When Frank Hardy teased him, chiding “Sherlock Bones, they call him!,” Chubby pushed back. “Cut it out, Frank!” And then he revealed the solution to the mystery, a secret that had eluded the Hardy Boys and their detective father. Fenton Hardy was the brothers’ famous detective father. He was a looming presence and to reinforce that, he was featured in the first story in the first issue. Thankfully absent from this entourage was what would soon become, for Saturday morning shows, mandatory and obsequious: a humorous sidekick or charming pet.

pete jones

chubby morton

LIFE’S FULL OF MYSTERIES (BUT THAT MAKES IT BETTER)

Each issue was stuffed with two fair play mysteries—all the clues were there for readers. If you were as smart as Joe and Frank Hardy (it went without saying that readers were smarter than Chubby), you could solve the mystery. For young readers, these comics, like the Hardy Boys prose mystery books, were a perfect entry point to the genre of mystery and detective thrillers. The plots from the Gold Key series have such great potential. They are full of saboteurs, criminal gangs, and deceptive adults. The Hardy Boys—undeterred by the normal constraints of school, finances, or adult supervision—traveled cross-country and internationally. And the premise for each story was clever, including: • Mysterious events sabotaging the opening of a Catacomb Amusement park, seemingly by disgruntled Native Americans • A dinosaur mystery in a swamp • In Venice, Italy, a statue of a goddess is missing • A robbery at the circus—including a classic locked-room mystery Clearly, this incarnation of The Hardy Boys was “safe” for children and non-threatening to adults. The gang looked like the Sears catalog version of hippies. They wore bellbottoms, vests, scarfs, and loud colors.

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Those Meddling Kids… (left) A photo cover on #2. (center) Hanna-Barbera’s similar concept, Butch Cassidy. (right) The Hardy Boys solve the mystery of the Headless Horseman in issue #3. By Christensen and Spiegle. Hardy Boys © Filmation. Butch Cassidy © Hanna-Barbera.

They didn’t do drugs. There was no sexual tension, neither overt nor implied, between Wanda Kay and her friends. And the gang was always respectful when speaking to adults—even when capturing the villains.

COVER TUNES

You’d think that with just four issues, there would be some cohesive uniformity to Gold Key’s Hardy Boys series. But as with so many expectations about the ’60s Hardy Boys, you’d be wrong. The first issue’s cover is a collage that looks as if it was designed by the same groovy artist who painted the Partridge Family’s bus. It sports a series of panels repurposing the Dan Spiegle artwork from the series. One panel, however, showcases a photo of the live-action Hardy Boys actors playing their instruments. The second issue’s cover is a friendly group shot of the actors smiling on a sunny day. The lighting looks natural and the poses look natural—without a whiff of playing concerts or solving mysteries. It’s surprisingly warm and upbeat. The penultimate issue, #3, offers up a spooky cover of the headless horseman, in typical Scooby-Doo fashion. The cover copy provided prospective readers with everything they needed to know: “Returning from a Western Rock Festival, the Hardy Boys encounter the Headless Horseman!” The Hardy Boys #4 cover takes us full circle, as it’s back to the Partridge Family layout. Interestingly, the photo montage of the actors show them all sharing an ice cream soda, in that “almost trademarked” pose of Archie, Betty, and Veronica! The logo is the one constant. It’s a typical, albeit innocuous, groovy font. And on most of the covers, it’s augmented by the additional tagline, “On the Beat!” But the odd part is that this isn’t the logo used on the cartoon. The show and most of the merchandise used a clever logo in the shape of two boys with a guitar, well communicating the premise and potential of The Hardy Boys.

MERCHANDISE

In the modern era, we often think of comics as the starting point for character merchandise. There wouldn’t be The Walking Dead T-shirts or Batman pajamas if the characters didn’t originate in the comics. But with The Hardy Boys, it’s a bit more convoluted. They characters had been merchandised via the books and TV shows long before this incarnation.

And if you were a kid who was passionate about this particular reboot, you had a lot of things you could buy—record albums, 45s, sheet music, View-Master reels, Halloween costumes (featuring Frank, Joe, or Wanda Kay), a Milton Bradley board game, and a Corgi car. To the world in 1970, The Hardy Boys comic series was just another licensing tactic. Unlike The Walking Dead or Batman, comics weren’t driving this property’s effort.

SO, WHAT WENT WRONG?

It would seem that this incarnation of The Hardy Boys was destined for pop-culture greatness. But it all fizzled pretty quickly. The biggest problem seemed to be that right after The Hardy Boys debuted, ABC introduced its own group of mystery-solving teens that would travel the country in a counterculture vehicle. Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, complete with bubble-gum rock songs, spookier mysteries, slicker animation, and an iconic canine, became a huge hit that continued season after season. The Hardy Boys and friends, by no fault of their own, seemed like also-rans by comparison. The mystery is solved. The Hardy Boys should have been a hit but it wasn’t. Joe, Frank, and the gang would have gotten away with it, too, if not those (other) meddling kids… and their dog. ED CATTO is a marketing and start-up strategist, with a specialty in pop culture. As founder of Agendae, Ed is dedicated to helping brands and companies innovate and grow. As part of the faculty at Ithaca College’s School of Business, Ed teaches entrepreneurial courses and one unique class focusing on comic conventions and Geek Culture. Ed’s also an illustrator, having won the 2019 Pulp Factory Award and a retropreneur, rejuvenating brands like Captain Action.

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THE PINK PANTHER’S ORIGINS

David DePatie was the final head of the original Warner Bros. cartoon studio, makers of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies, before it was shut down for good in 1963. With nothing left to lose, DePatie and his partner, Isadore “Friz” Freleng, founded their animation studio and officially called it DePatie– Freleng Enterprises Unlimited, Inc. A formal six-page memo introducing the company was issued on Warner Bros. stationery on March 19, 1963 and appears to be the first printed mention of DFE anywhere. In the inter-office communication, DePatie details plans for DFE to take over cartoon production for Warner Bros. by leasing the cartoon building and using many of its employees. The new company was publicly announced in the May 31, 1963 edition of Daily Variety. There was an overlap of the two studios. Warner Bros. was still doing the final touches on the animation for The Incredible Mr. Limpet, a Don Knotts comedy that combined live-action with animation. Work on the animated portion of this film was completed by April 19, 1963, as evidenced by an internal Warner Bros. memo that also mentions everyone’s termination from Warner Bros. including DePatie’s. Cartoon Studio upon completion by M ark Arnold of this work. No mention of DePatie–Freleng is mentioned or referenced. DePatie recalled, “Basically the entire staff was pretty much left intact until we ultimately closed down. When Friz and I formed our company, we literally had the cream of the crop, the pick of anybody we wanted, because they were all gonna get laid off. “There was a five-year lease on the building plus all the equipment for $500 a month. That really put Friz and I on the map. We had a beautiful facility, all ready to go.” david depatie DePatie explains how the Pink Panther came to Los Angeles Public be: “One day the telephone rings, and on the other Library/Valley Ties Photo Collection. end is [filmmaker] Blake Edwards. I had known Blake through an uncle of his by the name of Owen Crump. Crump was a producer at Warner Bros., and through that relationship I had met Blake two or three times. He said, ‘David, I understand that you are in the animation business. I’d like to see you.’ I go over to see Blake and he hands me the script of The Pink Panther. He said, ‘This is a live-action movie. I really don’t know where there’s a place for animation, but I’d like you to design me a pink panther.’ “We had a character designer by the name of Hawley Pratt. Hawley must have done at least 100 different renditions of a panther. The only thing we had to go by was in the script itself, the thing about the jewel that gets swiped back and forth, and in this—this diamond—is an imperfection that looks like a pink panther. We designed some stuff and one Sunday we took it over to Blake’s house and spread them out over his living room floor. He walked around, and he’s a pretty decisive guy, and he said, ‘That’s the one I want!’ The Panther was born. “Blake went off to Rome to shoot the movie, and the only thing he used the Panther for was on letterheads and business cards. Friz and I didn’t have any idea of where it was going to go from there. After the Congratulations! It’s Pink! picture was completed, I got a call from Blake and he said, ‘I have the (left) Pink-matted original art, by Phil DeLara, for the cover film in the can now and I would like to tell you my thoughts, so come on over.’ I went over to see him and he said, ‘I want you to create a of (inset) Gold Key Comics’ Pink Panther #1 (Apr. 1971). main title sequence for my movie.’ Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). “We went on to create a storyboard with the character involved in all of the main title credits and he thought it was great. He had to take Pink Panther © MGM Studios, Inc. Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue • BACK ISSUE • 45

Mad Monster Party Title page art from “Pinkenstein,” from Pink Panther #31 (Jan. 1976). Art by Warren Tufts. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage. (inset) Cover to The Inspector #2 (Oct. 1974). Artist unknown. © MGM Studios, Inc.

Germany. The UK premiere was on January 7, 1964, and the US premiere didn’t occur until March 18, 1964. The Pink Panther appeared in the opening and closing credit sequences of every film in the Pink Panther series except A Shot in the Dark (1965) and Inspector Clouseau (1968). His popularity spawned a series of 124 theatrical shorts and later at least ten TV series featuring new and repeat episodes and three primetime specials. The first entry in the animated cartoon series was “The Pink Phink,” released on November 14, 1964, featuring the Panther harassing his foil in his very first appearance, the little white mustached man officially known as “The Little Man” and/or “Big Nose.” In the initial entry, the Pink Panther annoys the little man by painting his blue house pink. This simple but effective cartoon won the 1964 Academy Award® for Animated Short Film, giving Friz Freleng his fourth and final Oscar. DePatie-Freleng continued to make Pink Panther cartoons throughout 1965, and initially the quality was of the same high standards of “The Pink Phink,” friz FRELENG but there were no more Oscars. DFE was ahead of schedule and now Marvel Animated Universe Wiki. contemplated other theatrical cartoon series. Panther cartoons were regularly released until 1969, when the series debuted on TV.

it over to the Mirisch Company, and get the budget okayed. It was expensive, but he got the budget cleared and we went ahead and made the main title. “The reception for the titles was magnificent. We took the picture out to preview at Village Theatre in Westwood and when the titles came on, people got up and they were jumping around and screaming and yelling. They had to turn off the projector and turn on the house lights because people were just going really crazy about it. I had the idea that maybe there was life in this Pink Panther after this main title sequence. I was able to get a very large contract from United Artists that surprised me at the time. We got a contract for 156 six-minute theatrical shorts.” The Pink Panther feature film starred David Niven, Capucine, Claudia Cardinale, and the incomparable Peter Sellers. The film premiered on December 19, 1963 in West

THE PINK PANTHER AND THE INSPECTOR ON TV

The cartoons made their way to NBC on Saturday mornings as part of The Pink Panther Show. For this series, NBC added a laugh track to the original cartoons, and brought on Marvin Miller as an off-camera narrator talking to the Pink Panther during bumper segments. Production of new theatrical Panther cartoons resumed in 1971, and then only on a sporadic basis theatrically through 1977. The final 32 Pink Panther theatricals actually appeared on television first as part of The All-New Pink Panther Show during the 1978– 1979 season on ABC, and then slowly released to theaters from 1978 through 1981. Once the Pink Panther cartoon series took off, it seemed inevitable that a series based on Peter Sellers’ character, Inspector Clouseau, would follow. The new series was titled The Inspector. The character design was restructured to have a prominent chin, little hair, and a slight mustache, so as to not so closely resemble actor Peter Sellers for fear of him claiming a copyright. This redesigned Inspector was the one used for the titles of the Inspector Clouseau (1968) feature film starring Alan Arkin. Later Panther titles redesigned the character again to resemble Peter Sellers, Roberto Benigni, and Steve Martin, depending on the film. The series featured the Inspector portrayed by Pat Harrington, Jr., who was best known from The Steve Allen Show and later from One Day At a Time. His Spanish assistant named Deux Deux joined the Inspector as they tackled a number of strange and bizarre villains. Similar to the live-action counterpart as portrayed by Herbert Lom, there was a Commissioner, who was always annoyed with the Inspector and also 46 • BACK ISSUE •Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue

sent him out on his assignments. The first cartoon in the series was called “The Great DeGaulle Stone Operation,” and was released with the James Bond film Thunderball in 1965. The theme music for the cartoon series was the song “A Shot in the Dark” by Henry Mancini, which was the same song used for the title theme for the motion picture of the same name.

THE PINK PANTHER IN COMIC BOOKS

So popular was the Pink Panther by this time that Gold Key Comics began a successful comic-book series that ran from 1971–1984 and lasted 87 issues. The cover to the first Pink Panther comic book had artwork by Phil DeLara. Later on, Warren Tufts took over after DeLara passed away in 1973. Bob Gregory also worked on these later books. There was also a mini-comic that appeared in 1976 and a Kite Fun Book from 1972 by Pete Alvarado. The Pink Panther series spun off The Inspector comic book in 1974 that ran for 19 issues, through 1978. Harvey Comics reprinted the Gold Key Pink Panther series during 1993– 1994 with a Summer Special and a nine-issue series. For the international market, cartoonist Fernando Llera worked on a Pink Panther comic book for a number of years, more than any other artist on the title. Llera remembers, “My association with the Pink Panther began in mid-1973. I was doing a comic book about a character I had created named El Mafioso Nick (Mobster Nick) as part of four different weekly titles published under the banner of Domingos Alegres (Happy Sundays) at Editorial Novaro, which was at the time one of Latin America’s largest publishing houses. They held the publication rights for all of the Dell and Gold Key titles as well as the rights for DC and Marvel comics for distribution in every Spanish-speaking country. “After a seven-month run, Novaro Publishers cancelled Mobster Nick, along with the three other titles of Domingos Alegres, and began publishing The Pink Panther and Beep Beep the Road Runner as part of their Domingos Alegres title instead. However, since both US titles were only published bimonthly, they needed, extra issues to fill out the rest of their schedule, which was two new issues every month for each. “Somebody at Novaro decided my drawing style resembled that of the Pink Panther cartoons and they hired me to draw and write the extra issues. The Road Runner was included FERNANDO LLERA in the package for no apparent reason, too. I was then given character model sheets for both titles as reference and given a few bylines to follow concerning each. “Every two weeks I had to draw a pencil rough for the entire issue, letter it in English and send it for approval to Western Publishing Company, which had an office in L.A. at the time. Once the script and artwork were approved (by Chase Craig or Zetta DeVoe), it was then mailed back to Novaro for me to ink and color. “That was pretty much the routine from 1973 to 1986, when suddenly, Editorial Novaro went bankrupt and folded. I had done about 156 issues of The Pink Panther and about the same for The Road Runner by then. “As luck would have it, another publisher, Editorial VID, acquired the rights for the Gold Key characters and hired me to continue The Pink Panther series early in 1986. I had to churn out two complete 28-page issues every month, but by this time I didn’t have to send my work for approval to the US so I worked a lot faster on each one. I managed to produce 220 Pink Panther issues between 1986 and 1992. Then the production stopped and VID concentrated solely on the DC and Marvel lines. “Fortunately, I was also working on a radio show and doing editorial cartoons for some local newspapers by then, so I was not left completely unemployed! “A few years later, I received a letter and a few Pink Panther collector’s items from somebody at DePatie-Freleng or Mirisch-Geoffrey productions—I can’t remember—thanking me for my contribution to the world of the Pink Panther. And that was my small part in the Pink Panther story. I still get mail from comic-book collectors in Central and South America and even Spain who own some of the titles I drew.” Strangely, no comic books were ever attempted for any other DFE cartoon properties.

PINK PANTHER AND INSPECTOR BRONZE AGE COMIC CHECKLIST • • • •

The Pink Panther #1 (Apr. 1971)–87 (1984) The Inspector #1 (July 1974)–19 (Feb. 1978) The Pink Panther Kite Fun Book (1972) March of Comics #376, 384, 390, 409, 418, 429, 441, 449, 461, 473, 486 • The Pink Panther 1976 trick or treat pack giveaway Note: Pink Panther has since been published by Harvey Comics and American Mythology.

Going Fishing Courtesy of the artist, a Fernando Llera Pink Panther cover from 1981. © MGM Studios, Inc.

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Environmental Protectors

by E d

These Gold Key comic books shared their characters’ public service messages and entertained young readers in the process. (left) Smokey Bear #6 (June 1971). (right) Whitman variant of Woodsy Owl #5 (Nov. 1974). Cover by Paul Norris and Larry Mayer.

Lute

Many comic books are set within a city, whether it be the New York of Marvel Comics or the fictional Metropolis, Star City, or Gotham City of DC Comics. However, during the 1970s Gold Key Comics went in the opposite direction when they produced a pair of comics set within the woods. These comics didn’t feature big-name superheroes but instead two widely known advertising icons: Smokey Bear and Woodsy Owl. While neither is as popular as Superman, Batman, or the Amazing Spider-Man, most kids and adults still know who they are to this day, and some can even recite their catchphrases. The popularity of the characters meant that fans would want to see Smokey and Woodsy in a variety of formats. This included comic books, and Western Publishing (under their Gold Key imprint) was happy to oblige them. While Gold Key Comics had its own stable of characters including Dr. Solar, Man of the Atom; Magnus Robot Fighter; and Turok, Son of Stone, the company was mainly known for its use of licensed characters including Disney, Star Trek, and many others, so Smokey and Woodsy fit right in. But these two comic-book series would stand apart from the other licensed titles: instead of simply providing entertainment, they would also provide readers with a message of either fire safety or pollution control.

SMOKEY BEAR

“Remember – Only YOU Can Prevent Forest Fires!” Those words helped propel Smokey Bear (not Smokey the Bear as some people think) into one of the most iconic characters ever. Smokey Bear is a fictional character used in advertising by the US Forest Service to help remind youngsters (and oldsters, for that matter) that their actions could prevent forest fires. He first appeared in 1944 (Smokey’s official birthdate is August 9, 1944). His first slogan was “Smokey Says – Care Will Prevent 9 out of 10 Forest Fires.” His most famous slogan made its debut in 1947 and remained the same until 2001 when it was changed to “Only You Can Prevent Wildfires!” However, Smokey Bear is more than just an icon of the Fire Service, as he has been featured in cartoons, comic books, toys, and other merchandise. Smokey Bear’s first comic-book appearance was in Dell’s Four Color #653 (Oct. 1955). The Smokey Bear comic book that many collectors are familiar with is a promotional comic first published in 1959 called The True Story of Smokey Bear. It contained the first 16 pages of Dell’s Four Color #932 (Aug. 1958) and recounted the “true” story of Smokey Bear and how he got his name. The story is based on the true story of a black bear cub that was saved during a fire in New Mexico in

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1950 and given the name of Smokey Bear after the fictional character. The promotional comic has been reprinted many times, with very little to no change to the cover or in the content. Reprints of the promotional comic can easily be found and are regularly given out to children to promote fire safety. In addition to those comics, Smokey was also featured in issues #708 (June 1956), 754 (Nov. 1956), 818 (July 1957), 1016 (Aug. 1959), 1119 (Aug. 1960), and 1214 (Aug. 1961) of Four Color. Dell’s Four Color which ran for over 1300 issues, was an anthology that featured a plethora of characters including Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Flash Gordon, Little Lulu, and Tarzan amongst many, many others. Remember when I said that the name is Smokey Bear and not Smokey the Bear? Well, Dell’s Four Color comics featuring Smokey were called Smokey the Bear Nature Stories. Even Dell didn’t get the memo on his name. Thankfully, his next comic-book series would correct this oversight. In 1969, Rankin-Bass Productions, famous for holiday-themed stop-motion television specials including Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer [see RetroFan #12] and Frosty the Snowman, amongst many others, produced the animated series The Smokey Bear Show for ABC’s Saturday morning lineup. The show ran for one season of 17 episodes, but continued in reruns. The cartoon was the basis for Gold Key’s Smokey Bear comic book. The cartoon itself was based on the Smokey Bear comics from Dell’s Four Color. So Gold Key’s Smokey Bear was based on Rankin-Bass’ The Smokey Bear Show, which was based on comic-book stories published by Dell Comics. Got it? A comic based on a television show based on a comic based on an advertising icon. Whew! Each issue of the Gold Key Smokey Bear comic contained several stories that varied in page length but usually ran approximately eight pages, giving readers a mix of stories containing fire-safety tales and fun kid-friendly stories. The Comic Code Authority seal was nowhere to be found on the books, but that didn’t matter since they were aimed at children and contained inoffensive material that parents wouldn’t mind their children reading. The comic lasted for 13 quarterly issues published between 1970 and 1973. Let’s look at a random sample of issues to get a feel for the series and the types of stories published. Smokey Bear #2 (May 1970) contained four stories plus an instructional page. The first story found Smokey Bear helping Mrs. Grizzly wake up her husband who is an off-season hibernator in “The Big Pushover.” “Too Many Cooks” had Smokey helping Jethro Coyote and his family put out a fire that they started in the woods. Mayor Owl wanted to turn the town into a convention destination but the idea backfires in “An Unconventional Town.” There is an instructional page with Smokey Bear discussing how to set up a campsite. The issue ended with “A Bad Sport,” in which Smokey encountered a bald eagle with a wig. Issue # 9 (Mar. 1972) once again featured four stories. In the first tale, “Heaven’s Devils,” Jethro Coyote and his family were back, but this time they took up riding motorcycles and Smokey used them as roving fire-spotters. Of course, Jethro and his family ended up causing a fire. In “Here’s Randy,” TV personality Randy Otto came to interview Smokey. Randy’s manager started a fire in the woods that Smokey put out. Floyd Fox wanted to bird watch in peace so he dressed up like a tree so no one would see him in “A Moving Experience.” The final story, “The Natural Thing to Do,” had Smokey instructing artist Pierre La Tulipe about fire safety. Four stories also made up the contents of Smokey Bear #11 (Sept. 1972). The first one, “The Meanest Man in Town,” had Weasel J. Googe trying to kick Jethro Coyote and his family off of Googe’s property for not paying rent. Smokey helped to keep them from getting evicted. “Private Eye Clem” was a starring vehicle for Smokey’s deputy Clem. The story saw Clem go undercover as his favorite fictional TV detective, Barney Bomb, to stop an unscrupulous carnival owner who didn’t take care of fire hazards that Smokey had pointed out. Smokey attended a Fire Fighter Convention in “What in Blazes?” and taught the children why protecting the forests are important and that preventing fires in cities and towns are important as well. Smokey showed the kids some everyday things that could cause fires such as an unattended grill and frayed wires. In “Growing Pains,” Mayor Owl’s

Smarter Than the Average Bear (top) PSA poster for Smokey Bear’s fire-prevention campaign, circa mid-1980s. Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). (bottom left) The first Smokey Bear comic (incorrectly titled “Smokey the Bear”), Dell’s Four Color #653 (Oct. 1955). (bottom right) Western Publishing’s popular and oft-reprinted The True Story of Smokey Bear. © USDA Forest Service.

Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue • BACK ISSUE • 49

The Green Team (left) Courtesy of Heritage, original cover art to Smokey Bear #10 (June 1972, artist unknown), and its published version. (right) Storyboards for a PSA television commercial featuring Woodsy Owl, signed by artist Bob Kurtz. Courtesy of Heritage. © USDA Forest Service/ National Association of State Foresters/The Ad Council.

niece, Olivia Owl, came for a visit and helped Smokey put out a fire. This also issue contained a page that reminded children to tell their parents the proper way to put out a cigarette in order to prevent a forest fire. While comic books today usually feature the names of their creative teams on their covers and interiors, some comic books from the Bronze Age didn’t list credits at all. This was the case with Gold Key, making it hard to determine just who wrote or illustrated the stories. As revealed in last issue’s article about Gold Key’s Dark Shadows adaptation, writer Merrie Spaeth worked for Gold Key Comics during the late Silver Age and early Bronze Age. “I wrote for many of their comics,” she tells BACK ISSUE, but when asked about Smokey Bear responds, “I don’t recall how many, if any, Smokey Bear stories I did for them. I wrote for a lot of different books for them and I just can’t remember everything I did back then. “For years, I would pay my bills by how many pages I was writing that month,” Spaeth continues. “I got $10 a page. Dark Shadows was my favorite to write for because they were full stories and not short ones. So, if I did another book and only did one story that would be eight pages at $10 a page, so $80. With Dark Shadows, I would write an entire 20–22-page comic, so it would be $200–220. These were the most in demand, so you didn’t usually get them. Also, these were full stories so you could write more involved ones. I really liked that. “Eventually I got to the point where I didn’t need the money from writing comics, so I stopped doing it. I liked doing it though. It was a fun time.” The Grand Comics Database (comics.org) lists artist John Constanta as the artist on issue #11 and as possibly working on issues #2, 6, and 10 as well. The GCD also lists artist Fred Fredricks (1929–2015) as the probable artist on issue #3. No writer credits are listed.

50 • BACK ISSUE •Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue

WOODSY OWL

Not to be outdone by Smokey Bear, Woodsy Owl also has one of the most popular catchphrases ever: “Give a Hoot – Don’t Pollute.” Woodsy Owl is the official mascot of the United States Forestry Service. First appearing in 1970, Woodsy was created to help instruct children about the importance of protecting the environment. He appeared in many commercials throughout the 1970s and ’80s. His vocals were performed by several famous voice actors including Sterling Holloway (the original voice of Winnie the Pooh) and Frank Welker (who has voiced many cartoons characters but is probably best known as the voice Fred Jones in various incarnations of ScoobyDoo starting with Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! in 1969). Like Smokey, Woodsy was also featured in a comic book published by Gold Key. Unlike Smokey, Gold Key’s Woodsy Owl comic was the feathered character’s first comic-book excursion. Similar to Gold Key’s Smokey Bear comic, Woodsy’s comics each contained several stories that alternated between message tales of protecting the environment (usually involving pollution) and cute, funny stories that would appeal to young children. The comic lasted for ten quarterly issues published between 1973 and 1976. Once again, we look at a random sample of Woody Owl comics to obtain a feel for the series. Woodsy Owl #1 (Nov. 1973) introduced Woodsy and his companions including Nutsy Squirrel, the Hillbilly Beavers, John and Martha Condor, Loose Moose, Punky Possum, Little Benjie Bear, and Hot Lion. Like Smokey’s comic book, this book contained several stories, but in a break from what was presented in the other comic, contained a full-length 20-page story (“A Most Egg-Citing Event”) along with a four-page backup tale (“Big Treasure Hunt”). The main story saw Woodsy

Barking from a Tree Original art to the first page of Gold Key’s Woodsy Owl #1 (Nov. 1973, courtesy of Heritage; note Woodsy’s missing paste-up word balloon. Art by Al Hubbard, script by Don R. Christensen. © USDA Forest Service.

promote his mission to stop pollution, along with planting new trees and helping endangered species when he and his friends helped Mr. and Mrs. Condor start a family. The backup tale found Woodsy and friends on a treasure hunt to find people who were doing something to help the environment. An eco-list just like Woodsy’s was included for readers so they could play along at home with their family and friends. The full-length tales wouldn’t continue, however, as witnessed in issue #3 (May 1974), which contained three stories. The issue contained a 13-pager, an eight-pager, and a four-page tale. In “The Recycle Roundup,” Woodsy and friends helped an alien who had crash-landed in the woods. They used recycled materials like aluminum cans to power his spaceship so he could leave Earth. The cover story, “The Millstream Mystery,” had Eli Fox tricking Hot Lion and the animals (except for Woodsy, that is) into thinking there was gold in the mill. Woodsy discovered it was a trick and chased Eli away. Just like in Smokey’s book, some of Woodsy’s stories didn’t involve any message but just provided a good, enjoyable story. “Woodsy Battles Littersville,” the final story, involved Woodsy educating a town of litterers. Issue #4 (Aug. 1974) once again featured three stories. “Bulletin Board Bugaboo” saw Woodsy and Hot Lion deal with a group of ants. “The Frizzled Feathers” introduced Rip Van Wrunkle, a miner who had just woken up after sleeping for 100 years, who wanted to continue his mining but was destroying the environment in the process. Of course, our feathered friend Woodsy stepped in to stop him. “The Rambunctious Ranger” saw Woodsy’s nephew Bitsy Owl become an official Ecology Ranger and then go overboard with his ecological mission. By issue #8 (Aug. 1975), Woodsy Owl had gone the route of Smokey Bear. It now contained four short stories along with two pages of “Woodsy Owl’s Helpful Hints.” As with the previous issues, however, the comic contained a mix of fun stories and those dealing with ecological awareness. The helpful hints in this issue were to make sure that you turned off a dripping faucet to conserve water and not to start smoking because not only was it bad for you, but it was also bad for the environment. Once again, the Comics Code Authority seal was nowhere to be found on this title, not that it mattered with such wholesome material. As with Smokey Bear, it can be hard to determine who worked on Gold Key’s Woodsy Owl. According to the GCD, Don R. Christensen (1916–2006) wrote the stories that appeared in issues #1 through 4, artist Al Hubbard (1915–1984) did the artwork for issue #1, and artist Paul Norris (1914–2007) did the pencils for issues #2 through 6.

VARIANTS AND EVEN MORE VARIANTS

Many Gold Key Comics were also published with a Whitman logo in place of the Gold Key logo. Both variants were published by Western Publishing and their contents weren’t different; they were the same comic with a different cover icon. The Gold Key editions were sold on the newsstands and the Whitman versions sold in grocery stores and retail stores, often bagged with several other comic books. All 13 issues of Smokey Bear and ten of Woodsy Owl were published in both Gold Key and Whitman versions. Welcome to the wonderful world of variant comic-book covers. You say that a different logo isn’t enough of a variant for you? Well, as they say in infomercials… but wait, there’s more! Comics have always had ads in them, promoting the sale of brine shrimp (sold as Sea Monkeys), X-ray glasses, and many, many, many other things [come back next issue as BI explores Bronze Age Ads,

Promos, and Gimmicks!—ed.]. During the 1970s and 1980s, some comics from various companies contained centerfold ads promoting Mark Jewelers. Don’t worry if you don’t remember them, because they were only placed inside of comics sold near US military installations. The hope was that the military personnel would read the comic, see the ad, and then purchase jewelry for their loved ones. Nothing on the cover would indicate that the issue contained this ad insert. The comics themselves were the same as those without the ad; only the centerfold ad insert was different. Gold Key, Marvel, and DC were known to have produced comics with these special ad inserts. Smokey Bear and Woodsy Owl comics were no exception to this marketing strategy. Smokey Bear #12 and 13 and Woody Owl #1–3 are known to have been produced with these special ad inserts. Collectors, good luck finding the Gold Key and Whitman versions of each Smokey and Woodsy comic, as well as the Mark Jewelers copies! Both Smokey Bear and Woodsy Owl remain popular to this day. Their comics from Gold Key (or Whitman, if that’s your preference) offered readers fun, wholesome adventures with environmental messages thrown in for good measure, amusing entertainment for the whole family. The author would like to thank Merrie Spaeth for her assistance with this article. ED LUTE gives a hoot, doesn’t pollute, and knows that only he can prevent forest fires. He had a blast visiting with old friends Smokey and Woodsy and was glad to be able to share that visit with BI readers. He is a full-time educator, fulltime geek, and parttime freelance writer.

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In the comics and cartoon worlds, where anthropomorphous characters (that is, illustrated and animated beings who behave as if they were human) exist including Donald Duck, Droopy Dog, and Felix the Cat, one particular muscle-bound murine reigns supreme— MIGHTY MOUSE! For almost 80 years, Mighty Mouse has entertained generations of children and adults worldwide through theatrical cartoons, syndicated and all-new animated shows for television, a plentitude of merchandise including apparel, board games, plush dolls, playing cards, story records, and, of course, comic books.

WHO IS MIGHTY MOUSE… AND HOW HE CAME TO BE!

Originally created in 1942 by Paul Terry’s Terrytoons Studios as “Super Mouse,” the character first appeared in the animated short, “The Mouse of Tomorrow” —a parody of DC Comics’ archetypal hero, Superman (just a year before, cartoons produced by Max Fleischer Studios were released through Paramount Pictures) and Walt Disney’s iconic Mickey Mouse, who had already reached a decade-and-a-half of multimilliondollar prosperity. Super Mouse was flying high after the release of several more well-received Terrytoons. But some changes were necessary; another “Supermouse”— sporting a similar red-and-blue costume—regularly appeared in Nedor Publishing Company’s Coo Coo

Comics, coincidentally debuting in 1942. Reportedly, Terry himself decided to change the name to “Mighty Mouse” and, after his animation staff tested various color schemes, permanently changed his new star’s costume to yellow and red. By the time Mighty Mouse first appeared in Terry-Toons Comics #38 (Nov. 1945), his popularity skyrocketed to become one of the most victorious superhero animals in pop-culture history. Retiring in 1955, Paul Terry sold Terrytoons Studios and its vast 25-year inventory of cartoon characters to CBS Television. His decision to do so would break ground in the industry; it paved the way for theatrical cartoons of the past to be shown to a new generation inside their homes. For a dozen years, Mighty Mouse Playhouse was, arguably, the show that introduced American children—boys and girls alike—to superheroes. Throughout this time, Mighty Mouse and other Terrytoons appeared in hundreds of comic-book stories by multiple publishers including Timely (later Marvel, with stories written and edited by a young Stan Lee!), St. John Publications (including the first-ever three-dimensional comic book—reportedly selling over 1.25-million copies!), Pines, Dell, Gold Key, and again, Dell. For 23 years, Mighty Mouse comics were consistently published throughout the Golden and Silver Ages—eclipsing well-known superheroes including Marvel’s Captain America and

V. C o n t e

Mighty Mouse in the ’70s Through the ’90s! (left) Western/Gold Key’s Adventures of Mighty Mouse #168 (July 1979), featuring cover copy playing off of ’70s Jawsmania. Cover artist unknown. (center) Spotlight’s Mighty Mouse Adventure Magazine #1 (1987). Cover by Nate Butler. (right) Marvel’s Mighty Mouse #1 (Oct. 1990). Cover by Ernie Colón. Mighty Mouse, Deputy Dawg, and Heckle and Jeckle © CBS Operations, Inc.

Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue • BACK ISSUE • 53

ARE GOLD KEY/WHITMAN COMICS REALLY GOOD COMICS? When asked how the Bronze Age of Terrytoons comics compare with the characters’ Golden Age and Silver Age predecessors, three well-known animation and comics experts clearly expressed their opinions: • MILTON KNIGHT “The Gold Key/Whitman comics weren’t the same; all their adaptations were sanitized. Imagine discovering a coverless copy of a St. John’s Mighty Mouse comic; I loved a story by [Terrytoons animator and director] Connie Rasinski with a sexy Mitzi Mouse. Seeing a Heckle and Jeckle comic by “the Stretchy Artist”—Jim Tyer—was a dream come true. Up to then, I had never seen a ‘funny comic’ that actually looked like animation. From then until the 1980s, a bias against authentic animation style had arisen; cartoons were one thing, but comics were supposed to be comics. Dell had always had that going, and so did the others. I had my own differences with the publishers for this reason; though they were doing animated characters, the styles were not authentic.” • JERRY BECK “Mighty Mouse comics from the 1950s were done by Terrytoons Studios and, unlike the Dell/Gold Key/Whitman

books, these artists actually signed their names to the work! The comic stories were drawn based on [Connie] Rasinski’s model sheets, and the comic adaptations of the cartoons were sometimes better! The whole run of the St. John’s era is amazing. The kooky, looseness of Jim Tyer—Robert Crumb once parodied Gandy Goose in that style! And later, Gene Deitch’s Tom Terrific and Clint Clobber were just fantastic!” • SCOTT SHAW! “They’re kinda tepid. The Dell stuff is not memorable, at least not to me. The ones that were packaged by Western Publishing are competent but unremarkable. Those that followed, after the split between Western and Dell, are quite poor, Dell’s equivalent to Charlton’s substandard line of Hanna-Barbera titles. “I love Timely’s Mighty Mouse funnybooks written and drawn by Al Jaffee in a style that displays his cleverness, versatility, and draftsmanship. I’m not crazy about Al Fago’s work. I don’t know if he was the editor or not, but there seemed to be a directive to draw every opening splash page with a huge image of the feature star’s face. The concept is bland and a rather lazy solution to what could have been impressive, as in Al Jaffee’s stories.” DC Comics’ the Flash, whose adventures ceased publication in the 1950s but returned for the 1960s. But all good things eventually come to an end and, in 1968, Dell’s Mighty Mouse #172 would be the last issue to appear on newsstands for nearly a decade… Now we fast-forward to flash back to discuss Mighty Mouse’s comics comeback during the Bronze Age! Early known Mighty Mouse art created sometime in the 1970s includes two gags pitched for an unrealized comic book or newspaper strip. Written and illustrated by Tony Tallarico, this veteran cartoonist’s immense body of work includes other Terrytoons properties used in children’s books and advertising. Sadly, Paul Terry passed away in 1971. But Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, Deputy Dawg, and other studio creations remained alive and well through nationwide television syndication during the 1970s. Children who once watched Terrytoons and read the comics were now adults—and all too happy to share those same experiences with their own families. Mighty Mouse merchandising was in full force, too: buttons, cereal bowls, chalkboards, puffy stickers, Super-8 films, trace-and-paint sets, daily vitamins, and more were readily available at the local grocery stores, five-anddimes, and toy-and-model shops. One company in particular reigned as the proud, powerhouse licensee for the character—Western Publishing!

The Early Years (top left) The former “Super Mouse” as he first appeared in 1942’s “The Mouse of Tomorrow,” and (top right) Mighty Mouse’s final look. To help remedy possible confusion with Standard Comics’ Supermouse (bottom left), Paul Terry insisted for years that Mighty Mouse’s revised name appear on posters, publicity, and licensing materials. (bottom right) A publicity photo of Paul Terry, promoting Mighty Mouse and other Terrytoons characters from his animation studios, in New Rochelle, New York. Mighty Mouse and Terrytoons characters © CBS.

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THE GOLD KEY/WHITMAN YEARS

Western Publishing Company, Inc., mostly known for creating its iconic line of Little Golden Books, Big Little Books, jigsaw puzzles, clean drawing slates, and other products for the children’s market, had two production offices in the 1970s: one in Los Angeles, California, and the other in Poughkeepsie, New York. Most of Western’s mammoth line of television- and movie-licensed comics was created in the former, but the Terrytoons comics were compiled from the latter location. Presumably, it was more convenient as Terrytoons Animation Studio was based in New Rochelle, New York, and that CBS Enterprises, renamed Viacom in 1970, had executive offices in Manhattan. Western, via its partnership with Dell Comics, had been involved with Mighty Mouse and other Terrytoons since the late 1950s after St. John’s Publishing’s last issue #144 (mistakenly, Dell’s series starts with #144—now cited as #144-B). After both companies went their separate ways in 1962, Western formed its own comics imprint, Gold Key, and published Mighty Mouse #156–165. Soon after, the Terrytoons license briefly returned to Dell; it published a second, brief run of Mighty Mouse, issues #166–172, without “Western” influence, later causing confusion among comic-book collectors. Although the Mighty Mouse title went on hiatus, other Terrytoons properties—specifically two magpies—would take the forefront in Gold Key’s anthology series, New Terrytoons (vol. 2). A couple of songbirds named Heckle and Jeckle—also part of TV’s heavy rotation of cartoons during the 1970s— took center stage and appeared on 44 covers of the entire 54-issue series. Published between 1962–1980, New Terrytoons would be the sole Terry-verse publication for almost a decade. Western started printing comics for non-traditional markets under its Whitman brand, where the company’s other products were sold. Other than the imprint changes on the front cover, the interior comics were unchanged. This decision was made for two “key” reasons: so newsstand distributors would not accept returns on comics that were not branded “Gold Key,” and so the “Whitman” comics, poly-bagged in twos and threes, had a potentially indefinite shelf-life. It was not uncommon for some retailers to carry both brands—Gold Keys on spinner or wall racks with several other publishers, and the Whitman multi-packs hanging from pegboards as part of the Western Publishing products display. “Western’s take on comic books was quite different than that of any other publisher,” notes animation historian and professor Jerry Beck (cartoonresearch.com)—who wrote over a dozen books on the subject, published an essay celebrating Mighty Mouse’s 75th Anniversary for 2017’s San Diego Comic-Con’s Souvenir Book, and, as once-Vice President of Nickelodeon Movies, tried to green-light a feature-length film starring Terrytoons’ top star, albeit unsuccessfully: “DC, Archie, Harvey, and other companies truly saw comics as respectable periodicals,” says Beck. “Western viewed theirs as ‘just another item’—one more SKU [stock keeping unit] as part of a decades-long, mass-product offering. jerry beck Their comics were one small component of a broader licensing deal to support their massive, supermarket distribution model. They were just creating cheap, throwaway entertainment for kids.” By early 1977, sales figures on New Terrytoons had waned and the book was under threat of cancellation. Interest in Heckle and Jeckle as the main feature was on the decline. Viacom International, now in charge of all Terrytoons consumer products, advised its licensees of a forthcoming Saturday morning cartoon show starring both Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle. Western soon reached a deal for the mightiest of all super-animals to return to comics—now as the starring feature in the bimonthly anthology series and once again in his own title, Adventures of Mighty Mouse. According to a 1994 conversation with Howard Berk, then-Viacom’s Director of Licensing and Merchandising, comics were an important component of its Terrytoons roster of characters: “TV syndication of the older Terrytoons material kept merchandising viable, but many of those original theatrical shorts did not air [in the 1970s]. Packages were usually geared for stations to have several weeks of programming, and then they would be repeated ad infinitum. This was before cable and home-video tapes and [laser]discs. [Viacom] realized that fresh cartoons on network television were needed to reinvigorate interest in our children’s properties. In the meantime, comics and storybooks were the best avenues for new editorial [content].”

Mighty Mouse vs. the Syndicate… …newspaper, that is. (top) Two tryouts possibly for an unrealized Mighty Mouse newspaper strip. Illustrated by artist Tony Tallarico circa 1970s, these panels (available at coollinesartwork.com) appeared for auction but remain unsold as of this writing. Note that Pearl Pureheart appears instead of Mitzi Mouse. (bottom) Not seen in comics since 1968, Mighty Mouse returned to take over the prime spot in New Terrytoons #44 (May 1977), replacing Heckle and Jeckle as the cover feature. With the exception of #47, he would appear on every cover until the series’ final issue, #54, in 1979. © CBS.

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And so, the first all-new Mighty Mouse comicbook story of the 1970s, “The Cheese Fair is Unfair,” debuted in New Terrytoons #44 (Mar. 1977). Until issue #52, Heckle and Jeckle tales dominated the Over several decades, Mighty Mouse and other Terrytoons had series, with additional backups shared between Silly reached incredible success with hundreds of official consumer Sidney, Hashimoto San, and Hector Heathcote. With products. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Howard Berk was exception of issue #47—a complete reprint of #23 Vice President of Merchandising at Viacom. He authorized licenses from four years before with a different-colored cover for thousands of items featuring intellectual properties (IPs) including (also the last to feature Heckle and Jeckle on it)—and Captain Kangaroo, Dark Shadows, and The Honeymooners. #51 (republished stories selected from Dell’s Mighty Berk was known to have a soft spot for those who were particularly Mouse #145 and 146 with a retraced, recolored knowledgeable about the Viacom archive. In the mid-to-late 1980s, cover from #155), all other covers and he was one the first licensors that would give independent stories are believed to have been freshly comic-book companies a chance to prove themselves. produced with possible inclusion of Although Berk was around during the tail end of Viacom’s unpublished Dell file inventory. Meanwhile, Viacom grantedarrangement with Whitman Comics, the first time an all-new Filmation rights to produce one Terrytoons license for the category took place under his season of The New Adventures of management was with Spotlight Comics. Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle. “I liked those guys because they knew the characters With Filmation known for producing so intimately,” he said to me in 1994. “They just ran out of a cornucopia of Saturday morning animoney before they could establish themselves.” mated and live-action programming “Those guys” Berk referred to were Richard Maurizio including Archie, Star Trek: The and Jim Main. They also recall working with him on Animated Series, Ghost Busters, and howard berk approving various Terrytoons stories including Mighty Shazam!, Berk made an interesting Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, and Deputy Dawg. comparison to Paul Terry: “Mr. Berk was not one to mess with!” laughs Main. “This was right before my time [at Viacom], but we “If you brought him a script or copies of a work-in-progress and he went with Filmation for a few reasons, one of which was the promise of a theatrical Mighty Mouse cartoon,” saw something he thought was amiss, he would circle it and request

a change. I made quite a few trips to the Viacom offices in New York just to have things green-lighted!” “After we drew the first issue of Mighty Mouse and submitted it to Viacom, Howard made us redraw several panels,” adds Maurizio. “He would say things like, ‘Oh, no. Mighty Mouse looks too determined’ or ‘He can’t look angry—ever!’ Funny, though… Milton Knight’s story was the only one that was approved on first submission. After that, I let Jim meet with Viacom for approvals.” One of the most perhaps frustrating experiences Maurizio had with Viacom was a lost opportunity during the holidays in 1988: “Howard contacted us about creating an all-new Mighty Mouse costume for someone to wear while passing out our comics during the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. We asked artist and puppeteer Tony Basilicato, who did Prime Slime Tales [for Mirage] and worked with Jim Henson on The Muppet Movie, to help us. He put together this awesome, padded outfit with a perfect head based on the classic Terrytoons model sheets drawn by Connie Razinski—complete with Mighty Mouse’s eyelashes that were drawn on with magic marker. For reasons I still don’t understand today, Viacom killed it for that reason. It was devastating.” Years after the Spotlight Comics and Marvel licenses had run their course, I met with Berk at the 1994 Licensing Expo in New York City. I had just started Studio Chikara, a custom comic-book packaging company, and left an envelope at the Viacom booth stamped with the words, “MIGHTY MOUSE VS. HECKLE AND JECKLE.” Later, his assistant contacted me to discuss the idea. I presented the story with concept art and Berk seemed impressed, asking, “Why didn’t anyone do this before?” Viacom’s asking price for the Terrytoons comics license was too high for viability, and the caveat to distribute titles on newsstands killed the deal. But Howard and I kept in touch until he retired from Viacom. I have been fortunate enough to meet some wonderful and successful people in product licensing throughout my career. Howard Berk was one of those people, and he has my gratitude for providing his valuable advice and time. — Robert V. Conte

Berk and colleagues with with Terrytoons merchandise, circa 1990s.

SPOTLIGHT ON HOWARD BERK

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Promotional Rarity A scarce house ad for Adventures of Mighty Mouse that appeared in a select few Western Publishing comics of the day. © CBS.

Double Trouble? (top left and center) New Terrytoons #23 (Nov. 1973) and 47 (Nov. 1977), examples of Gold Key/ Whitman’s infamous practice of reprinting comic books in the same series to save money and catch up on production time when creating new content. Other than updated color separations and ad swaps, the stories inside are identical— frustrating then-longtime collectors and subscribers. (top right) This extremely rare, New Terrytoons comic “2 pak” was sold at K-Mart Canada in the late 1970s. Note: “Gold Key” is the imprint instead of “Whitman,” without title or issue number on said Berk. “The company struck me as a modern-day Terrytoons Studios in its never-ending quest to save a buck and churn out as much product as humanly possible. They did produce the program later than we wanted, and released a Mighty Mouse ‘movie’— by splicing together enough clips from their shows to make it. [Paul] Terry would have been proud! [laughs]” The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle did not premiere until Fall 1979—over two years after the new Western/Viacom agreement. This late tie-in to the comics did little to increase Whitman’s sales on both its Terrytoons titles. Adventures of Mighty Mouse hit shelves with a March 1979 cover date but, unlike its companion title, the first two of this seven-issue series exclusively contained (without stating so) Dell and Gold Key reprints from the 1960s. Issue #166 reprints stories featuring the character from Dell #149, and #167 does the same with Dell #154. (Heckle and Jeckle, Silly Sidney, and other ancillary characters from the original issues were excised in favor of advertising.) This mishmash of reprints and all-new stories could usually be distinguished by what logo was used on the first page of each tale. Six out of the seven published covers were completely new; the last issue, 1980’s #172, reprints the cover and lead story “Panic in the Sky” from Gold Key’s Mighty Mouse #160 and “The Pied Piper,” with two bonus Heckle and Jeckle stories—all originally from #148—with minor alterations.

Perhaps more astounding was the run’s issue numbering; instead of starting at #173 where Dell’s second series left off, Western just continued from Gold Key’s #165, published in 1965. Whether an oversight, through some leftover hostility from the friction between Dell and Western’s 1962 split, or simple negligence, many comic-book collectors who mistakenly believe they have an entire collection of Mighty Mouse, in fact, may not. Another unfortunate aspect of the Terrytoons comics published by Gold Key/Whitman are that the majority of stories and art are uncredited. “One reason it’s hard to identify the artists and writers on those Terrytoons comics from the 1970s–’80s, is that they were produced out of the New York office,” says veteran animator, illustrator, and writer Scott Shaw! (shaw-cartoons.com). “I think that Wally Green and Bill Harris were the editors there. It was likely all local talent.” At that time, Shaw! worked for the competition’s kids’ comics of that period including The Flintstones, Laff-A-Lympics, and Yogi Bear, as reported in this issue’s Hanna-Barbera article. “I never worked for Western, just for Los Angeles’ Chase Craig at Hanna-Barbera on the Marvel books,” he says. Perhaps it was Western’s business practices of not crediting artists, low-grade pay scale, and keeping the original art produced for their titles that kept creators who admired Terrytoons like Shaw!—who was inspired by Ralph Bakshi’s The Mighty Heroes

top of the logo. (bottom) Look familiar? Western Publishing’s cost-andtime saving practices included creating “new” comic-book covers. How? By having a staff artist trace line art from an existing piece in storage published years before (middle, 1962’s Adventures of Mighty Mouse #155), then modify and recolor it. Courtesy of Heritage Comic Auctions (www.ha.com). (right) The cover of Gold Key’s reuse, published in 1978 as New Terrytoons #51. © CBS.

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Mighty Mouse vs. the Punisher (?!) (left) Wait… Did Mighty Mouse actually fight the Punisher? Well, not quite. This “Punisher” was actually Professor Theorem, who, in this story by writer Paul S. Newman, suffered from sleepwalking and used that name as his calling card! But, as Marvel’s Punisher once met Archie and his gang from Riverdale, one never knows… Published in Gold Key’s Adventures of Mighty Mouse #171 (Nov. 1979). (right) John Costanza original art, courtesy of Heritage, for the cover of New Terrytoons #50 (May 1978). © CBS.

and Gene Deitch’s Tom Terrific— to focus his talents elsewhere. “Those who worked at Western New York were mostly young cartoonists, like Gary Terry or Mark Mayerson, trying to get into the business,” adds Jerry Beck. “Some classic artists including Marty Taras, who worked for Famous Studios Animation in its heyday and drew Baby Huey and other comics, were likely involved, too.” Mark Mayerson (mayersoncreative.com), a writer and cartoonist who, in 1989 created a Terrytoons parody named “Flighty Mouse” (published in Apatoons magazine), confirms that Gary Terry indeed contributed to the Gold Key/Whitman comics and addressed an inquiry about a possible relation to another “Terry”: “I worked with [Gary] in 1976 at a New York animation studio called Teletactics. So far as I know, Gary was no relation to Paul Terry. I’m sure he would have mentioned it since we were working in an animation studio and he was drawing Mighty Mouse.” Another animator, illustrator, and human encyclopedia of cartoon knowledge, Milton Knight (miltonknightsitemenu.blogspot.com), concurs with Beck: “Taras drew Heckle and Jeckle [cited as ‘Farmer Boys’ for New Terrytoons #46 on the Grand Comics Database (comics.org)] and I believe John Stanley wrote some, too.” Creators who are speculated to have contributed to Western’s Terrytoons comics, via the Grand Comics Database, include Gene Fawcette, Frank Johnson, and Paul S. Newman,

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the latter of whom had records indicating so in Robin Snyder’s History of the Comics vol. 2 #8 (Aug. 1991). Fortunately, in 2005 Heritage Comics Auctions auctioned material from the Random House Archives, including an incredible amount from Western Publishing. Longtime artist John Costanza, whose wealth of illustration and lettering work for virtually every major publisher has made his name synonymous with classic comics, was credited with covers for Adventures of Mighty Mouse #162, 166, and 169 and New Terrytoons #45, 46, 48, 49, 50, 53, and 54. The auctioneer has sold other original covers and interior images from these books, but most contributing artists remain unknown. Unless business records or cancelled checks from Western Publishing are revealed one day, this information may never see light of day. Western’s final Terrytoons publications were in 1981, part of the company’s longtime March of Comics promotional booklets. Featuring all-new art and stories, they were distributed at various retailers including Buster Brown, Sears, and others. By then the parent company was Mattel Toys, which had since shut down the Gold Key line of newsstand books and, eventually, ceased publishing Whitman Comics, too. So Mighty Mouse and other Terrytoons characters would be dormant for just over five years. That is, until the Spotlight shone upon them once again… continued on page 61

MIGHTY MOUSE COMICS THAT ALMOST WERE…! Many Mighty Mouse comics were published during the Bronze Age. However, several unreleased issues were planned, solicited, and, in some cases, completed. To date, these stories remain unavailable. Few are reported to be in the Viacom archives, while others lie with their original creators. Sadly, a few were destroyed, too! Here’s a look at some of the unpublished Mighty Mouse comic stories.

WHITMAN COMICS – TERRYTOONS 40th ANNIVERSARY

“Mattel Toys owned Whitman in the early 1980s, and we discussed a big collection of Mighty Mouse and the other Terrytoons,” recalled Howard Berk, then Viacom’s Head of Licensing in 1994. “I think we wanted all-new material, and they did not want to pay for it because the Filmation show was not renewed for a second season. Anyway, the idea fell through but there was either a cover or promo art made.”

SPOTLIGHT COMICS

Although the company had only five published comics featuring Terrytoons characters, editor Jim Main, publisher Richard Maurizio, and various creators remember others in production: • JIM MAIN “There were a few scripts left unassigned on my desk at the time everything ended. Some comic stories and covers were finished or almost done. I have copies of them. A really wonderful piece by Jim Engel comes to mind for the proposed first issue of Heckle and Jeckle. I’m saddened to even think about it, as that was my baby!”

• JIM ENGEL “I drew a cover for The Mighty Heroes #3 that was planned to be published in full-color. Then I wrote a Mighty Mouse story named ‘Pyramid Life Crisis,’ where Oil Can Harry sets up shop in Egypt. Cats are sacred there, so Mighty Mouse couldn’t beat him up without being arrested!” • RICHARD MAURIZIO “Both Mighty Mouse #3 and Heckle and Jeckle #2 had completed covers by Joe Staton. Gary Fields drew at least one story and Ray Dirgo drew another. The Mighty Heroes #2 had two stories. I drew the first, written by D. G. Bishop. The other was by Joe Gill and Pete Fitzgerald, titled ‘From the Shrinker, with Love.’ If all had worked out, #3 would have been published in full-color with Engel’s cover. Two projects I regret not publishing were Mighty Mouse #4 with Jerry Ordway’s cover and Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures based on the late-’80s television show.” • STEPHEN KEETER “I wrote several scripts that were never published. Unfortunately, I no longer have most of them… just a few snippets. I do have the complete, but never published, artwork for a Mighty Mouse story called ‘Long John Catnip,’ written by yours truly and illustrated by the enormously talented Nate Butler and Dennis Yee.” • MIKE KAZALEH “Buried in my closet somewhere is a Mighty Mouse comicbook story that I had illustrated for the ill-fated Spotlight company. It was never published, and I was never paid. This was a little before Marvel had the license.”

(left) Jim Engel’s cover art for Spotlight’s The Mighty Heroes #3, which was to upgrade from blackand-white interiors to full-color. Unfortunately, Spotlight had closed before #2 was printed. (right) Heckle and Jeckle #1 cover art by Joe Staton, unpublished by Spotlight. © CBS.

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(top) Intended to be the cover of Spotlight’s Mighty Mouse #4, famed Adventures of Superman artist Jerry Ordway created this masterpiece using Duo-Shade. (bottom) Two years before Ralph Bakshi’s Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures TV show was adapted into comics, Spotlight had its own series in development with stories written by BACK ISSUE big cheese Michael Eury! Unfortunately, the scripts and art from this series seem to be lost forever… Mighty Mouse © CBS.

• JERRY ORDWAY “I was living in West Haven, Connecticut, in the late-1980s, and was not under any exclusive contract to Marvel or DC at that time. I liked superheroes and Mighty Mouse was one, or a parody of one. I was drawing Superman at that time and was either asked, or inspired, to draw the hero standing on the Moon with Earth in the background—similar to what was in the credit sequence on the 1950s Adventures of Superman TV show. I drew the artwork on art board called Duo-Shade. When you apply a rather smelly chemical to it, reproducible shading lines would appear. You’d dip your brush in and paint the chemical to simulate a three-dimensional shading effect, in addition to the ink lines I had already applied. This was very popular among the EC artists of the 1950s.” • MICHAEL EURY “Spotlight was among my very first comics work! All of my scripts were typed on an IBM Selectric typewriter, back in the days when computers were the domain of scientists, and I did not save them. I did indeed write two of the three scripts planned for the unpublished Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. One was a League of Super-Rodents story that I don’t really recall, but I suspect it was a parody of the Legion of Super-Heroes. And I wrote a story pitting Mighty Mouse against the Cow—a villain from the show I utterly (udderly?) adored—becoming a rock star (Bellvis, with a cowbell medallion) in a ruse for his criminal enterprises. That was well over 30 years ago, though, and that’s all I recall about the subject matter. I do remember being thrilled when I got news that Ralph Bakshi himself had approved my scripts! That was quite exciting for this fledgling comics pro!” • NATE BUTLER “I painted a cover for Mighty Mouse Adventure Magazine #2, but Spotlight went out of business before it was ever published in color. I also inked one or maybe two other guys at Spotlight, I think. I also got them to hire Tom Moore, an old-timer who had worked for Archie in the 1950s–1960s. He came out of retirement to work with me on the revamped Jughead book for Archie. Tom also inked a Mighty Mouse story called ‘The Terrible Tiger,’ penciled by George Broderick.”

MARVEL

“I was at my drawing board working on Mighty Mouse Issue #11 when the phone rang and the axe fell,” says series writer Michael Gallagher. “In the lead story, Mighty Mouse was going to get his version of Spider-Man’s black costume from Secret Wars. The only other concept I barely remember scribbling down was a story where an anthropomorphic ‘He-Man, Master of the Universe’ comes to town to challenge our hero… I may have called him ‘He-Mouse,’ but I really can’t recall. 60 • BACK ISSUE •Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue

continued from page 58

MIGHTY MOUSE’S AND OTHER TERRYTOONS’ COMEBACK!

(left) Nate Butler’s painted cover for Spotlight’s unpublished Mighty Mouse Adventures Magazine #2. (right) A cover by Milton Knight for a proposed Heckle and Jeckle in 3-D comic book. © CBS.

You can see the Charles Vess cover in issue #10’s letters page. All my Marvel Mighty Mouse correspondence, notes, plot outlines, fully drawn scripts, and stats of original art now reside with the rest of my archive at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum (cartoons.osu.edu/) on the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus.”

HECKLE AND JECKLE IN 3-D

Reportedly, an all-new special was planned at some point during the 1980s, but it is unclear what company would have published it. “I did a cover for a 3-D Heckle and Jeckle comic that didn’t happen,” recalls Milton Knight. “They didn’t have the rights for those. I also had a Mighty Mouse script, but Spotlight closed shop not long after that.” The first Spotlight press release does list a 3-D Heckle and Jeckle comic. However, that specific format was considered a different licensing category that Viacom did not grant the company.” “I don’t remember planning any 3-D comics,” states Richard Maurizio. “Maybe Blackthorne Comics or Ray Zone was, not us.” Former Blackthorne Comics publisher Steve Schanes does not recall if the company had the Terrytoons license from Viacom: “We had G.I. Joe 3-D, Transformers 3-D, Star Wars 3-D, and other profitable licenses,” he states. “I recall we did an Underdog 3-D comic, but I have no specific memory of a Mighty Mouse 3-D. It could have been us.”

POW! ENTERTAINMENT

Apparently, Stan “The Man” Lee had a soft spot for Mighty Mouse; he contributed to the character during his early days—the Timely era of comics published in the 1940s. “I worked on a Mighty Mouse pitch for Stan Lee›s POW!, but it didn’t go anywhere,” states Scott Shaw! “The last I heard, Smilin’ Stan had someone design an anime version of Mighty Mouse.” Perhaps one day the existing stories may be published. Oh, what could have been…

A new decade had started and, by the end of 1981, Western Publishing printed its last Terrytoons stories inside March of Comics #483–484. With exception of a small, lackluster theatrical release of Filmation’s Mighty Mouse and the Great Space Chase in 1982 and fading syndication of Mighty Mouse Playhouse on television, Viacom had to face that demand for Terrytoons was dwindling. Meanwhile, the comic-book market had changed. While the majority of publishers still sold monthly issues on newsstands on a fully returnable basis, another venue was now available: the comic-book store. There, collectors could buy titles on a consistent basis and purchase back issues to help complete their favorite series. Such shops purchased their product through a non-returnable business model that supported a loyal customer base. Known as the Direct Market, this sales method created opportunities for would-be creators-turned-publishers and small press to solicit their proposed titles in advance— thereby reducing the guesswork and financial risk associated with the traditional distribution method. The early-to-mid-1980s also led to the “black-andwhite comics boom”—hundreds of new publishers offering their anthropomorphic wares including Cerebus, Usagi Yojimbo, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Fortunately, the advent of home-video players and subscription television created new opportunities for Viacom and Terrytoons. Children’s Video Library Corp. obtained an official license to release the aforementioned Mighty Mouse film and a Best of Terrytoons compilation. Other companies, believing some of the original Terrytoons shorts were now in the public domain, had issued a multitude of videotapes. An expanded, high-quality channel selection on pay television, soon to be known as “cable,” allowed Viacom to open its Terrytoons vaults to air cartoons not seen in a generation. These platforms encouraged Viacom to offer Mighty Mouse and other Terry-verse licenses during the annual Licensing Show and Toy Fair, then held in New York City—and would soon lead to the return of Terrytoons comics! Spotlight Comics was founded in 1986 by cartoonist Richard Maurizio, who loved Terrytoons growing up—particularly The Mighty Heroes (created by Ralph Bakshi) during the bungling superteam’s syndicated run. But other factors helped set his career path, too: “I grew up reading Superman, but was more interested in animation and cartoons,” says Maurizio. “My father was a staff photographer at Famous Artists Schools in Westport, Connecticut. He brought home some of the mail-correspondence course books taught by Milton Caniff, Al Capp, and others. Dad shot that photo of [art school founder] Al Dorne drawing a puppy on back of various comics. The ad was originally his printed photograph, then was later converted to line art. I became interested in cartooning after that and, when I was about 13 years old, took classes at the local YMCA.” richard Maurizio Maurizio’s decision to pursue his love of cartoon art would be fortuitous: “My classes were taught by Dick Giordano and Frank McLaughlin, both of whom worked for DC Comics then.

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Super Cover Art! (left) Stat for Spotlight’s The Mighty Heroes #1 cover, complete with logo-and-typepaste-ups! Not seen since Dell’s Mighty Mouse #171 in 1967, Strongman, Cuckoo Man, Diaper Man, Rope Man and Tornado Man return for one black-and-white adventure. Art by Jim Engel. Issues #2–3 were planned but unpublished. (right) Black-and-white cover with paste-ups for Mighty Mouse #1, featuring three all-new stories. Cover by Concrete creator Paul Chadwick who, reportedly, illustrated this image in exchange for an ad for his character on the inside back cover. © CBS.

Frank was a judo instructor whose knowledge influenced the creation of the series Judomaster for Charlton. This was fascinating to me, so I enrolled at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City and commuted to take basic art classes. I wanted to become a comics professional.” After being published for the first time inside JC Comics’ T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #2 (Jan. 1984) and later contributing to various periodicals including Comics Collector and Toys Values Monthly, Maurizio felt frustrated by the ups-and-downs prevalent in the comics industry: “Deals would happen, then not happen, after a lot of time was invested in creating materials. After putting together an issue of Ghostbusters (still unpublished to this day) for another publisher— only to later lose the license to Now Comics—I thought it was best to start my own company. But I knew it couldn’t be done without help—a lot of it. [laughter]” As fate would have it, Maurizio would meet Kelley Jarvis-Maclay (jarvisarts.com), an aspiring animator who would help him realize his dream of becoming a comics publisher: “Growing up in the ’70s, my sister took me to see Disney’s The Jungle Book in a theater—the first time I saw an animated, feature-length movie,” recalls Jarvis-Maclay. “I was mesmerized by how the characters had feelings—very different than that of the slapstick humor seen on Saturday mornings. From that point on, KELLEY jarvis-Maclay I wanted to tell stories by bringing drawings to life.” Inspired by multiple animators including Don Bluth, Friz Freleng, Chuck Jones, Walt Kelly, and Disney’s “Nine Old Men,” Jarvis-Maclay wanted to follow in their footsteps. But if that did not work out, she had a backup plan: “Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, Woody Woodpecker, and other characters I loved had stories being told in printed form. I educated myself how to draw these famous cartoon faces, and collected old Dell comics to learn about the artists who illustrated them. I first met Richard, who was teaching my first art class in the comic-book field, ‘How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way,’ at a local art-supply store in Connecticut. It was there that I learned about storytelling, figure art, perspective, and staging.”

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The two hit it off, and soon started collaborating guarantee based on a gross royalty of 10% of cover together as publishing partners. Spotlight Comics’ price, and that was it.” Spotlight’s agreement with Viacom permitted first titles included Lt. Caper (story and art by Maurizio with inks by McLaughlin), Samurai Squirrel by the company to create and publish all-new comics Jarvis-Maclay, and reprinting a 1960s newspaper including Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, Deputy strip, Stern Wheeler, by Ralph Kanna and Jim Aparo. Dawg, and The Mighty Heroes. Once word got out to Enjoying their slice of the black-and-white comics pie, the comics industry, a familiar company contacted Maurizio and Jarvis-Maclay had higher aspirations: Maurizio with an opportunity: “Charlton offered [Spotlight] newsstand distribution publishing full-color, licensed comic books featuring after we announced the Terrytoons and Underdog characters they enjoyed growing up with. “By then all kinds of funny-animal comics hit the deals,” he recalls. “I thought this would bring more scene,” states Maurizio. “Boris the Bear, Adolescent attention to the company, give us equal status with all the majors, and make us more Radio Blackbelt Hamsters, Gnatrat, GI Jackrabbit, money. Viacom wanted the books so many more. Their [sales] numbers were available this way, too.” good, but those characters were new. Producing the comics would be the There were few classic kids’ comics at next step. Originally, Maurizio had that time. Archie and Harvey were still hoped his partner, Kelley Jarvis-Maclay, around. DC had the Warner Bros. would handle all the art chores while characters. Marvel’s Star imprint was he ran the business. But the sudden mostly newer funny-animal characdemand to meet production and disters like Heathcliff and Care Bears. I tributor deadlines made that impossible: thought if we brought back some “I penciled two stories and was of the classic animated characters, supposed to be the lead illustrator, our sales would triple.” but just wasn’t able to due to other Maurizio’s dream was to recreate the massive title offering of classic milton knight cartoon characters that Western Publishing once controlled less than a decade before with one exception: to make the quality of the stories and art better than Spotlight’s predecessor. “I had the Whitman/Gold Key Underdog and Adventures of Mighty Mouse comics but wasn’t a fan,” Maurizio muses. “I loved Terrytoons, especially The Mighty Heroes, which was an underrated show and hadn’t appeared in comics since the 1960s Dell series. I wanted to do those comics—Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle, Deputy Dawg—all of them. I also enjoyed Underdog and Tennessee Tuxedo, so I was determined to get the licenses.” Spotlight secured rights to publish Underdog via Peter Peach at Filmtel Lts. (see Mark Arnold’s article in this issue) and the Terrytoons license through Howard Berk at Viacom (see sidebar). Maurizio fondly recalls negotiating with Berk inside the company’s Manhattan offices: “I was at one of the trade shows and learned that Viacom had the Terrytoons property. So I called the main office and was forwarded to Howard. He told me to come up with a business plan, so I did and we set up a pitch meeting. That was an interesting experience, as I had to explain to Howard that Viacom owned the entire Terrytoons library—not just those in recent memory. [laughs] The company’s legal team checked it out, and I was right. I signed a crazy, high-money contract with a $10,000 advance against a $20,000

Shining Knight Spotlight’s Mighty Mouse #1 included “The Mind of Mighty Mouse,” written and illustrated by animator, artist, scribe, and cartoon-encyclopedia extraordinaire, Milton Knight. Knight has not only the distinction of having his work approved by Viacom without a single change or correction, he is also the only talent who drew the character for Spotlight and Marvel! © CBS.

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licensing obligations,” Jarvis-Maclay recalls. “I didn’t have much say in the stories or the art direction for the [Terrytoons] comics.” Maurizio adds, “Kelley’s pencils retained the feel of the original, 1940s animated Mighty Mouse. Her artwork was among my favorites of all the comics Spotlight published.” Fortunately, Viacom’s approval process was relatively simple. From the company’s previous experiences with Western Publishing and its employ of multiple artists that illustrated New Terrytoons and Adventures of Mighty Mouse, the licensor understood its characters would be depicted in a variety of styles. Spotlight was provided a four-stage submission process: script, pencils, inks, and colors. Upon approval of all four steps, the publisher could go to press. “There were two caveats that we had to learn the hard way: Mighty Mouse could never, ever look angry, and his eyelashes had to go,” laughs Maurizio. “There was no modern style guide, so we generally had free rein. After contracts were signed, Berk gave us a couple of VHS tapes with various Terrytoons shorts and said, ‘Have fun!’” Realizing that Spotlight had huge potential, Maurizio brought in colleague Jim Main (mainjim23@gmail.com) to oversee the production of the creative elements. Main, whose background includes writing and editing various small press and fanzines such as Brain Freeze, *Ppfszt!, and Whatever, warmly recalls: “I worked with Rich on other projects before Spotlight Comics. We enjoyed the same things in pop culture and, when the company had formed, he asked me if I’d be interested in a position. I agreed and was in charge of traffic control—working with staff and freelancers, assigning stories to teams, and dealing with licensing folks. It was quite… interesting!” With Main on board, it was time to put together a

The Mouse of Steel (top left) Famed Superman artist Curt Swan penciled this cover for Spotlight Comics’ Mighty Mouse #2 (1987). (top right) Swan’s cover as inked by Frank McLaughlin. Courtesy of Heritage. (bottom left) The published version. (bottom right) Swan signing comics at San Diego Comic-Con, 1984. Photo by and © Jackie Estrada. Mighty Mouse © CBS.

pool of talented writers, artists, letterers, and colorists who were familiar with the characters and would create stories while Maurizio focused on growing the company. It would not be long before an immensely talented roster had been formed. Classic creators including Joe Gill (Captain Atom, Popeye, The Phantom), Win Mortimer (Battle of the Planets, Spidey Super Stories), and Ray Dirgo (multiple Hanna-Barbera comics for Charlton) joined the team, soon followed by relative newcomers such as Bill White (Roger Rabbit, Sonic the Hedgehog), Rusty Haller (Alf, The Flintstones), Gary Fields (Biker Mice from Mars, TMNT), and others who recently reflected on their work for Spotlight: JOHN A. WILCOX (find him on LinkedIn): “I have been a professional colorist (Amazing Spider-Man, Indiana Jones), writer (Elvira– Mistress of the Dark, Felix the Cat), and editor since 1983. Jim Main was a breeze to work with as an editor. He gave us room to explore our creativity without constraints. Mark Scott Marcus was a pal I asked to co-write Mighty Mouse in “The Island of Dr. Felinus” with me for Mighty Mouse Adventure Magazine #1. During our writing sessions, we laughed a lot and ate lots of pizza and doughnuts! Doug Cushman and Nate Butler were all absolutely awesome to work with, too—an absolute dream team. They truly elevated my scripts, as did Susan Dorne’s fine lettering—icing on the cake! I felt they all did a knockout job with that story. It felt... cinematic. A cross between an adventure film and a Golden Book. A great combination, if you ask me. I’d work with them all again in a heartbeat!” SUSAN DORNE: “I was a comics letterer at the time of Mighty Mouse, which was one of my favorite characters as a child. I quit the business with the advent of computer fonts, so it was an honor to work on the comic book.” JIM MAIN: “Shortly after I joined the company I was asked to pitch stories. My scripts for ‘Plan Feline from Outer Space” in Mighty Mouse #2, Heckle and Jeckle in ‘Defective Detectives’ for Mighty Mouse Adventure Magazine #1, and “Coo-Coo Carolers” for Mighty Mouse and Friends Holiday Special were a lot of fun to write. I enjoyed seeing how the artists turned my words into pictures—they made me proud of our accomplishments!” MIKE TIEFENBACHER: “The appeal for me in doing the Spotlight work was the excitement of working on established characters I’d loved as a kid,” says the longtime writer, artist, and co-founder of The Comics Reader. “It was a joyful experience.

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“It was also a learning experience, as it was the first time I’d inked someone else’s pencils [for ‘The Spy is Falling,’ penciled by Kelley Jarvis-Maclay, in Mighty Mouse #1], and I still feel a pang of retroactive guilt over instances where I’d altered the pencils.” MILTON KNIGHT: “I forgot exactly how I connected with Spotlight; possibly at a con or it may have been through friends. ‘The Mind of Mighty Mouse’ for 1987’s Mighty Mouse #1 was a way to explore the character fighting a unique challenge; his basic goodness manipulated by Oil Can Harry, whom I really dig. Through using the stupidity of the media, he gets away clean at the end. That story closed with a ‘To Be Continued…’ as a gag based on the Pearl Pureheart cartoons that pretended to be serial chapters.”

and satiric aspects (and operatic—with Oil Can Harry in the original cartoon series!). Full-color comics with newsstand distribution were an excellent incentive as well. My dad bought up every single copy in the small North Carolina town where I lived! [laughs] “I was flattered when I learned legendary artists Curt Swan and Frank McLaughlin illustrated the cover featuring my story, ‘The Devil You Say.’ These men were legends, and working with artists Ray Dirgo and Kelley Jarvis on the interiors was great, too. They both did such a tremendous job; Kelley’s coloring was so effective and Ray did a brilliant job capturing the spirit of the original Mighty Mouse theatrical cartoons, which is exactly what I was trying to achieve. Everyone did such an amazing job of cementing that nostalgic feel, and I still enjoy re-reading this story these many years later!”

NATE BUTLER (find him on LinkedIn): “My rememJIM ENGEL (jimengel.net): “It was great illustrating jim main brances of working with Spotlight Comics on the covers of Mighty Mouse and Friends Holiday Special and Terrytoons comics, as I recall, started when Doug The Mighty Heroes for Spotlight. Those [Ralph] Bakshi characters were relatively unknown, and I felt this was an opportunity Cushman [see sidebar] connected me with Spotlight. We went to create some quality illustrations in a way that comics readers could together to Richard’s home (I think it was in Danbury, Connecticut) appreciate them. My sensibilities in approaching new images with those where we met him, Jim the editor, plus Rich’s ‘significant other,’ characters were not only inspired by the great classic funny-animal artists Kelley. I can’t remember what artwork we showed them, but I was but also by Will Eisner, John Buscema, and others. Doing those covers working for Archie and Marvel’s Star Comics at the time—maybe on was manageable with my workload. I was a fan of old Dell and Gold Key Looney Tunes for DC already, too [for DC’s Looney Tunes Magazine, comics because their covers were usually nice, self-contained vignettes which ran from 1989–1991—ed.]—and they liked what they saw. “Doug was put to work writing and penciling ‘Junk Man’ for the that could also be used on a T-shirt or album cover. That’s the approach first issue of Mighty Mouse. I can’t remember what they assigned to me I took—iconic, standalone illustrations instead of ‘just comics art.’ “One regret was how the printed versions of my covers look. My first; it was either the cover for the Mighty Mouse Adventure Magazine color guides were not followed on The Mighty Heroes, and Mighty #1 (I liked how the final cover looked but it was cropped wrong and the Mouse and Friends Holiday Special was horribly washed out. Fortunately, the painted cover led to a phone call from Ralph Bakshi himself! He liked that piece so much he commissioned me to create some Deputy Dawg pitch art for a possible spinoff of his Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures Saturday morning cartoon on CBS. Bakshi never returned the original to me [laughs], but my piece was later published as a full page in his book, Unfiltered.” STEPHEN KEETER: “Jim Main contacted me with an opportunity to write the Terrytoons characters, and Mighty Mouse came to mind immediately. (I was also interested in Tom Terrific, one of the most fun and unusual animated characters in history, but this didn’t happen, unfortunately.) Here I was, being offered the chance to write the adventures of a character I’d loved all my life, one that I grew up with and was inspired by… both by the heroic

Meet Mr. Cartoonist Spotlight’s Mighty Mouse #2 was printed in color and contained two stories, including “The Devil You Say?,” written by Steve Keeter, drawn and lettered by the late Ray Dirgo, and colored by Kelley Jarvis-Maclay. (inset) Known best for Charlton’s Hanna-Barbera comics—and this issue’s cover!—is Ray Dirgo (1908–2000), signing a children’s book he illustrated, I Can’t Talk, I’ve Got Farbles in My Mouth, published by Greene Bark Press in Dec. 1995. Photo courtesy of Mary Vigliante Szydlowski. Mighty Mouse © CBS.

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printer did a poor job on the color reproduction. It was disappointing!) or maybe inking Doug’s pencils for the lead story in that issue, ‘The Island of Dr. Felinus.’ I remember liking Doug’s pencils a lot. Since the art would print in black and white, I wanted to do a nice job with the tones, too. This was all pre-computer, of course, so I spent many hours cutting Zip-A-Tone! The final result pleased everybody, but I probably spent way too long on it. As we all know, comics page rates are typically not the best. I made more doing coloring books! (Later, Doug and I did a Mighty Mouse coloring book together for Marvel. I did layouts, he finished penciling most of the pages, and then I inked everything.”) As production continued on all the Terrytoons titles and Underdog—including fantastic covers by Butler, Engel, Concrete creator Paul Chadwick, and consummate Superman artist Curt Swan, Spotlight solicited orders from over 15 comic-book distributors including Diamond Comic Distributors, Heroes World Distribution, and Capital City

Something Special Jim Engel’s original art for Spotlight’s last Terrytoons publication, Mighty Mouse and Friends Holiday Special #1 (1987), as it was meant to be seen in its full, vibrant color. The actual comic-book printing is washed out. That, however, did not stop famed animator and director Ralph Bakshi from contacting Engel to create new art for his studio.

Distribution. Former CDC Solicitations Director Wayne Markley recalls: “I was very excited for Mighty Mouse from Spotlight. As a kid, I had read a few of the St. John and Dell comics, so I was thrilled to see him return. At Capital City Distribution we spotlighted the book and recommended it because its contributors included Milton Knight, who I was a fan of. Plus, issue #2 had a Curt Swan cover!” According to Maurizio, non-returnable sales averaged between 7,000–8,000 copies per title. Then Charlton’s newsstand projections arrived—appearing quite substantial: 100,000 copies of Mighty Mouse #1 and 50,000 copies each of Mighty Mouse #2 and Mighty Mouse Adventure Magazine #1. While these numbers were certainly attractive, they were 100% returnable and, in time, would prove to be a fatal mistake for Spotlight. “I did not completely understand how newsstand distribution worked,” says Maurizio. “I had hoped we would make money by having a 15–25% sell-through or more on each title. When I first met with Charlton, the sales reps gave me a lot of encouragement as our licenses were internationally proven successes. Months later, they called me to visit their offices and gave me crushing news…” Maurizio was provided an Affidavit of Sales, a statement showing monthly sales versus damages for each title. Ultimately, sales figures for all titles distributed to newsstands were below 10% of each print run. Worse, he learned that the unsold copies were supposedly stripped of their covers and destroyed as the bar codes printed on them were the “most accurate” way to manage inventory. Maurizio walked out of Charlton’s offices with a check in-hand—for under $5,000 total. “After the Charlton debacle, a few comic-shop distributors closed and we were stiffed there, too,” says Maurizio. “Royalties would soon be due to Viacom and money was owed to some creators. Later I learned that several newsstands and bookstores never put our books on the racks—they just sat in boxes as store owners and managers didn’t want to displace their regular sellers in favor of an unknown company. The realization Spotlight would have to close hit me like a ton a bricks. It was the lowest point in my professional life. No one wants to fail, and no one wants to financially hurt people who believed in you and what you were doing.” Sadly, Spotlight Comics filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and permanently closed its doors by early 1989. In hindsight, Maurizio wishes to keep positive memories of that time, particularly when thinking of three creators who are no longer with us: “Win Mortimer drew his stories for us on 10x15 and 11x17 copy paper. Copy paper! [laughs] Frank McLaughlin had to ink his story on boards using a light-box. Ray Dirgo was funny, too. Anything he said ended with ‘Right on!’ In Mighty Mouse #2 he was wrongly credited as ‘Ray DIRGG.’ When we told him, his reply was, ‘Do you want me to pay for paper? Charlton used to charge us for paper.’ Bill White drew a great version of Deputy Dawg but was uncredited on the splash page because the credits spray-mounted on it fell off. Ah, the good old days… [laughs]” Maurizio would later work on other iconic cartoon characters including Animaniacs, Mister Magoo, and Tom and Jerry. He recently contributed his inking, editing, and writing skills on a new hardcover featuring classic Jetta Raye (jettaraye.com) adventures with all-new stories. Although Spotlight published only a handful of titles during its short time in business, collectors look back at its comics as perhaps the most faithful Terrytoons stories during the Bronze Age. Some creators, however, don’t necessarily agree: SCOTT SHAW!: “The writing was nothing special in any of those comics, but I loved the covers by Jim Engel and the interior stories by Nate Butler, Bill White, Gary Fields, and Milton Knight. I think that luring Curt Swan and Paul Chadwick to draw covers was a poor choice (although I love their ‘straight’ material), and I’m not a fan of Ray Dirgo’s work.” MILTON KNIGHT: “To be honest, [Spotlight] didn’t strike me as any more ‘loving’ than any other publisher. But it’s not so surprising, as they were licensing so many properties. I preferred Spotlight over Marvel because I was allowed to write, draw, and ink Mighty Mouse myself.”

Mighty Mouse, Deputy Dawg, and Heckle and Jeckle © CBS.

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MEET DOUG CUSHMAN Doug Cushman (doug-cushman.com) is a longtime children’s book author and illustrator with more than 130 titles included on his list of amazing, artistic accomplishments. According to Doug, a certain cartoon mouse had something to do with it…

For me, the apex of my time with Spotlight was with their Mighty Mouse Adventure Magazine #1. I penciled the story “The Island of Dr. Felinus,” and my good friend Nate Butler inked it. I dove head first into really getting detail and humor into the pencils, caricaturing the villains after DOUG CUSHMAN: I lived in Connecticut at the time, writing Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. Nate went far and and illustrating like a madman back then (as I still do today). beyond amazing with his inks, adding Zip-A-Tone textures I grew up loving cartoons and comics, especially the and detail (it was a totally black-and-white story). I lived in newspaper Sunday Funnies, as we called them back Connecticut and Nate lived in New Mexico, so it was a in the Stone Age. I followed pretty much all of long-distance project. (Nate also created the cover them: Dick Tracy, Katzenjammer Kids, Snuffy for the issue.) I loved every second of it. For Smith, Beetle Bailey, Peanuts, The Phantom, the two of us, it was a pure act of love and joy etc. But when I saw my first Mighty Mouse working on the story. And it showed. cartoon, I was hooked. I loved him. The Jim, Rich, and Kelley Jarvis[-Maclay], a first toy I remember owning was a little wonderful artist herself, were true fans of stuffed doll of Mighty Mouse. The very first these old characters. They were all great drawing I remember doing was of Mighty to work with. It was really an act of love Mouse. He was a HUGE influence (might producing these comics. Money was tight explain why I was never a cat person, eh?…). and, frankly, I was surprised that they lasted as About that time, I’d already written and long as they did. But it was fun, no regrets illustrated my first book (at eight years old, at all. I’d do it again, no question. doug cushman an edition of one, on lined paper with a I’d been collecting Mighty Mouse memconstruction paper cover. I still have it). orabilia for years before I met Rich and Jim. It was about fourth grade when, while parents were Secured in a storage shed, I still have some Golden Age visiting some friends (the friends had daughters and who Mighty Mouse comics from Timely, 3-D comics, 8mm films, a wants to play with GIRLS!), I discovered Pogo and Walt painted cel, pins, buttons, all kinds of plush toys, bubble bath Kelly in his book Uncle Pogo’s So-So Stories on their soap bottles, and most of the original art from “Dr. Felinus.” bookshelves. It was a revelation, incredible stuff. Didn’t For me, the original cartoons from the 1940s are the real understand it all, but it made me laugh. Mighty Mouse. I’ve no favorite, though “The Perils of Pauline Fast forward now to the ’80s. I was fully involved in Pureheart” stands out; I love watching her sing “Carry Me children’s books, which I loved, but still kept a foot in the Back to Old Virginny” while under hypnosis as Mighty Mouse comic-art field. For a couple years, I wrote gags for the great battles Oil Can Harry. It’s delightfully goofy. What I loved Frank Johnson (of Boner’s Ark fame) when he penciled and about these early cartoons is that they never took themselves inked the daily and Sunday strip Bringing Up Father. While seriously. They were pure parody, spoofing tropes of opera, wandering around a comic-con in New York City, I spotted superheroes, silent film plots, and even cartoons themselves, a small stand displaying Mighty Mouse comics with NEW e.g., Mighty Mouse using his own orange “speed lines” to tie stories and art! Rich Maurizio manned the stand. I introduced up villains or pull ships from dangerous waters. He symbolized myself and told him how much I loved Mighty Mouse. what was good and true, a “pure heart.” And of course he He was looking for some artists, and turned out he lived in sang pretty well too. I enjoyed the Ralph Bakshi reboot; it kept Connecticut as I did. I’d never done any comic-book art but the spoof element and updated Mighty Mouse for the ’80s thought it’d be fun. We met a few weeks but kept the heart of the character. later and the rest, as they say, is history. All in all, Mighty Mouse was an Even though I’d been illustrating books important influence on my own work for over ten years by that time, I was new as an author and illustrator. Many of to the comic-book process. I approached the books I’ve published involve it as I did with my book illustration. I wrote parody, anthropomorphic animals, goofy and penciled “Junk Man,” basically writing situations, breaking some walls in the the dialogue as I drew the pictures (picgenre, and making sure justice is served tures usually come first for me). Rich and (my own picture books, Mystery at the editor Jim Main liked it, so it was accepted. Club Sandwich or Mystery of King Karfu, I confess I was vaguely aware of [inker] a Reuben Award winner, are good Frank McLaughlin (I knew a few names examples). Mighty Mouse gave me all of in the superhero comic world, but not those qualities and more. many). We’d only met a few times, but he was always kind and encouraging. My Splash to Spotight’s “The Island pencils for “Junk Man” were minimal, not much background, for example, so he of Dr. Felinus,” penciled by Doug added a few details. That brief encounter Cushman, from Mighty Mouse taught me a lot. I’m sorry I didn’t get to Adventure Magazine #1. know him better; I would have loved to hear his stories of “the old days.” © CBS. Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue • BACK ISSUE • 67

Those titles were printed as Prestige Format specifically for those stores; that format is more durable for them and easier to display, One of the four founders of the now-defunct Malibu Comics Entertain- and also gave us an opportunity to push a bit on the price point ment, former Creative Director Tom Mason (currently an animation and increase profitability. I picked the stories, and I wanted stuff writer, children’s book author, and Emmy winner), reminisces on the that was fun and interesting selected from the public-domain comics that I could acquire from back-issue dealers. 1989 two-issue series Video Classics: The Adventures of Mighty Mouse: “The process used to create the covers for the two volumes and “Malibu had started publishing comics in 1987, months after the black-and-white ‘boom’ had ended. Once a week my partners and to scan the color comics to reprint in black and white was before the age of scanning and Photoshop, and since the original art for I would meet for breakfast to brainstorm. Adding publiccompleted stories from that era just isn’t around, we had to domain titles was a group strategy to expand the line and work from the printed comics. I pulled stories from varito boost cash flow each month. Titles included were ous Mighty Mouse comics we had and used a really nice Abbott and Costello, The Three Stooges, Sherlock Holmes, stat camera. I would take the comics and shoot one Perry Mason, Brenda Starr, The Saint, Charlie Chan, page at a time and see how well I could keep the colors The Shadow, Huckleberry Finn, lots of things. from muddying while still retaining the integrity of the “Regarding reprinting some of the Golden printed black lines. For the cover art, I found images in Age Mighty Mouse comics [from the St. John and individual panels that would look good when blown Pines era], we were trying to make a push into up to cover size. bookstores and video stores (remember those?), “Video Classics was designed to be an umbrella and we kept looking for public-domain material title, so if the series had found alternative spaces that had name recognition, specifically for people outside the direct market, then we could’ve used in a video store. We had a bookstore rep at the the title for other material. But our bookstore rep time, and we were creating products for them to tom mason wasn’t able to get any of our material into alternative try to sell. The Mighty Mouse name is still under markets and the program was ended.” trademark, but those comic-book stories that we reprinted were in the public domain. So legally we could reprint them, but we didn’t have the legal right to create new artwork MIGHTY MOUSE FLIES AGAIN—AT MARVEL! or use the Mighty Mouse name as the title. Ultimately, the push Spotlight Comics license with Viacom for its Terrytoons characters into alternative markets proved to be a publishing unicorn for us. had terminated when the company filed for bankruptcy. Marvel had recently retired its Star imprint of comics geared towards children but remained successful with some classic characters including Bullwinkle and Rocky. As Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures was a critical success (albeit with some controversy) on Saturday morning TV, Marvel quickly added Mighty Mouse #1 (Oct. 1990) to the company’s publishing schedule. The Marvel series’ debut was not fast enough to coincide with the Ralph Bakshi-produced show that had already run its course. The ten-issue comic-book series, however, featured stories told in the newer continuity—with Mighty Mouse’s alter ego, Mike Mouse, and his companion, Scrappy Mouse. Marketed as “A Rodent for the ’90s!,” Marvel’s series also incorporated parodies of large storylines of the day including Secret Wars and DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths. A clever “Chronology” detailing our hero’s evolution (and costume change) appears in issue #2, too! Covers were mostly illustrated by Ernie Colón, with occasional surprise covers by George Pérez, John Byrne, Milton Knight, Steve Lightle, and Kevin Maguire with Joe Rubinstein. Writer Michael Gallagher’s scripts [see sidebar], illustrated by the late Ernie Colón (1931–2019) and Marie Severin (1929-2018), occupied the majority of these comics, with exceptions of issue #s 6 and 10. Arguably, this series is the funniest Terrytoons comics of the Bronze Age. Other creators and editorial staff graciously recall their time contributing to the Mouse of Steel’s canon. Let’s start with the editor of the entire run, veteran comics writer, editor, and Deadpool co-creator, Fabian Nicieza!

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MIGHTY MOUSE REVISITS HIS EARLY DAYS

Classics Revisited In-between Spotlight Comics and Marvel’s licensed Mighty Mouse comics, Malibu Graphics took a different path in 1989 when it published two prestige-format collections of public-domain stories from the Golden Age. Packaged as Video Classics: The Adventures of Mighty Mouse, comics once published by St. John and Pines in full color now appeared in black-and-white. © CBS.

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FABIAN NICIEZA

ROBERT V. CONTE: What do you recall about working on Mighty Mouse? FABIAN NICIEZA: Outside of giving Dan Slott his first published work, my memory on that series is beyond minimal. I inherited the title from Sid Jacobson, who had hired the key creative team, but I don’t remember much in the way of detail about the issues or the licensing process. Evan Skolnick was Sid’s assistant and then mine. He handled the day-to-day grunt work with the licensor. His memory is much better than mine! CONTE: What did you see in Dan Slott as a writer? Discovering new talent that skyrockets to success is a wonderful trait of a good editor. NICIEZA: Because Dan was our intern, Evan and I could tell right away how sharp he was in terms of story and character, but especially smart in a unique aspect of comic-book writing that is intuitive, rather than learned: being an “idea man.” Having lots of ideas and not worrying if all of them are “just right.” Pitch a lot to see fabian nicieza what sticks that can then evolve into a story. © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. So when he pitched his [Late Night with David] Letterman issue [#10], we knew it was the right place to see if he could work those ideas out into a full story. But more importantly, we got him to shut up for almost five minutes after we said yes. [laughs]

EVAN SKOLNICK (evanskolnick.com)

A BAFTA and D.I.C.E. Award-nominated videogame writer and narrative designer, Evan Skolnick’s 25+ years of combined story-and-game development experience can be found in over 50 games including Star Wars 1313, Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, and The Walking Dead: A New Frontier. While at Marvel Comics, Skolnick contributed to several titles including Doctor Strange, The Incredible Hulk, SpiderMan Unlimited, and, of course, Mighty Mouse! CONTE: What was it like working with former Marvel executive editor and key Star Comics legend Sid Jacobson? EVAN SKOLNICK: I was Sid’s assistant editor from mid-1989 until he left Marvel in late-1990 or early 1991 (I’m not 100% sure on the exact timing). He was a great mentor to me, and we had a wonderful working relationship. Sid had been doing this kind of work for a very long time, so for him a lot of the job seemed like it was almost automatic. He was supremely confident and comfortable in his role. Sid had a stable of talent that he was familiar with and knew he could count on, and he would tend to use them again and again on his various projects. These folks were highly capable and very versatile, so it generally worked well, but it also may have occasionally contributed to a bit of sameness across the titles we were editing. CONTE: What was it like to work with both the late, legendary Ernie Colón and Marie Severin, who penciled and inked many of the stories? SKOLNICK: I had already been working with Ernie and Marie on prior comics (Alf, Damage evan skolnick Control, etc.), so this was just a pleasant continuation of those relationships. Both were wonderful people and incredibly talented. I knew they had both done a huge amount of high-profile work in the past, and I felt lucky to get to interact with them so frequently and learn as much as I could from them. CONTE: And how about Michael Gallagher, Dan Slott, and other writers on this series? SKOLNICK: I first worked with Michael Gallagher on Alf, on which his scripts were laugh-out-loud funny and perfectly structured. Mike would send in these visual scripts—essentially roughs of the entire comics, with pencil art, word balloons, and everything. He was a good cartoonist in his own right, and so continued on page 72

Does Whatever a… Mouse Can? (top left) Milton Knight returned to Mighty Mouse in a big way, starting with issue #6 (Mar. 1991) —a parody of (top right) 1990’s Spider-Man #1 by Todd McFarlane. (inset) He later recreated this image for a gallery showing. (bottom) Knight would also create backup stories in the series featuring perhaps the second most popular character from the Ralph Bakshi-produced TV show, Bat-Bat! Mighty Mouse and Bat-Bat © CBS. Spider-Man TM & © Marvel.

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MEET MICHAEL GALLAGHER Michael Gallagher is one of several professional cartoonists in his family, known for comics and newspaper strips including MAD, Spider-Man, Archie, Alf, and Sonic the Hedgehog. Here, he fondly recalls writing Marvel’s brief run on the Mouse of Steel…

However, the editorial credits in issue #1 list Fabian and Evan Skolnick, who was Sid’s assistant for some time. Hearing that I was going to be writing new adventures for my all-time favorite cartoon character was absolutely thrilling. I couldn’t wait to get started! CONTE: From where did you draw inspiration to write stories CONTE: Let’s take a trip inside a time machine and go for the ten-issue series? back to the early 1990s. How did you become involved GALLAGHER: In a word: satire. It all goes back to some with Marvel Comics? early MAD parodies including Superduperman, Mickey MICHAEL GALLAGHER: Wow, this time machine is bigger Rodent, Starchie, Woman Wonder, Melvin of the Apes, on the inside! Actually, we need to go back to the mid-’80s, etc. Those incredible sendups are the foundation of my when Marvel first announced the creation of Star Comics. admittedly warped sense of humor and storytelling style. I had been helping write gags for the Heathcliff newsWhen I lecture to kids about writing and cartooning, I paper feature. Created by my Uncle George “Gately,” always advise them to try a satire because you already Heathcliff was chosen to help launch the line. have something to work with and it forces you to My name came up as a potential writer for analyze the source material in detail. the [Heathcliff] comic books and I flew up Mighty Mouse was no exception. Right to New York from Florida and met with from issue #1, I riffed on Frank Miller’s clasStar’s veteran editor, Sid Jacobson. My first sic with “The Dark Might Returns.” It didn’t comic-book story, “Ghost in the Outfield,” stop there: “Mices on Infinite Earths,” “Batappeared in Heathcliff #2 (June 1985), Bat, Year One,” and “Samor the Sub-Plotpenciled by Warren Kremer. I was off and ter,” which lampooned lots of Marvel running. threads followed. CONTE: What do you recall about being hired CONTE: What was it like to work with the to write Mighty Mouse? legendary Ernie Colón and Marie Severin? GALLAGHER: My memory is a little fuzzy GALLAGHER: It’s sublime and surreal when michael gallagher on the exact moment I was told. I was you get to work with people you’ve long writing several titles at the time and admired from afar. Speaking of satire, changes were happening. The Star imprint was being Marie was the undisputed queen, from little cartoons left phased out and the few remaining books, like Alf, were on her co-worker’s desks to Not Brand Echh. I had already being folded into the regular Marvel line. Also, Sid’s tenure gotten to know and love her as the primary inker on Alf. was coming to an end and Fabian Nicieza was taking over Meanwhile, Ernie was a true master. He could draw anything for him. Fabian was easy to work with, extremely and it was always elegant. I was privileged to see bursts knowledgeable and obviously a major talent on the of his genius; I’d get full-size copies of his pencils which rise. I’m pretty sure the decision to publish new Mighty not only had incredible renditions of my story, but just Mouse stories was made while Sid was still in charge, off the outer margins of almost every panel, Ernie would so it was his choice to let me be the initial writer. scribble notes and tiny little drawings, caricatures, complaints, observations, and more, mostly directed to Marie. They were incredible. Marie always hated to have to erase them after inking the page. I had the extraordinary experience of working with both of these Hall of Famers on separate projects afterwards. CONTE: In hindsight, Mighty Mouse fans cite this series as a Marvel-ized, loose adaptation of the Ralph Bakshi Mighty Mouse Adventures animated show from that time. Do you agree and, if so, care to elaborate? GALLAGHER: I wasn’t privy to any of the legal negotiations between Marvel and the representatives of Mighty Mouse at that time regarding the characters that Ralph Bakshi created. I knew I had the freedom to incorporate them, but don’t recall any requirements beyond what I was used to with other licensed properties. My goal with the title was to try and create an amalgamated Mighty Mouse

Michael Gallagher (right) dressed as his favorite supermouse in a homemade costume, proudly standing next to his father, John Gallagher—a two-time winner of the National Cartoonists Society’s “Best Gag Cartoonist of the Year” award and primary illustrator for Sport Magazine. 70 • BACK ISSUE •Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue

Gallagher’s writing style embellished the satire of Marvel’s Mighty Mouse series, including a parody of Batman: The Dark Knight Returns in #1. Art by Ernie Colón and Marie Severin. © CBS.

with aspects of his Terrytoons persona, some new, original players, and a heavy dose of the very successful CBS show. I certainly cherry-picked many of Mr. Bakshi’s madcap gallery of heroes and villains, mixing and matching them with our other cast members within the framework of a self-aware comic book. If that’s “Marvel-izing,” then I’m guilty as charged! CONTE: It seemed unusual to parody Crisis on Infinite Earths, a storyline published by DC Comics, as opposed to a huge Marvel event such as Secret Wars. What was the thinking behind this decision? GALLAGHER: There’s a long history of Marvel poking fun at DC and (to a lesser degree) vice-versa. Marvel always enjoyed satirizing themselves as well, like in Not Brand Ecch. DC’s epic crossover, Crisis on Infinite Earths, was a monumental industry event. To me, that series had more “lampoonable” concepts plus lots of new and unusual characters. It opened the door to featuring alternate versions of the Mouse of Steel and had the extra benefit of tweaking the “Distinguished Competition,” which I think fans enjoy. We’d already gotten away with “The Dark Might Returns,” so why not push the envelope a little more? Secret Wars was also a big deal, but didn’t seem as ripe for parody as Crisis. I used the pun “Secret Chores” to frame the Samor story in issue #3, but that’s all. CONTE: There are a few issues of Mighty Mouse that you did not write. Did you need a breather or was it time to move on? GALLAGHER: I think it was a combination of things. I was writing other titles at the time. I had been scripting kids comics for quite a while at this point. Plus, why wouldn’t Fabian want to let other clever, creative people take a crack at this beloved, iconic character? Deep down, I probably wanted to have Mighty Mouse all to myself, but that’s egotistic and not realistic. I never resented any of the other writers or their stories. Meanwhile, I had also been making contacts around the rectangle of editor’s offices that surrounded the Bullpen, so I was beginning to contemplate my future in what was and is a volatile business. Freelancers may want or need a breather, but it can be dangerous to take one. This may sound a bit corporate and cold, but as I always have my students repeat after me, “That’s show biz!” CONTE: Who did you enjoy working with the most at Marvel? GALLAGHER: I moved back to New Jersey from Florida soon after I started writing for Star, so I made the trip to the Marvel offices on a regular basis. That’s when I got to meet and hang out with many of the people I was working with on the comics. Those I remember most fondly; Sid, Warren Kremer, Laura Hitchcock, Howard Post, Ernie Colón, Angelo DeCesare, Marie Severin, and my longtime collaborator, David Manak. Fabian and Evan (who also did the coloring) were always

very encouraging to me, and how incredible was it that they got all those fan-favorite artists to draw Mighty Mouse covers: John Byrne, George Pérez, Steve Lightle, Kevin Maguire, and Charles Vess! Although I never met Jacqueline Roettcher or Milton Knight, I always admired their work. When I moved on to Guardians of the Galaxy, I became (and still am) good friends with Kevin West. CONTE: In your opinion, what is Mighty Mouse’s impact on American pop culture? GALLAGHER: Whenever I mention my tenure on Mighty Mouse, I am inevitably serenaded by someone joyfully singing that famous line, “Here I come to save the day!” That theme song’s a pretty powerful cultural touchstone, if you ask me, as well as his heroic, unselfish raison d’etre firmly ingrained in hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of minds. I was an avid comic-book memorabilia collector and am still very proud of my many Mighty Mouse toys and collectibles, including his featured appearance in the very first 3-D comic. Who can forget Andy Kaufman lip-syncing to the record on the first episode of Saturday Night Live or Mighty Mouse’s “Power of Cheese” commercials circa 2001? The Mouse of Steel’s staying power is a testament to his firmly rooted status as a major American cartoon icon. I’d venture to say that he’s the second most famous cartoon mouse of all time, and there’s certainly been a lot of them!

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Hot Collectible Issue! (left) A hidden gem found in the vast comics work of writer Dan Slott is his first published script in the pages of Mighty Mouse #10 (July 1991)! Today we know and respect Dan for his groundbreaking runs on Amazing Spider-Man and Fantastic Four. Don’t be surprised if prices for this comic skyrocket and start being slabbed everywhere. Remember, BACK ISSUE told you first! (right) Marvel’s last attempt to revive Terrytoons was 1999’s The Mighty Heroes #1 but, like Spotlight and Dell before, these characters’ comicbook adventures were doomed. There are devout followers of this Terrytoons cartoon series so, perhaps one day, they will return. [Editor’s note: See my TwoMorrows book Hero-A-Go-Go for a Mighty Heroes history and interview with creator/animator Ralph Bakshi. And one of these days, we’ll cover the superteam in our sister mag, RetroFan!] © CBS.

continued from page 69

when these scripts came in it was pretty much like receiving an original, hand-drawn comic book that no one else had seen before! I loved getting to read them. Sometimes the crazy energy in those roughed-out comics was far beyond what ended up in the final version as penciled by Dave Manak—not because of any failing on Dave’s part; he was amazing—but because the requirement of getting Alf and the other characters to be on-model would inevitably pull a little of that manic energy out. I always wished we could have published a compendium of Mike’s crazy visual scripts for Alf. Mike had a very clear, very punny vision for Alf, and we felt that his stories were much better and funnier than what was on the TV show. I remember we were always worried that the TV show producers would notice this and steal him away. Sid assigned Mike to write Mighty Mouse, but in retrospect he might not have been the best fit for adapting the surreal, post-modern Bakshi TV show to comics form, because Mike had a very traditional “setup-punchline” approach to comedy. I didn’t question it at the time, though. But then Sid left Marvel for Harvey Comics, and my new boss Fabian Nicieza (a great friend and one of the most important professional mentors I’ve ever had) hired our then-intern Dan Slott to write the tenth and final issue of Mighty Mouse. Once I saw Dan’s brilliant script, I realized what this series probably should have been from the start. To frame it in a period-appropriate way, with a nod to Dan’s story itself: We had been evoking Johnny Carson when we should have been pulling a David Letterman. Speaking of Dan, this was his first published comicbook story, and right from the start you could see his incredible talent and sense of humor coming through. This set him up for the regular writing gig on the hugely successful Ren and Stimpy comic that came out later that year.

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MILTON KNIGHT

CONTE: You are the only writer and artist that successfully transitioned from Spotlight’s Mighty Mouse to the Marvel series, starting with #6. How did that happen? MILTON KNIGHT: I had done freelancing for Marvel before (one of my first jobs was Crazy magazine in 1980, and later, Heathcliff) and I was always hanging about trying to get work. Somehow I connected with the editor [Fabian Nicieza]. Everyone who knew me knew I sang the praises of Terrytoons. There was no connection between the jobs. Many animators worked on licensed characters and ended up returning to them years later. It just happened. CONTE: You parodied Todd McFarlane’s Spider-Man #1 when you illustrated the cover for Mighty Mouse #6. Was that your choice or an editorial directive? KNIGHT: Believe me, everything on those jobs was editorial directives. That parody was so specific, I didn’t know half the gags I was drawing. I disliked Marvel’s need to tie superheroes into all the humor they did. CONTE: What was it like to work with the late, legendary Marie Severin, who inked your Marvel art? KNIGHT: She didn’t like my work and wrote negative, hurtful comments… in ink… on the borders. I don’t mean instructive; she actually wrote, “I can’t believe this art” on one; she didn’t find a page parodying [editor-in-chief] Tom DeFalco was funny (which I had not written), and said so on it. Totally unnecessary; she knew I’d be getting half the art back. Marvel had a superhero agenda I didn’t care for at all. The three Bat-Bat backups I did for them were a Batman parody I didn’t get either.

MICHAEL KAZALEH

Mike Kazaleh has had a long career both writing and drawing animated TV cartoons including the Bakshi Mighty Mouse, Ren and Stimpy, The Simpsons, Krypto the Superdog, Gumby, and Bugs Bunny. He has also created his own independent comics including The Adventures of Captain Jack and Zorch Comics. CONTE: How did Marvel Comics approach you after the company became publisher of Mighty Mouse? MICHAEL KAZALEH: Fabian Nicieza called me on the phone and asked if I wanted to pencil a Mighty Mouse story, and of course I said yes. I was told later that Marvel wanted to use me earlier, but [the previous editor] Sid Jacobson wouldn’t allow it. When Sid left Marvel to return to Harvey, they contacted me. This last bit has always mystified me, as I did not personally know Sid, nor did I even know that he’d ever heard of me. CONTE: Who did you work with closely on the series, and what was your dynamic with them? KAZALEH: The first two stories I penciled were written in what I considered “the normal way,” which is to say that the writers had roughly sketched out the story, dialog and all. The first was by Michael Gallagher, and second was by the team of Tom Brevoort and Mike Kanterovitch. I didn’t personally have contact with Gallagher, but I did have a few phone calls with the other two, and they were very nice. The next story I drew would end up being the last one. It was to be done “the Marvel way,” meaning that the writer would write a plot, the artist would draw it, then the writer would write the copy. He said he was using a new writer and this was his first story. I read the plot, and I asked Fabian if I could edit it before I drew it. He said that would be fine, and then he asked me if would talk to the writer to tell him what I wanted to do. I said fine, and Fabian had him call me on the phone. The writer was Dan Slott, and we ended up becoming good pals after that. It was a short time later that we were back together and working on the Ren and Stimpy comics, and we had a grand time bouncing ideas back and forth. As I recall, Marie Severin did the inks for the whole series. I did not have any personal contact with her. I was a fan of her drawings, but I would have been happier if I could’ve done my own inks. Some time later, I was back working for Ralph Bakshi on Cool World. I had a Mighty Mouse splash page pinned up in my cubicle. Ralph looked at the page and was incredulous that Marie had inked my pencils. Another note about the last issue, it almost wasn’t published. The direct sales pre-orders were low—about 50,000 copies. (That would’ve been considered low by the standards of the day. Now such sales would be considered wonderful. And at the time there were additional sales from the newsstands.) Fabian liked how the issue turned out, and convinced the management to go ahead with it anyway. Because issue #10 was done in Marvel-style, I had more input into the content. Also it was on that issue that Fabian wanted the series to get even more like the TV show, and we went a little broader as a result. CONTE: What was it like working with editor Fabian Nicieza? KAZALEH: I liked Fabian very much. He was smart and easy to get along with, and he was supportive of the work we were doing. CONTE: Some Mighty Mouse fans cite this series as a Marvel-ized, loose adaptation of the Ralph Bakshi New Mighty Mouse Adventures animated show that you worked on. Do you agree and, if so, care to elaborate? KAZALEH: It was based on the show in the sense that it used some of the characters that were created for it, like Bat-Bat and Scrappy. But some of the Marvel stories were specific parodies of other superhero comic-book stories, which is something we would have avoided on the CBS network series. With issue #10, Fabian expressed a desire to move away from the comic-book parodies and, were the series to continue, the stories would likely have gone after other targets. As Marvel’s Mighty Mouse came to a close, the series—like its predecessors— met with mixed reactions from some comics creators: JIM ENGEL: “I saw the Marvel stuff, but it frustrated me; taking on the license was just another title added to their roster. I would have loved to do that series because I believe I would have done it better. Marie Severin was one of my absolute favorite cartoonists ever, one of my inspirations, but I think that stuff didn’t fit her. Not a big slave to the on-model approach. Funny animal characters should have the same

Mighty… and Flighty (top) Page 2 of the Mike Kazaleh-drawn MM/Bat-Bat team-up from Marvel’s Mighty Mouse #3 (Dec. 1990). (bottom) A year earlier, animator Mark Mayerson parodied Mighty Mouse as Flighty Mouse, a satire on the animation industry’s then-“outsourcing and a general sense of corruption,” for Apatoons magazine. Read the entire story at mayersoncreative.com/comics/flighty_mouse.html. Used with permission. Mighty Mouse and Bat-Bat © CBS. “Flighty Mouse” © Mark Mayerson.

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Chain Reaction Comics superstar Neal Adams helped spark new interest in our rodent hero by illustrating this alternate cover art for Dynamite’s Mighty Mouse #1 (June 2017), a salute to (inset) Adams’ iconic cover for Superman #233 (Jan. 1971). Mighty Mouse © CBS. Superman TM & © DC Comics.

freedom that superhero comics do. Spider-Man is recognizable as Peter Parker, whether it’s drawn by Steve Ditko, John Romita, or Todd McFarlane. That same flexibility should apply to iconic cartoons, too.” SCOTT SHAW!: “I think the 1990s series was a wasted opportunity for Marvel not to exploit the popularity of Ralph Bakshi’s then-recent Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures. Instead, the cover of every issue seemed to be catering to hardcore comic fans. I got the impression that the editor assumed that no one was interested in Mighty Mouse and that fannish references to The Dark Knight Returns, Crisis on Infinite Earths, and Image Comics were the only way to sell this series to Marvel readers. It’s too bad; cartoonist Mike Kazaleh drew a few stories for Marvel’s Mighty Mouse, but they bore little of the popular outrageousness of Bakshi’s TV series for which Mike actually did a lot of work, so why not exploit that? Instead, covers by John Byrne and Steve Lightle, and Kevin Maguire? Yeah, like they’re funnyanimal specialists. Their versions were drab and lifeless. At least Mike and Dan Slott were hired to create most of the run of Ren and Stimpy. I think that Ernie Colón’s and Milton Knight’s efforts were wasted, too.

ONE LAST, UNTIMELY TERRYTOON…

In 1999, Marvel made one last attempt to revive The Mighty Heroes when it published a one-shot special as part of its short-lived Paramount Comics line. Written by Scott Lobdell with wraparound cover and interior art by Rurik Tyler and Larry Mahlstedt, Strong Man and his silly, sad sacks of a team return to face their worst villain ever—low sales!

MIGHTY MOUSE IN THE MODERN AGE

Just over 25 years after Mighty Mouse’s last appearance on the four-color page, Dynamite Entertainment licensed rights from CBS Operations, Inc. for all-new, comic-book adventures. From 2017–2018, the company published five issues (with multiple variant covers illustrated by Neal Adams, Alex Ross, and others), collecting them into a trade paperback titled Saving the Day. On modern-day Earth, a latchkey child named Joey, regularly bullied at school, finds solace in watching cartoons featuring his favorite superhero. Suddenly, Mighty Mouse is transported out of Joey’s television set from Mouseville—along with cat-like aliens intent on taking over the planet! As usual, our superpowered mouse beats his adversaries and remains triumphant—teaching his human sidekick the importance of selfconfidence and not to tolerate bullying. This story contains elements of classic Terrytoons and was received well by some longtime fans.

WHAT A MOUSE!

In today’s world, where our youth feeds on “retro” fashion, accessories, and collectibles, Viacom licensees continue to sell Mighty Mouse apparel, lunch boxes, tin signs, and vinyl figures. Although new Mighty Mouse animated series and films have been conceived and announced in various stages of development, none have materialized. Reportedly, Paramount Animation is producing a hybrid, live-action/CGI motion picture slated for a possible 2022–2023 release. While we wait, perhaps the studio’s parent company CBS/Viacom—now owner of the entire Terrytoons library—will stream the original shorts from the 1940s through the Bakshi cartoons from the 1980s for today’s audiences. After all, our newest generation should know everything there is to know about the character from Mouseville, right? Mighty Mouse, please come and save the day again—we need you! In Tribute: There were two artists that I had intended to interview for this article who, sadly, passed away. May Frank McLaughlin (1935–2020) and Steve Lightle (1959–2021) rest in peace. You both, and your contributions, will always be remembered. ROBERT V. CONTE’s 32-year comics career includes writing Chuck the Rabid Dog for Heavy Metal, and editing Tex Avery’s Droopy, Screwball Squirrel, and Wolf & Red for Dark Horse Comics. He fondly remembers Mighty Mouse and other cherished Terrytoons via syndication during the 1970s— the days when television offered less than 13 channels! He kept missing the episode where Supermouse evolved into Mighty Mouse and, after writing this article, finally understands that such a cartoon never existed! Now Robert edits an all-new cartoon comic book, Cosmo Cat! Check it out at www.cosmocatcomics.com!

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by S t e p h a n

Friedt

Here Comes G-Force! Win Mortimer cover art intended for Gold Key’s Battle of the Planets #1 (June 1979). (inset) Animation-based art was used on the cover instead. Courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions (www.ha.com). © Sandy Frank Film Syndication Inc.

Battle of the Planets was an Americanized version of a popular Japanese cartoon series known as Science Ninja Team Gatchaman. It followed a team of young heroes called G-Force in their battle to protect Earth from intergalactic threats. Their use of a giant ship made up of smaller ships would inspire other popular series like Voltron. The G-Force team was to kids and young adults of the 1970s what Jonny Quest had been to the kids and young adults of the 1960s.

TATSUO YOSHIDA’S VISION

It started in the imagination of Tatsuo Yoshida. Tatsuo was born in 1932 in Kyoto, Japan. He and his two younger brothers, Kenji and Toyoharu, spent a portion of their childhood during the American occupation of Japan, where they were often gifted with well-read copies of comic books from the soldiers. This early exposure to

Superman and the realm of superheroes proved to be the spark that brought out Tatsuo’s artistic talent of. He supplemented his family’s income by selling his drawings during his teen years. In 1954, now married, Tatsuo packed up his art supplies and, with his wife beside him, moved to Tokyo, where the manga phenomenon was just starting. The publishing house Akita Shoten recognized his talent and hired him on. From 1955 to 1957, he was a prolific artist for the company. His workload eventually became overwhelming, and he convinced his brothers to join him. Toyoharu was also a talented artist, so he helped lighten the load, taking on the pen name Ippei Kuri to distinguish himself from his brother. Brother Kenji got a job in in production. From 1957 to 1962, the three brothers were instrumental in producing more than 40 titles for the company. If that was not enough, Tatsuo also provided art for the publishing house Shonen

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Gaho Sha, where he illustrated his childhood favorite, Superman, from September 1959 to October 1960. In 1960 Tatsuo became more interested in developing projects than drawing them, so he formed a studio and began producing comics for several publishers. In 1962 Tatsuo named his new company Tatsunoko Productions. From 1962 to 1969, Tatsuo bounced back and forth between providing comics and working in the fledgling animation studios that were springing up. He created a comic called Boy Ninja Squad Moonlight, which ran from 1963 to 1965. In 1964 it was developed into the animated series Ninja Squad Moonlight, which ran for 130 episodes from 1964 to 1966 and was the first animated series to include Tatsuo in the credits. Boy Ninja Squad Moonlight would have many of the seminal features of what would become Battle for the Planets. During this time, he illustrated the comic book for Mach Gogogo, which became a cartoon and ended up in the US as Speed Racer. From 1969 to 1971, Tatsuo worked more in animation than comic books, striving to increase the realism of the artwork involved and being instrumental in the trend to include as much science as possible. In 1971, working with a core group of professional friends, Tatsuo set out to create a science-based series that would appeal to an older set. After all, the fans of his many comics series were growing older. Ippei Kuri (brother Toyoharu) pointed out that one of the most popular series they worked on was Tatsuo’s Boy Ninja Squad Moonlight… so why not blend ninjas and science? Ippei and Tatsuo still had their love for superhero comics and wanted to bring the same love to a Japanese hero… better yet, a team of heroes in colorful costumes! Further inspired by the popularity of the Godzilla movie franchise and its emphasis on the hazards of pollution, their team would be melded with science (including bringing in a teacher as their Science Fiction Consultant) and the team of hardy heroes would guard Earth from pollution and a horrendous evil from space in the form of an organization called Galactor, led by the gender-fluid villain, Berg Katse. The original draft, Science Ninja Squad 5, incorporated various hooks popular in previous Tatsunoko Productions series—a team, orphans, some comedy, etc. The five characters were: Ken (The Eagle) Hayabusa, the passionate and headstrong leader; Jun (The Swan) Shiratori, the sensitive but strong member; Joe (The Condor) Takano, the nihilistic and impulsive one; Ryu (The Owl) Washio, the big-hearted and brave member; and Jinpei (The Swallow) Tsubakuro, the comedic and dependent one. All had last names that were types of birds, setting the bird motif of the series. They all had distinct, different-colored uniforms with built-in wings, different individual weapons, different powers, and modes of transportation unique to each, which could transform into one large vehicle. They were a space police force that operated from Phoenix Headquarters and a giant submarine/airship also called Phoenix, to continue the bird theme. Production model sheets and notes show that the name mutated through production: Secret Seven, Shadow, and Birdman pop up on original notes, production cannisters, and model sheets. But it was decided they needed something catchy, something that would get people’s attention… and Science Ninja Squad Gatchaman was born! Some of the merchandise would change it to Science Commando Gatchaman. This was Tatsuo Yoshida’s baby from the beginning. He was responsible for all the original character designs and drawings, which were later turned over to the team of professionals to adapt and adjust to produce the series. While most animated series at the time were allotted somewhere in the mid to high 3000 cels per episode, Gatchaman was given a budget of 4500 to 6000 cels per episode and as much as 7000 cels if needed to maintain the amount of realism to the animated flow to satisfy Tatsuo’s vision.

BotP Creator Tatsuo Yoshida (top) Kenji Yoshida, Tatsuo Yoshida, Tatsuo’s wife, and Ippei Kuri. (bottom) The Japanese version of Superman, as illustrated by Tatsuo Yoshida. Photo: Lambiek.com. Superman TM & © DC Comics.

INNOVATION ANIMATION

The series strived to be different from anything before it. They included special effects not seen in other production companies, from a major use of airbrush (95% of the helmets, the visors, the smoke, shine on the mechanicals, etc. were airbrushed, according to Sadao Miyamoto, one of the animators), to live-action plates. Experimental lighting and photography techniques that had been perfected in earlier Tatsunoko works were used to give Gatchaman its own unique identity. And the

76 • BACK ISSUE •Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue

Battle of the Planets Cover Gallery Issues #2–9 of Battle of the Planets, from Gold Key/Whitman (Western Publishing). Covers by Win Mortimer. © Sandy Frank Film Syndication Inc.

staff was determined to perfect the look of explosions… not the spikey blasts you see in most animation, but something much closer to reality. Thanks to rivalries between the animators, all masters in their field, the realism of the art evolved as the show progressed, becoming more and more a realization of Tatsuo’s vision of an ideal animated series. The staff was encouraged to see as many movies as possible, always looking for things to emulate and ideas to use to improve the art of the series. Elements from 2001 and Planet of the Apes were incorporated thanks to this policy. The staff thought the series would last for a year, when in fact the demand for new episodes from fans were so strong it lasted three years until 1974, for a total of 105 episodes. Tatsuo’s company always hoped to take their various series to the international market and had a booth at the Marché International des Programmes de Télévision, which took place around the first quarter of every year in Cannes, France. Starting in 1975 they offered Gatchaman, but it did not get any takers in 1975, 1976, or 1977. But in April of 1977 it was seen by a young American television executive by the name of Sandy Frank. When Star Wars broke in May of that year, the young executive remembered the show from Tatsunoko Productions that had impressed him. He decided he had to have it to ride the wave of sciencefiction popularity exploded on the American public. Sandy Frank had spent 20 years in the business of television production and distribution, and had run his own company for 13, when he came across Gatchaman. Over a considerable period of negotiations between Sandy and Tatsuo, Mr. Frank obtained almost complete international rights to Gatchaman… everywhere but Italy, which was already under contract. Tatsunoko would benefit greatly from the partnership, as their strengths were in production and not distribution or monetizing their products. Sandy immediately gathered a crew together to work with all the materials that they received from Tatsunoko. On the advice of his friend, director Irvin Kershner (The Empire Strikes Back), he contacted writer Alex Lovy of HannaBarbera Productions for assistance. He also brought on Fred Ladd, who was instrumental in bringing the Japanese children’s programs Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion, and Gigantor to America. Ladd advised Sandy on several aspects of bringing foreign series to the US but had no faith in Lovy’s abilities to work with foreign material and decided this project was not for him. His advice also led to the release of Alex Lovy and Frank replaced him with Jameson Brewer (The Incredible Mr. Limpet, The Addams Family, and Branded). Jameson had worked at Universal in animation, moved to Disney, and ended up at Hanna-Barbera. After viewing several episodes, Brewer realized they had a lot of work to do. The series had far more violence than was allowed on American TV, the gender-fluid villain would never fly in America, and the language was too adult as was the occasional nudity. Removing the objectionable aspects would create shortages in the running times, so they had more work to do to fill the gaps than originally anticipated. Brewer set to work on revising the series’ scripts. The violence was removed and explained away (cities were “evacuated” before they were destroyed); a new robot character, 7-Zark-7, was added to fill story transitions and time shortages caused by the cuts; and the gender-fluid villain became a brother/sister team. 7-Zark-7 was roughly designed by Brewer and was turned over to newly added production person, Alan Dinehart, one of his buddies at H-B. Alan was friends with famed comic-book and animation artist Alex Toth, who whipped up a model sheet for the character. Even though parts of all 105 episodes of Gatchaman were used, only 85 episodes of Battle of the Planets were produced. Other changes included changing the character’s names. Ken became “Mark,” Joe became “Jason,” Jun became “Princess,” Jinpei became “Keyop” and was given a vocal tick, and Ryu became “Tiny.” Gender-fluid villain Berg Katse became “Zoltar” and his sister became “Mala Latroz.” And the evil organization bent on world domination changed from Galactor to “Spectra.” Besides Alan Dinehart, Brewer also brought in more talent from H-B: composer Hoyt Curtin, and voice actors Janet Waldo and Casey Kasem, with the additions of Alan Young and Ronnie Schell [see RetroFan #12 for a Ronnie Schell interview—ed.]. The series, Battle of the Planets, was ready to sell. But that did not mean it would sell. Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue • BACK ISSUE • 77

Sandy took the completed pilot to Marché International des Programmes that year (March of 1978) where it generated interest, but no buyers. Sandy was not deterred. He spent the rest 1978 traveling the US pitching it to program buyers around the country. Sandy started in May, with a personal deadline of August. His first month of pitches was met with a dismal reception. Programs buyers were impressed, but only a handful were willing to commit to something so different than anything they had seen before. This was not the Bugs Bunny or Tom & Jerry cartoons they were used to buying. After a month of pitching and less than a handful of takers, far too few to replace their investment, Sandy submitted it to audience research firm and had it tested on both coasts. Reaction among kids and their parents were favorable, so Sandy hit the road again. Finally, in mid-July of 1978, with his personal deadline fast approaching, WNEW of New York, an influential network and one of the original TV stations in the country, committed to the series. A powerhouse in the industry, Metromedia Group, heard about the commitment and jumped on the bandwagon. Their national affiliation of major market stations sealed the deal. Now stations were coming to Sandy to get on board, and what looked like a potential failure became a multi-milliondollar success.

win mortimer

Zoltar’s Revenge Original Mortimer cover art, courtesy of Heritage, to the unpublished 11th issue of Gold Key’s tie-in. © Sandy Frank Film Syndication Inc.

THE LEAP TO COMIC BOOKS

Sandy Frank did not stop there. He had the merchandising rights as well, and as the series began to air he made sure there was merchandise available… including a TV tie-in comic book through Western Publishing. A concise look at the issues produced by Western Publishing under the Gold Key and Whitman logos includes these ten issues: Battle of the Planets #1 (June 1979) was issued first as a Gold Key comic, but was also printed as a Whitman comic for inclusion in a rack-pack bag of the first three issues. The cover art appears to be taken from the animation artwork. The interior art is by longtime comicbook artist Win Mortimer. The story is by Gary Poole, who scripted many comics for Western, including the adaptation of King Kong. The stories appear to be new stories loosely based on the characters and plot threads of the cartoon and include “Operation Decoy,” where Zoltar kidnaps 7-Zark-7, and “Undersea Threat,” where G-Force battle a giant robot turtle built by Zoltar. Battle of the Planets #2 (Aug. 1979) was issued as a Gold Key and was also printed as a Whitman comic for inclusion in a rack-pack. This time the cover and interior art are by Win Mortimer. Stories are again by Gary Poole. In “Ice Creature,” Zoltar attacks Earth’s polar security base with a giant snowman robot, and in “The Flaming Menace,” a giant torch creature attacks a village in India. Battle of the Planets #3 (Oct. 1979) was issued as a Gold Key and was also printed as a Whitman comic for inclusion in a rack-pack. The cover and interior art are by Win Mortimer, with stories by Gary Poole. In “Solar Blockade,” Zoltar builds a giant lens to block the sun from Earth, and in “The Lake Monster!,” while on vacation, G-Force encounters a giant lake monster (another Zoltar robot). Battle of the Planets #4 (Dec. 1979) was issued as a Gold Key and was also printed as a Whitman comic. The cover and interior art are by Win Mortimer and the stories are by Gary Poole. In “The Creeping Forest,” the island of Malu is in the clutches of Zoltar, his thugs, and a variety of robots; and in “The Earthquake Menace,” an earthquake hits California and Zoltar threatens to cause an even bigger quake. Battle of the Planets #5 (Feb. 1980) was the last issue printed as a Gold Key and was also printed as a Whitman comic. The cover and interior art are by Win Mortimer and the stories are by Gary Poole. “The Hidden Enemy” is Part One of a two-part story. While on holiday, Zoltar foils Tiny’s chance in the Mr. Galaxy contest, captures Princess, and buries G-Force in a mine. “The Vulture Menace” is Part Two of a two-part story. G-Force escapes and battles a giant robot vulture. Battle of the Planets #6 (Apr. 1980) was published only as a Whitman. The cover and interior art are by Win Mortimer and the stories are by Gary Poole. In “Ghost Ship Part One,” G-Force investigates mysterious happenings in the Bermuda Triangle and are captured by Zoltar and his robot whale, and in “Ghost Ship Part Two,” G-Force escapes and takes control of Zoltar’s robot whale. Battle of the Planets #7 (Oct. 1980) was published as a Whitman. The cover and interior art are by Win Mortimer (as Winslow Mortimer) and the stories are by Gary Poole. “Enemy Within” is Part One of a two-part story where Zoltar sends an agent to infiltrate the G-Force headquarters. “Invasion of the Ant Creatures” is Part Two, where Zoltar’s plans to infiltrate G-force fall apart, so he sends an army of mechanical ants to invade. Battle of the Planets #8 (Nov. 1980) was published as a Whitman. The cover and interior art by Win Mortimer and the stories this time are by Bob Langhans, a regular writer of Western’s Disney comics. In “Surprise Surrender,” Zoltar surrenders, or at least a booby-trapped robot version does, and in “The Tidal Wave,” while investigating a problem at Tiki Atoll, Zoltar attacks the G-Force. Battle of the Planets #9 (Dec. 1980) was published as a Whitman. The cover and interior art are by Win Mortimer and this time the story is by Ms. Charlie (Char) Seeger, who wrote primarily for DC during her short run as a comic-book writer. “G-Force Divided” features Zoltar attempting to divide and conquer G-Force with the use of look-alike robots. Battle of the Planets #10 (Feb. 1981) was the last issue and published as a Whitman. The cover and interior art are by Win Mortimer (as Winslow Mortimer) and the story was again by Ms. Charlie Seeger. In “Pioneer Planet,” G-Force tries to find a new home for a race whose planet has been destroyed by Zoltar.

78 • BACK ISSUE •Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue

THE CREATIVE TEAM

Artist James Winslow (Win) Mortimer (May 1, 1919– January 11, 1998) was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He learned his craft from his father, a lithographer, and at the Art Students League in New York. When Win discharged from the Canadian Army at the end of WWII, he designed posters for a living, then became employed at DC Comics in 1945. He rapidly became the go-to artist for covers for Superman, Superboy, and Batman. Win is credited along with writer Don Cameron with creating the Batboat. He would take over the Superman newspaper strip from Wayne Boring in 1945 and would go on to create the newspaper adventure strips David Crane in 1956 and Larry Bannon in 1960. Win would also return to DC to work on Swing with Scooter and co-create the series Stanley and His Monster with Arnold Drake. Many DC comics were graced with his art over the years. By the 1970s, Win was freelancing at other publishers. At Marvel he was the primary artist for all 57 issues of Marvel’s Spidey Super Stories, and the cult favorite Night Nurse series, as well as providing stories for many of Marvel’s black-and-white magazine line. At Western he worked on Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery, The Twilight Zone, several issues of Doctor Solar, and every issue of Battle of the Planets. Win was inducted into the Canadian Joe Shuster Hall of Fame in 2006. Writer Gary Poole was an editor at Western Publishing from 1970–1975. He would later be a writer for several series: Flash Gordon, Grimm’s Ghost Stories, Twilight Zone, most of the Battle of the Planets series, and several of Western’s cartoon tie-ins. Gary was editor-in-chief at Golden Magazine and Golden Press. Gary became a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, and went on to be a successful performer, writer, author of over 20 books, artist, and MC. He still performs to this day. Writer Bob Langhans worked on many cartoonrelated series for Western and Disney, and provided scripts for cartoon shows like The Smurfs and Richie Rich/Scooby Doo Show. Writer Charlie (Char) Seeger wrote scripts for several of DC’s mystery comics as well as two issues of Battle of the Planets. Ms. Seeger would leave comics and become a successful TV scriptwriter, songwriter, independent film producer, and commercial insurance producer.

A DURABLE CONCEPT

Battle of the Planets was not done with the cancelling of the Gold Key/Whitman series. From 1981–1983, the British weekly magazine TV Comic from Polystyle Publications ran two-page story sections of all-new, uncredited stories in issues #1530 through 1671. Story arcs ran for two to five weeks, with most of them running four weeks. Issues #1530–1655 were full color, with the balance published in black and white. Polystyle would also reprint much of the American series in a selection of annuals and specials during the same time. A large assortment of merchandise was produced in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, and the Netherlands, from toy guns, models, and vehicles to coloring books, activity books, and sticker books. That was still not the end of Gatchaman/Battle of the Planets… Nearly a dozen spinoffs, variations, and companion cartoon series exist. A live-action movie was rumored for years and now appears to be in the development hands of the Russo Brothers (Avengers: Endgame).

In 2002, Top Cow would release a miniseries and several one-shots in a short-lived revival that was best known for its Alex Ross covers. The interconnectivity of life is exemplified in the history of Gatchaman/Battle of the Planets. If not for the exposure of Tatsuo and his brothers to the comic book Superman, Gatchaman might never have come to be. If not for the success of Star Wars, Gatchaman might never have been brought to the US in the guise of Battle of the Planets. And if not for the success of Battle of the Planets, the second wave of Japanese animation with such popular series as Starblazers, Robotech, and others might never have happened. STEPHAN FRIEDT has been around comics for a long, long time. A former columnist for The Buyer’s Guide for Comic Fandom, he has contributed to Alter Ego and the Grand Comics Database and is the senior database administrator for www.comicspriceguide.com. And he still finds time to hold real jobs and be at the beck and call of a wife and two daughters in his secret identity as a resident of the Pacific Northwest.

G-Force in the UK (top) Cover and title page from TV Comic Weekly #1543 (July 17, 1981), featuring Battle of the Planets. Scans courtesy of Stephan Friedt. (bottom) Signed, numbered Alex Ross limited edition print from Dynamic Forces, 2001. Courtesy of Heritage. Battle of the Planets © Sandy Frank Film Syndication Inc. Tom and Jerry © Warner Bros. Animation/ Hanna-Barbera Productions.

Br onze Age TV Toon Tie-ins Issue • BACK ISSUE • 79

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TV TOON TIE-INS! Bronze Age HannaBarbera Comics, Underdog, Mighty Mouse, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Pink Panther, Battle of the Planets, and Smokey Bear and Woodsy Owl. Bonus: SCOTT SHAW! digs up Captain Carrot’s roots! Featuring the work of BYRNE, COLON, ENGEL, EVANIER, FIELDS, MICHAEL GALLAGHER, WIN MORTIMER, NORRIS, SEVERIN, SKEATES, STATON, TALLARICO, TOTH, and more!

BRONZE AGE PROMOS, ADS, AND GIMMICKS! The aborted DC Super-Stars Society fan club, Hostess Comic Ads, DC 16-page Preview Comics, rare Marvel custom comics, DC Hotline, Popeye Career Comics, early variant covers, and more. Featuring BARR, HERDLING, LEVITZ, MAGUIRE, MORGAN, PACELLA, PALMIOTTI, SHAW!, TERRY STEWART, THOMAS, WOLFMAN, and more!

THE KIRBY LEGACY AT DC! Explores Jack Kirby’s post-Fourth World Bronze Age DC characters! Demon, Kamandi, OMAC, Sandman, and Kirby’s Odd Jobs (Atlas, Manhunter, and more). Plus: the SIMON & KIRBY Reunion That Wasn’t! Featuring BISSETTE, BYRNE, CONWAY, GIBBONS, GOLDEN, GRANT, RUCKA, SEMEIKS, THOMAS, TIMM, WAGNER, and more. Demon cover by KIRBY and MIKE ROYER!

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2021

BRONZE AGE TV TIE-INS! TV-to-comic adaptations of the ’70s to ’90s, including Bionic Woman, Dark Shadows, Emergency, H. R. Pufnstuf, Hee Haw, Lost in Space (with BILL MUMY), Primus (with ROBERT BROWN), Sledge Hammer, Superboy, V, and others! Featuring BALD, BATES, CAMPITI, EVANIER, JOHN FRANCIS MOORE, SALICRUP, SAVIUK, SPARLING, STATON, WOLFMAN, and more!

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TwoMorrows. The Future of Comics History. TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA

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BACK ISSUE #127

SOLDIERS ISSUE! Sgt. Rock revivals, General Thunderbolt Ross, Beetle Bailey in comics, DC’s Blitzkrieg, War is Hell’s John Kowalski, Atlas’ savage soldiers, The ’Nam, Nth the Ultimate Ninja, and CONWAY and GARCIA-LOPEZ’s Cinder and Ashe. Featuring CLAREMONT, DAVID, DIXON, GOLDEN, HAMA, KUBERT, LOEB, DON LOMAX, DOUG MURRAY, TUCCI, and more. BRIAN BOLLAND cover!