Category Archives: comics

A feast for the eyes is online: Jack Bradbury’s son. Joel, has started a site devoted to the talented cartoonist’s work. Bradbury did thousands of pages of artwork for funny animal comic books, most of them absolutely beautiful, and many of them are collected in the comics section. Be prepared to spend a few hours looking over the literature of such superstars as Spencer Spook and Fremont Frog!

No porn, I swear!

Frank was generous with posting two early Andy Panda stories by John Stanley (here and here), so I am finally returning the favor by posting the first story with Andy’s longtime costar Charlie Chicken. As Frank noted, Charlie began as a fluffy hatchling, and ‘grew up’ over the span of three issues. The only other ‘growth’ of this kind in funny animal comics was the woodpecker kid Splinter changing from a boy to a girl in the first few issues the Splinter & Knothead duo (originally ‘Nuthead’) appeared in.

Charlie’s personality changed drastically in these first few issues, to say the least. Before he became the wise guy sidekick for Andy, he was pretty much an evil little asshole in the ‘baby guise’, similar to Bob Clampett’s Tweety. Perhaps Stanley quickly realized that this type of ‘persona’ (really, gag idea) was extremely limiting and decided to axe it.

I’m uncertain if this is Stanley’s first Lantz character story, but it has to be one of the earliest. I also like how Charlie’s sex isn’t taken into account throughout this whole story.

Taken from New Funnies #79 (September 1943).

I know there’s a lot of fans of Harvey Eisenberg out there, so here’s a [mediocre] Li’l Bad Wolf story he drew from Walt Disney’s Comics & Stories #77. (By the way, did he have an actual first name, or did Zeke really name his son “Li’l”? Typical hick.)

A great Bo Bunny and Skinny Fox story from Funny Stuff No. 64. It’s a great example of how everybody in Mayer’s funny animal world are complete irredeemable bastards, yet you still find them interesting to read. “Dog eat dog”, “bunny kill fox”, “duck maim frog”; the combinations are endless in the Mayer universe. It’s amazing how well they hold up for repeated readings when you’re not supposed to like anybody.

Thanks to Frank for the scans. You should go to his blog and see some of the great early Lantz character stories by John Stanley he’s put up.