I write a lot about superhero comics on here, but there's a lot more to the history of comics than just the long-underwear types. Let's go back to mid-1940s America, when the heroes were on the way out and the next big thing might just possibly be anthropomorphic animals. Mickey Mouse and his friends were big business, after all, so it's understandable that a lot of comic publishers turned to copying whatever they were doing...
Quality Comics, a fairly small publisher who had one big superhero hit with Plastic Man and one big war-comic hit with Blackhawk, decided in time for their 'Spring 1945'-dated comics to branch out into the animal kingdom, and recruited the great Ernie Hart, who'd created the popular (if not hugely original) Super Rabbit for Timely/Marvel Comics a year or two previously.
Ernie Hart's connection with Marvel continued into the superhero rebirth of the 1960s, tenuously - he wrote the dialogue scripts (under the pen-name "H.E. Huntley") for a handful of their comics when Stan Lee was too busy. One of them was the first appearance of the Wasp, which has led to him being rather dubiously credited as her co-creator. But it's with the animals that he was truly creative, and nowhere more so than for a little while at Quality!
It all started in
Hit Comics #35 - you can read it and all the rest of these public-domain comics at that link!
Kid Eternity was the headline hero of Hit Comics - he's not as famous as he should be, he's got the interesting super-power to summon any person from history or mythology to help with his crime-fighting. His costume is rather cool, too; I like the red sash around his waist. But in the pages behind him (Quality still had 56-page comics, while market leader DC had been forced by paper rationing down to 48) are a lot of other features, including two new ones with the 'Hart' signature - Marmaduke Mouse and Egbert.
Marmaduke is the most significant one, because it doesn't just introduce the two central characters of that series (Marmaduke and Louie the lion), there's one panel - the one that started this blog post - that shows us a whole range of other characters too, prototypes of the ones who would later get their own stories. Ernie Hart was obviously planning right from the start on launching a whole line of funny animals for Quality!
It's also interesting to note that Hart originally saw the animals as actors who'd play different roles in each story. In Hit Comics #35, Louie is the evil king of the forest, and Marmaduke is the smallest animal but the only one who dares defy him (mainly because he doesn't know what 'defy' means). In #36, Marmaduke lives in a little suburban house of his own, inherits a million dollars and is kidnapped by Louie, a crook. In #37, Marmaduke skips school to go fishing and truant officer Louie tries to catch him. In #38, Louie is a homeowner trying to get rid of Marmaduke the mouse who eats all his food. In #39, Louie is a farmer, and Marmaduke a bum trying to beg a nickel for a cup of coffee.
The other strip, "Egbert and the Count" works in the same kind of way, although Egbert the chicken's personality is more consistent - he's extremely stupid, but somehow always gets the better of the Count, a fox who wants to either eat Egbert or rob him of his money. Their first adventure also introduces a Mr Owl, who mispronounces words to comic effect.
And comic effect is the key feature of the dialogue in these stories - there's no such thing as too many gags! The very best ones are when Ernie Hart manages to work a play on words or silly joke into every single speech bubble, whether they make any sense or not...
(Indeed, he's not above using the same gag repeatedly - hey, if they like a horse, then they'll like two horses twice as well!)
The funny animal invasion seems to have been a hit with the readers of Hit Comics - or maybe just with the publisher - because when the American paper rationing was lifted at the start of 1946, Quality launched all-new solo comics for their favourite heroes. Kid Eternity got one, but so did Marmaduke and Egbert! And they were both written and drawn entirely by Ernie Hart!
The comics each cram eight stories (plus the obligatory two-page text story that all American comics were required to have in order to qualify as a magazine and get a reduced postage rate) into their 48 pages (with #12, they're cut down to 32). Here's a rundown of all the characters:
Marmaduke Mouse is the one who really stood the test of time - his comic continued to be published until Quality went out of business in 1956 (though the last couple of years were just reprints of old stories). After all the role-switching of the earliest stories, it soon settles down into a fixed situation - Louie is the king of some unspecified country, and Marmaduke works for him. They get into scrapes caused variously by Marmaduke's bungling, Louie's idiocy or outside forces. Louie generally gets furious with Marmaduke and vows some excessive punishment, but they're always friends again by the end.
Cholly Chipmunk is fat and loves to eat food. He's perfectly happy to steal it from other people, or anyone who's left a pie to cool on the windowsill, and gets into all kinds of scrapes as a result. But he also dreams about being a hero and is regularly ordered by his conscience to do good deeds instead. In the first issue of Marmaduke Mouse, Cholly appears in the first Marmaduke story, then continues into his own strip, in which he reads Egbert's comic. He's really tying this shared universe together!
Frowzy and Fuzzy are a big stupid dog and a smaller, smarter cat, perpetually penniless, who travel the country looking for work, but always end up just as jobless and poor as they started out. It wasn't a terribly original idea, with its roots in the great depression, but maybe it introduced the concept to post-war kids! They're a very likeable pair, anyway.
Sad Sam Skunk has the usual problem of cartoon skunks (I think his cameo in the first Marmaduke story just predates the first Pepe le Pew cartoon, incidentally) - the other kids won't play with him because he smells. The interesting thing about Sam is that his smell isn't a natural feature, it comes from a scent atomizer that he always carries with him - it's part of his skunk family heritage. Sad though he is, he can never bring himself to just leave the scent at home - and he does still sometimes come out on top, usually when another character has a cold...
Giddy Goose gets around - he also had a story in every issue of All Humor Comics, yet another one of Quality's new titles launched in spring 1946. But despite the double exposure, there's nothing all that distinctive about Giddy - he's unintelligent and nonetheless gets the better of people who try to trick him, despite not knowing what's going on. He's got a nephew called Gaddy who serves as a general sidekick.
Buggy Corners (population - wow!) tells the story of Flip the Flea and Anson Ant, who are rivals for the love of Beetrice Bee. She's extremely fickle, and often ends the story by going off with the bad guy, but our heroes never give up. They face a lot of dangers along the way, too - it's a regular theme in these stories that being eaten is a normal occupational hazard of life as a funny animal, but these smallest creatures are always threatened by spiders, anteaters and natural disasters like rainfall, and they take it all in their stride!
Egbert, like Marmaduke, gets multiple stories in each issue of his own comic. And like Marmaduke with Louie, Egbert is mostly paired with the Count, but sometimes has solo adventures too. He's probably best with the smooth-talking scoundrel Count, but I think you can see why this was the less successful comic. There are still plenty of laughs to be had with dim-witted Egbert, though!
Nero Owl is an interesting one - he has his own story, titled "Nero Owl" in each issue, but they mostly (not always) feature Egbert as a supporting character. Nero, who speaks mainly in spoonerisms, is a doddering old fool who works as a private detective. And like all the great cartoon heroes, he usually comes out on top somehow!
Rollo Raccoon, always accompanied by his loyal sidekick Picklefoot Pig, has rather generic adventures. The first couple show him with a talent for talking his way out of a problem, but that rather goes away in subsequent stories. Still, he's distinctive in appearance thanks to the red bow tie he always wears, with no shirt.
Bunnyhunch and Buzz, the Bunny Boys, are a pair of brothers who get into all kinds of trouble thanks to Buzz's insistence on disobeying their mother and going to look for adventure. Hunch, who can't pwonounce his Rs, is always scared but gets dragged along anyway - but as soon as they actually find a frightening situation (wicked witch, big bad wolf, etc), Buzz is terrified and Hunch has to save him. The interplay between the two of them is a lot of fun!
Beanie Bear, the Cub Scout, tries to do a good deed every day - and everyone else tries to take advantage of his good nature, especially Mr Bindle, the bum. I really have no idea what kind of creature Mr Bindle is supposed to be - he's green, with floppy ears. But Beanie's complete innocence is always funny, anyway.
Foolish Fables is another series set in a town of bugs - indeed, it's sometimes called Buggy Corners, but sometimes Bugville. And it mostly chronicles the misadventures of Abercrombie Caterpillar, who is elderly and comically deaf.
And if you were wondering what happened to Solly Sparrow and Frankie Frog from that original gathering of prototypes, well, Solly makes a cameo appearance in the first story in Egbert #1, but nobody very much like Frankie ever shows up in these comics. I wonder where he hopped off to...
But isn't that a fantastic line-up of characters to all flow from the pen of one writer-artist? There should seriously be a cinematic universe with all the gang interacting and entertaining the world! Nobody could fail to be amused by moments like this, could they?
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