Among the things I love about Alvin and the Chipmunks is the long and multi-media history behind them - including the way it ties in with another subject I find fascinating: early issues of comic book adaptations of new cartoons, made before they knew how the franchise was going to develop.
It's a niche thing, but a great rabbit-hole (or chipmunk-burrow) to dive down if you're in the mood. I must tell you at length all about the fascinating first issue of "Mighty Heroes", or possibly go on for pages and pages about naked baby Kermit the Frog some time. But those are comics that had some preliminary details of character designs and the like to work with - the one I've been enjoying today is working from less than that...
The Chipmunk phenomenon started out with novelty records:
And the sheer cleverness of speeding up Ross Bagdasarian's voice to turn it into chipmunk voices is something people don't appreciate in these days of autotune and technology! In 1958 it was a brilliant innovation!
Luckily, some genius on YouTube has satisfied the world's curiosity and compiled an original-speed version!
But that song and its sequels (squeakquels) only give a slight hint of the chipmunks' personalities, and the various record-sleeve illustrations don't provide more than a suggestion of how they would look. Even an appearance on Ed Sullivan as glove-puppets is just a step in the right direction...
No, what was needed was proper Chipmunk fiction to bring them to life! It took the cartoon "The Alvin Show" in 1961 to really turn Dave and the boys into a lasting phenomenon. There were comic book spin-offs aplenty after the cartoons had caught on, but the first real work of literature in the chipmunk universe was this one comic, in 1959!
Dell comics weren't like most American comics of the time, which had a separate numbering for each title. This was no. 1042 in a long, long series of one-off comics based on cartoons, films, all sorts. Number 1041 was Sea Hunt, starring Lloyd Bridges. Number 1043 was The Three Stooges, showcasing their new lineup of Moe, Larry and Curly Joe, which is probably what led to the chipmunk issue getting the unique title "The Three Chipmunks", the only time the trio is described in exactly that way. I recommend ComicBook+ if you want to read all the Dell comics that don't feature copyrighted characters (and maybe Disney and Warner Bros will allow them to include the rest, one day).
The GCD reckons that the stories in this comic were written by Paul S. Newman, but has no idea who drew the pictures. A comment on ComicBook+ says John Stanley. Neither of these names mean anything to me, but it's good stuff!
Alvin's harmonica, subject of the chipmunks' latest hit single, gets a starring role in most of the stories. There are a lot of elements that have stayed constant over the sixty years of adventures - Alvin as well as his typical antics is distinguished by wearing a hat, and there's a consistent colour scheme for each chipmunk, albeit an unfamiliar one. The red-blue-green colours came about for The Alvin show. And the generic cartoon exploits they get up to, usually with a musical theme, are the kind of stories you'll still see in the latest 21st-century cartoon episodes. It's nice when things stick to the classics.
The characterisation of Simon and Theodore is in a very early state too - they didn't get much individuality in the earliest songs, but Simon picks up from a throwaway line or two and comes across here as boastful and thinking a lot of himself. It's an unusual take that drifted away once he'd got his glasses. Theodore is a bit more bland, but has a few moments that make him feel like his present-day self. Here's a perfectly in-character Theo and an unusually self-possessed Simon:
I should have read this comic long ago. I'll have to find a real-life copy out there some day...
