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When I was a boy there were many cartoon characters that frustrated me terribly. Characters like Hong Kong Phooey, Jabberjaw, the Great Grape Ape...I liked those characters. They were, in my opinion, successfully realized: the design and voice casting were top-notch. But the shows themselves were so badly written they infuriated me! Alas, Barney Bear was another character that caused me such distress in my cartoon-consuming youth. He would show up in the middle of the Tom & Jerry show, win me over with his great design and appealing persona, then proceed to bore me to tears. Why, Barney, why???
A lot of mind-numbing mediocrity can be forgiven when you happen to have the Duck Man drawing your comics, however.
I mentioned in an earlier post how Barney and Benny act like an old radio comedy team. In this story that comedy team is Abbott and Costello. Benny acts as Bud Abbott, the straight man/instigator to Barney's Lou Costello, the patsy and victim of all the cartoon violence. Although the ending, with Barney coming out on top, doesn't come from the Abbott & Costello dynamic, but rather from Barks' trademark sense of ironic comeuppance.
Here is Barney Bear and Benny Burro from Our Gang Comics #24 (July 1946):
My brother and I were talking recently about all the great reprint projects that have been happening, and how many old cartoonists are being discovered by new fans. Even old-timers like us have new favorites! Five years ago I had no idea who Fletcher Hanks was. I didn't know Dan Gordon's name, but had enjoyed some of his unsigned work in books I had bought. And there were many artists like Boody Rogers, whom I had heard of but never saw much of their work. I just learned about Jimmy Thompson's Robotman comics about a month ago!
With all the great comic book reprints scheduled (Milt Gross, Dick Briefer, Basil Wolverton, Jack Cole, EC artists, Archie artists, etc), I think it's only a matter of time before we get some sort of archival set of Sheldon Mayer's various works for DC Comics. Scribbly and Sugar and Spike are no-brainers, but thanks to Gabriel's recent posts at Joyville, I think Mayer's funny animal comics need to be collected as well. I think full-color trade paperbacks (similar to the Superman
and Batman Chronicles) of Mayer's various titles would be ideal, especially given the volume of the work being discussed here.
In Mayer's NCS bio, he writes that he "resigned editorial directorship [from National/DC Comics] in 1948 to do a "novel" in comic book form..."Scribbly", the kid who wants to be a cartoonist. Had fun with it until 1950." On the surface, some of these stories look like just another entry in the "teen comedy" genre. But Mayer energizes these stories with his dynamic drawing; the body language, facial expressions, and physical comedy give the stories an animated look that would continue to serve him well in Sugar and Spike. These characters are rarely at ease...and when they move, they move fast!
Here are two stories from Scribbly #3 (Dec-Jan 1948):
