{"id":2660,"date":"2018-05-01T14:36:00","date_gmt":"2018-05-01T21:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/?p=2660"},"modified":"2024-01-09T14:40:29","modified_gmt":"2024-01-09T22:40:29","slug":"maggies-world-061-funny-animals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.comic-con.org\/toucan\/maggies-world-061-funny-animals\/","title":{"rendered":"Maggie\u2019s World 061: Funny Animals"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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MAGGIE’S WORLD BY MAGGIE THOMPSON<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maggie\u2019s World 061: Funny Animals<\/h1>\n\n\n
Maggie Thompson<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Aesop\u2019s stories teach lessons for centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Folk tales of Coyote and Fox and Rabbit are brought to an American audience by Joel Chandler Harris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Britain, Alice grows to accept that Wonderland is a world of talking animals, an elephant\u2019s child gets a longer nose, and a hedgehog takes in washing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In America, one of the earliest animated characters is a dinosaur, interacting with his creator in 1914.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The earliest broadcast television image is a doll of the 1919 comics character Felix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 1973, it is no leap of the imagination to accept a fox playing the traditional role of Robin Hood, when Disney goes from Richard Todd in 1952 to a fox voiced by Brian Bedford. (Did the 1973 film become the inspiration for a generation of \u201cFurry\u201d fans? But that\u2019s not today\u2019s topic.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human form or character to something that isn\u2019t human. And that\u2019s pretty basic to \u201cfunny animals\u201d in comic books, comic strips, and animation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So \u2026 Comics \u2026<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

What were the earliest anthropomorphic characters in comics? Felix? Bre\u2019r Rabbit? Krazy Kat and that gang? It\u2019s easy to get caught up in looking for specifics\u2014setting up the foundation for ongoing arguments. And then there were Mighty Mouse, Pink Panther, Howard the Duck, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles \u2026 How many will I forget? Let\u2019s understand from the beginning that this discussion will omit hundreds, because there are more than I can count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Action-adventure funny animals include rabbits. In the comic book that may have given its name to the genre, Hoppy shared the abilities of Fawcett\u2019s Captain Marvel.\u00a0Fawcett\u2019s Funny Animals<\/em>\u00a0#36 (March 1946) \u00a9 2018 DC Comics. Stan Sakai combined other traditions to bring readers a rabbit ronin.\u00a0Usagi Yojimbo<\/em>\u00a0#1 (July 1987) \u00a9 2018 Stan Sakai.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By the time I began to collect comic books (at age 3\u00bd), newsstands were packed with those characters, and I took them all for granted. Most told new stories about animals appearing on movie screens. As in:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  • MGM: Tom and Jerry. Barney Bear and Benny Burro.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Walter Lantz: Woody Woodpecker. Oswald Rabbit. Andy Panda.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Warner Brothers: Bugs Bunny. Porky Pig. Sniffles. Henery Hawk.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Walt Disney: Donald Duck. Mickey Mouse. Goofy. Pluto. Three Little Pigs.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    Those are only a few of the ones I found in the comics I was buying in the 1940s. Frankly, I\u2019d never seen cartoons with Barney or Henery and didn\u2019t even connect animation with my growing collection. The Donald Duck I knew from comic books spoke clearly. I always knew the licensed characters better from their comic book versions than I did from their animated incarnations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In any case, my comics in the 1940s were packed with animals who were pretty much just people in the guise of a variety of other animals. As they had been in Aesop\u2019s Fables 2500 years earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Why Animals in Comics?<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

    For one thing, the comics creator has an infinite resource in design when the characters are picked out of a menagerie. Even the youngest reader can tell Tom from Jerry at a glance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Moreover, readers can identify role models without regard to skin color or ethnic groupings. Age and gender are often distinguishing characteristics, but the audience can be more broad when its members look for characters with which they can identify. I\u2019m looking at you, Roadrunner!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Aside from Shirts and Hats \u2026<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

    More realistic animals did get their own comics stories now and then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I grew up with Animal Comics<\/em>, where I first encountered Walt Kelly\u2019s Pogo, and the publication edited by Oskar Lebeck did stay true to its title by carrying a variety of other animal features. These even included the licensed comic book version of Howard R. Garis\u2019 Uncle Wiggily. Garis was still writing his own stories, but his often cover-featured rabbit acquired such other writers and artists as Kelly in new comics material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Not all the animals were of the animals-as-humans variety, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Rover began as a captioned feature by Dan Noonan, whose tales of a cocker spaniel in the Caribbean started in Animal Comics<\/em> #20 (April 1946). And the prolific Gaylord Du Bois provided \u201cChuckwagon Charley\u2019s Tales,\u201d in which a kindly cowboy told animal stories to a couple of kids. When Animal Comics<\/em> came to an end, the feature moved to Roy Rogers Comics<\/em> in the late 1940s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Speaking of Rogers, his Trigger, Gene Autry\u2019s Champion, and The Lone Ranger\u2019s Silver eventually got their own series. Nor were horses the only animals to star in more realistic comics. So did Rin Tin and Lassie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Some animal adventure stories go for less anthropomorphism. Rover\u2019s adventures began with captioned tales of the dog alone.\u00a0Animal Comics\u00a0<\/em>#26 (April 1947) \u00a9 2018 Oskar Lebeck. \u201cChuckwagon Charlie\u2019s Tales\u201d began with this story in\u00a0Animal Comics<\/em>\u00a0but later appeared in\u00a0Roy Rogers Comics<\/em>.\u00a0Animal Comics<\/em>\u00a0#27 (June 1947) \u00a9 2018 Oskar Lebeck.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
    Funny?<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

    Especially in the case of the more realistic animal tales, the stories focused on adventure, rather than humor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Why, then, fans\u2019 adoption of the \u201cfunny animals\u201d description for all of them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    At a guess, it\u2019s because the term was an existing title that fit a spectrum of material. Fawcett\u2019s Funny Animals<\/em> found its way into collections\u2014and fan parlance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    After all, we\u2019ve called what we read \u201ccomic strips\u201d and \u201ccomic books\u201d for so long that we long ago tired of the now-and-then articles bemoaning more serious tales with the plaintive cry, \u201cComic strips and comic books aren\u2019t comic!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Not all \u201cfunny animals\u201d are funny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Metaphor<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

    Because, as was the case with Aesop (and tales of Coyote, Fox, Rabbit, Anansi, and more), some anthropomorphic stories go beyond action-adventure and farce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Funny animals also play a role in social satires. Shocked by violent entertainment for children, Chicken Little encourages them to act out \u201cthe wonderful poem for happy little hearts, \u2018A frog he would a-wooing go.\u2019\u201d\u00a0The Pogo Peek-a-Book<\/em>\u00a0\u00a9 2018 Walt Kelly. Animals carry out father-son conversations in the Pulitzer Prize-winning\u00a0Maus: A Survivor\u2019s Tale<\/em>. \u00a9 2018 Art Spiegelman.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

    Though his career began with a newspaper-strip biography of P.T. Barnum, Walt Kelly spent years developing funny-animal entertainment. He morphed his comic book Pogo character into comic strip format for the New York Star<\/em>. But, as he did so, he began creating political cartoons for the newspaper, and they ran almost as counterpoint to the animals rollicking on the comics page. When the Star<\/em> folded, he took Pogo<\/em> to the Post-Hall Syndicate, and the antics resumed as before. But slowly his characters began to reflect events outside the Okefenokee Swamp, and several sequences became grim satiric commentaries on current events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Among the most notable cartoonists to continue in that vein is Art Spiegelman, whose self-published feature received national recognition when Maus<\/em> won a Pulitzer Prize. Its autobiographical tale of the Holocaust as told in the form of a father mouse\u2019s conversations with his son is one of the most stunning examples of the simultaneous distance and empathy possible in a \u201cfunny animal\u201d comic strip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Comedy and tragedy, fantasy and reality, low gags and high art: They can all be found in comics starring those \u201cfunny animals.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Maggie\u2019s World by Maggie Thompson appears the first Tuesday of every month here on <\/em>Toucan!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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    Written by<\/p>\n\n\n

    Maggie Thompson<\/div>\n\n\n

    Published<\/p>\n\n\n