Reading old 'funny animal' comics: a sure way to get people to give you funny looks on trains and buses

Greetings, chums. If you would be so good as to indulge a mad old man I thought I might mention some undeniably good comics today. I'm rather a fan of vintage 'funny animal' comic books, particularly those that feature Donald Duck written and drawn by 'the good duck artist' Carl Barks or Mickey Mouse drawn by Floyd Gottfredson. But in all the decades of my lonely existence I have never met anybody - in the flesh - who really shares my love of this particularly unsung avenue of the obsolescent, the old and the nerdy. Even friends who like comics - and I have one or two, believe it or not - who, reassured by the recent adult acceptance of superheroes as in some way cuturally valid, would be quite prepared to spend an all-too-rare evening in the pub discussing how many different kinds of kryptonite there are, or whether Super-Horse or Beppo the Super-Monkey was the stupidest idea for a super-animal, nonetheless perceive 'funny animal' comics as infantile, ridiculous, and the most obvious symptom of my antisocial sickness. In fact, they can barely conceal their disdain for me, when, with a nervous laugh, I casually attempt to drop a topic like Super Duck, the lederhosen-clad Donald rip-off of the 1940s (who had a strangely attractive, albeit duck-headed, girlfriend), into the conversation.

So, many years ago, searching for informed discussion and intelligent debate on weighty issues such as this, and when I was younger and even more idiotic than I am now, I joined a Disney comics "discussion group". Super-Duck was not mentioned there, of course (even less people care about him than care about Donald) but I hoped to engage other like-minded fellows in some cheery 'funny-animal' related wrangling on topics of mutual interest. It has to be said that in the main the experience was a grisly one. Many messages had been written by people (all men, of course) who seemed quite clearly to believe that Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge, et al, were real, and that comic strips about them were little more than transcribed excerpts from their personal biographies; and that if you could manage to ignore the superfluous irritation that these strips contained an entertaining narrative, jokes, and that sort of thing, they might at least contain useful statistical data which would enable you to calculate the exact size of Scrooge McDuck's Money Bin in square feet, or to ascertain in precisely which year he first wore a top-hat. The fact that Carl Barks, writer and illustrator of these tales, had no interest at all in such considerations, meant nothing to the feverishly enthusiastic chaps on the message-board. In addition, in other free moments, when not engaged in such matters as isolating the strictly correct permuations of the convict-numbers written on the fronts of the villainous Beagle Boys' jerseys, many of these chaps would write in the group to tell a more recent writer of Duck strips, also a member of that group, who shall remain nameless, but who is rather highly regarded these days, (perhaps precisely because he is obsessively interested in all that kind of boring fan-boy duck data) how very wonderful he was, and how very wonderful it was that he devoted his valuable time to reading their unworthy messages filled with their glowing praise, lavished upon him endlessly, like a cascade of oily gold. Which, to me, all seemed rather sickening.

Foolish dolt that I am, I could not contain myself. Unwisely, I immediately wrote in to the group with a comment to the effect that I didn't give a stuff how big McDuck's money bin was, and Barks wouldn't have done either; and that I didn't think the new stories could hold much of a candle to the old ones, to boot. After merely being ignored for the preceding years, suddenly I found myself somewhat towards the centre of attention, as I was savagely lambasted for my sacrilege. Suffice to say I did not write in again.

But I digress. What I was trying to say was that I don't get much of a chance to actually share the delights of old Disney comics with anybody, hence I am writing about them here for my massive internet readership. Let me make it clear, I'm being quite specific about this. I don't just like every Disney comic strip, they have to be by the decent writers and artists, who transcended the limitations of writing about characters that, by the 1940s, were already coagulating into corporate ciphers, little more than advertising images for the mass-marketing of American pop-culture. But beneath Uncle Walt's radar, under-paid artists like Barks and Gottfredson were not telling stories of ducks and mice, they were telling stories of hard-up everymen, who just happened to have animal heads. If you've never tried them, you should. I recently picked up a whole batch of early issues of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories from way back in the 1940s, from an ebay seller in the states.

The issues themselves are what you might call a curate's egg. They always get off to a cracking start with a Carl Barks Donald Duck ten-pager (unlike most of the geeks who I upset all those years ago, I prefer Barks' comedy shorts to the long Scrooge adventure tales). The best of Barks' work stands up against anything in American popular literature, I reckon - it is simultaneously funny, sad, bitter, life-affirming, truthful, bizarre, and massively cynical. And somehow, thanks to Mr. Barks, a weird duck in a sailor suit becomes an everyman who can make me laugh. Check out the page below that I have attempted to upload for you in my usual ramshackle way.

This is from Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 89, February 1948. I think this page alone is a work of genius. I believe Barks has included a self-portrait, depicting himself as the battered boxer halfway down the page.

Not only do you get this brilliantly funny "interior monologue" character stuff with great visual gags, Barks also sticks in screwball craziness whenever he feels like it. Having got the job as a night watchman, Donald must attempt to stay awake until he clocks on... hence the following...

Isn't it terrific? A little later he tries a spot of dancing...



For me, the first panel above has more potency than a six-month prescription of antidepressants...

Anyhow, enough about Barks, for now. As well as top-quality stuff like this, you also get filler. Drippy kiddie stuff. There's the tedious slum-dwelling insect Bucky Bug (out of focus, below, like a half remembered nightmare), for example...

Incidentally, as a rule of thumb, any comic strip written in rhyme (and this goes for all comic strips, in the world, ever) is not worth reading and is best skipped over (in certain cases, best destroyed). For some reason, somebody somewhere at some time decided that the kiddies gleefully delight in text written in rhyme, no matter how rubbishly it has been concocted. Invariably painfully knocked-up to order by miserable half-drunk hacks, compelled to tell contrived stories in rhyming 'poetry' they do not feel any desire to write (and more difficult to cobble together than straight sentences, goddammit), efforts of this sort are always painfully infantile, tedious and - literally, in this case - lousy.

Another rule of thumb: Chip 'n' Dale: AVOID AT ALL COSTS. E.g.:

And it's in rhyme. The evil chubby-cheeked little shits. I hope Donald has a rifle.

Instead, spend some time digging Gottfredson's fantastic Mickey Mouse - another highlight of early issues of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories. Take a look at this brilliantly drawn sequence from issue 89, February 1948(written by Bob Karp and Dick Shaw), featuring Goofy's pet lion, Agnes....


And the splendid strip below is from issue 77 (February 1947), and was written by Bill Walsh...a great example of how down-at-heel Mickey (and Donald) were before they got cleaned up and middle-class-ified a few years later...

I love the weird pre-comics code funny-animal world, where it is entirely normal for a libidinous giant mouse, in slacks and a Leo Gorcey hat, to attempt to make some time with a haughty human gal, only to be served with an eviction notice.

The looming spectre of adult sexuality within the 'innocent' funny animal kiddie universe of these years never fails to fascinate me. Which leads me on to another highlight of these comics: short Donald Duck strips (reprinted from newspapers) by Al Taliaferro. His Donald is often tempted away from Daisy by other, more shapely, more human, dames...

Who can blame Donald for winking at that curvy gal, eh? After all, Daisy is a duck! But, erm, hang on a tick - so is Donald. I forgot for a moment. Also, Don seems to be wearing more in the trouser department when he's on the beach than he does at home. I'm confused. As usual.

Don't be afraid. You know you want to try some of this stuff. It's brilliant, really funny, I guarantee it. You just need to get the right stuff, the old stuff, by the good writers and artists. Start with a cheap reprint volume of Barks. And be prepared for the funny looks you'll get if you read this stuff on the bus to work. Perhaps slip your Donald Duck inside your copy of The Economist?

You'll find a growing stack of these comics in THE HOUSE OF COBWEBS.

"Bagged...in a giant unbreakable plastic net!" Blackhawk, No. 189, October 1963

This copy of the DC comic Blackhawk, salvaged from an Oxfam shop in Reading, clip-cornered, and with '6d' scrawled in biro across it, has been through the wars a bit. As had the Blackhawk characters by this stage: October 1963. They had started off decades previously as WWII 'Air Ace' fighter pilots of different nations, but by the 1960s the kiddies weren't interested in that sort of thing any more. As we know from one of my previous posts, the flower children were more interested in reading about wacky teens, skin-head wigs and feeding lollipops to little monkeys.

So, what were the editors to do with Blackhawk? The answer was obvious. Keep the good bits - the fetching leather gear, and the national stereotypes (a useful aid - along with hair colour and moustaches - in differentiating between a large cast of virtually identical airmen in matching outfits) and get rid of the bad bits - like all those pointless, boring aeroplanes (whose crazy idea was it to have those?) - leaving the team do what they were best suited for: sci-fi crime investigation.

But if they were going to do a revamp, why couldn't the little guy with the Mr Spock haircut (prominent on the cover, but with no "lines" inside) have a leather suit like his pals?

Meanwhile, though the Blackhawks had been grounded, The Super Cavemen of 15,000 B.C. had taken to the skies. Any discussion of the plot would of course be both tedious and fruitless: this comic was sold entirely on this cover concept. Why do you think I bought it? But I must say that the story inside is a weighty, ambitious piece, about the theft of futuristic devices, which have been dispersed by villainous aliens into ancient times, in three "chapters". Indeed, so weighty was it that I fell asleep on two consecutive evenings before I had reached Chapter 3, The War With Super Weapons. I usually only do that with 1960s Superman stories - particularly those that feature guff about the bottle city of Kandor, tedious Kryptonians with names ending in "-El", or "Imaginary Stories" (gosh, you mean they're not real? zzzz), or Nightwing and Flamebird, whoever the hell they are. Or anything at all featuring The Legion of Super Heroes.

Though I love 'em, and this issue of Blackhawk is actually pretty good fun (if you stick with it and can remain conscious long enough to reach the end) it reminded me that DC Comics were the absolute masters of po-faced tedious pseudo-scientific snore-content, and it was at its height in the early to mid 1960s. God, some of their stuff was dull. Anyway, here we get a glimpse at ze cavemen's camp (and ze camp Blackhawks, non?) as our heroes are imprisoned in "unbreakable" plastic.



But, Himmel, did I mention the fact that the team also visit ancient Rome? Well, they do, and here the 'national phrases' are a useful aid in distinguishing your Olafs from your Andres. But, Himmel? Eh?

And where did they get those togas, I don't hear you ask? Well, they might have built the Colloseum, but you can bet your bottom US dollar that a trusty American Zippo lighter will turn those Romans straight into bewildered red-skins...



Do they find all the "super devices"? That would be telling, py yiminy! I wouldn't dream of spoiling the ending. But though he is surrounded by "ultra-modern" gadetry throughout, and has a quick go on the jet-powered skis to wrap everything up, poor old Blackhawk, trapped somewhere on Mid-Sixties DC Earth, can't for the life of him seem to find his aeroplane.

But, Himmel, you will find zis comic in THE HOUSE OF COBWEBS.