Amidst wrapping things up on my Ren & Stimpy book and various freelance gigs, this blog has once again fallen wayside. In lieu of substantial postings, here is a rarity: the only time Walt Kelly professionally drew Bugs Bunny that I’m aware of. From Looney Tunes & Merrie Melodies Comics #24, October 1943. Tune in next month to see the time Carl Barks drew a comic strip of Woody Woodpecker teaching kids how to send time bombs to your congressman.
7/27/12 UPDATE: It wasn’t the only time Kelly drew Bugs. See Michael Barrier’s comment.
I can’t wait until that new Ren and Stimpy book of yours comes out. It would be nice to hear a fresh perspective of what went on behind the scenes when the show was still being made, even though there must still be a lot of bitterness over what happened even after all these years. Hopefully you were able to interview most of the important people who were most involved with the show. Glad to you see back on the blogosphere as well.
Except for the lettering, I would not have guessed that was Kelly.
Some of the highlights of the otherwise unsubstantial Hogan’s Alley article are Bob Jaques’ anecdotes (it was interesting to hear about how Fil-Cartoons nearly ruined Stimpy’s Invention).
I’m imagine there’s a lot of similarly fascinating untold stories about R&S. Hearing, say, Bob Camp talk about Stimpy’s Invention or Chris Reccardi talk about the George Liquor duology would be infinitely more fascinating than hearing people laugh at ridiculously corny, dirty jokes.
I love that Porky is colored dead cold blue on the second page.
Stories such as this further confound my understanding of the relationships between the East Coast and West Coast offices of Western Publications. I suppose Kelly could have done this while in LA, but his comics work almost exclusively appeared in the East Coast, Oskar Lebeck-edited titles (which are far superior to the West Coast output, Carl Barks’ work excluded)…
Surely there’s something here I don’t know, or that I’ve misunderstood.
Quite a lot of East Coast talent contributed to Looney Tunes up until late 1943. Kelly himself also drew “King Hickory Stickory,” an absolutely hilarious one-shot story, in issue 20, as well as his more well-known Pat, Patsy and Pete stories.
There’s a Bugs one-page gag in The Funnies 64, or New Funnies 65, that I dimly recollect as being by Kelly, too. (Yes, it’s in Funnies… that was when the book was changing format, and all kinds of weird stuff was going on…)
Kelly’s side drawings of Bugs are closer to on-model than his front and angles drawings, which look like the drawing used for the main Merrie Melodies theater poster (shown in Maltin’s book) from the 1942-43 release season, which give the rabbit a more ‘childishly’ cute image. The profile drawings, particularly the Bugs-at-the-mailbox at the bottom of Page 2, look like Kelly was working from Bob McKimson’s late-’42 model sheet.
Kind of underwhelming for Kelly, but a lot of his early funny animal stuff was such. Nice novelty, tho’. Glad your workin”, old son.
Kelly drew Bugs for the first time for Camp Comics No. 1, February 1942, in a two-page feature that has Elmer Fudd enlisting with Bugs’s help; he drew a comics story with those Warner Bros. characters before he drew any with Disney characters. David Gerstein is right–there’s a one-page Bugs & Elmer feature in New Funnies No. 65; my notes from my most recent inspection of that issue don’t show it as by Kelly, but I’ll take another look. As to Frank Young’s question, I don’t think there’s any mystery there: the artwork was shipped to New York (and Poughkeepsie) from the West Coast to be printed, and Lebeck’s people must have had to fill the gaps at a time when Eleanor Packer’s people were being picked off by the draft.