Sunday 18 December 2011

Ripping Good Holiday With Huck, Yogi and Jinks

Huckleberry Hound and his tele-mates are as loved in the U.K. and they are in North America. And here’s a bit of concrete proof.

It’s ceaselessly amazing that people around the world not only read this blog, but some link to it. One of those readers is in Scotland and his link is at
KID ROBSON’S SITE. He’s posted a neat Christmas colour comic from 1960 that was part of TV Express Weekly. It features all the regular characters from the Huck show of the day.

Ranger Smith looks dreadful in a couple of panels, but the design of the old car is neat and you’ve got to love a dog from North Carolina talking about the “boot” of a car.







Kid has an interesting site for those of you into comics, and a very extensive blog roll of related sites. It’s worth taking a peek.

8 comments:

  1. Thanks for the mention. I'll be posting some more strips in a few days or so. (By the way, I'm in Scotland, not England.) Incidentally, your own blog is excellent.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Lots of US-ians get the England/Britain thing mixed up! I'm Scottish myself, but now live in England. The drawings in this comic are amazing! Love this stuff. Why can't the other HB characters be as plugged to death as Scooby-Doo is over here in the UK? So unfair. As an ignorant Brit, I assume it should be 'trunk' not 'boot' in Huckleberry-ese?

    ReplyDelete
  3. We're even. I'm not in the U.S.

    I noticed the reference to IPC Fleetway and thought it was based in London, hence England.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Interestingly, I once lettered three comic strips of Hanna-Barbera material for a British Holiday Special magazine.

    'Though originally US produced and thus English language, they had then been translated into a foreign tongue. (Spanish or somesuch.) For some reason, the originals weren't available, so the foreign versions had to be translated back into English.

    The editor (who was translating) didn't have a clue about the traditions of the characters (in this case, The Flinstones, Scooby Doo, and Yogi Bear) and made quite a few mistakes. For example, Ranger Smith was called 'Warden Smith', picnic hampers were called 'luncheon baskets', and the Town of Bedrock was called 'Rock City' - and loads of other irritating inaccuracies. I asked permission to re-dialogue the strips to bring them 'on-form' and was grudgingly allowed to.

    However, the Special's regular comic (which I didn't work on) always had the same kind of mistakes. But guess what the kicker was? The comics had to be approved by the Hanna-Barbera agents before they could be published, so someone at the HB offices was asleep at the wheel.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks for posting this one, Yowp. I've never seen it before. I've collected almost everything with Huck in comic books, but I haven't begun to get the British weekly comics set. I know I'll get it someday.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Same here, Kid! [As for exposure of given characters, if Scooby-Doo had that same stock cues as the very first HB short series, it too would be hassled with the same music rights issues, also if it had been better written, quality [subjective, I know] NOT being a typical sought after ingredient.


    ONE odd thing:
    Interestingly, Quick Draw & Snooper's absense from longtime culture, given Scooby-Doo's exposure, in a certain odd way, DOES seem particularly bizzarre, given their adventure, and in Snoop's case, myster set up, which makes me for one wonder why a tenth anniversary [in 1969] revival of those characters couldn't just be done, ditch Scooby-Doo at the model sheets,etc. Hmmm.

    At least Ruff and Reddy, given their reputation for being a REAL definite kids show, with the adventure format, could have been slated for 1969 instead of Scooby...tough question: them, or Scooby?

    Very well-drawn and colored strip, Kid [and HB artists!]

    Steve Carras

    ReplyDelete
  7. The Boo Boo model here was used briefly...and ultimately dropped altogether. It's like, for a short while, a different cartoon actor played Boo Boo.

    ReplyDelete