Wednesday 6 January 2016

Yogi Bear Weekend Comics, January 1966

It’s winter in Jellystone Park and four of the five comics that appeared in weekend newspapers 50 years ago this month reflect that. Three are on the ice and two involve ice fishing. One featuring birds on a clothesline could have appeared at any time during the year.

Guest appearances every once in a while are nice and we get some this month from Yogi’s “Kellogg’s” comrades and the not-in-animated-cartoons Mrs. Ranger. Boo Boo gets the last two weeks off. Yogi shows his inventiveness in one comic and there’s another rescue comic this month.



Quick Draw McGraw and Huckleberry Hound stop in on Jellystone Park in the January 2nd comic. Note the little bird perched atop the “Yogi Bear” lettering in the opening panel. Yogi and Quick Draw have neat scarves while Boo Boo and Huck keep their bow ties. Apparently, Quick Draw is smarter than the average bear in this comic.



Yogi has his scarf AND his tie in the January 9th comic. It’s a good thing the kid is named “Hugh.” The line wouldn’t have rhymed if he were named Finster. Nice google eyes as Yogi falls through the ice in the centre row.



The friendly denizens of nature once again agree to help Yogi in the January 16th comic. You’d figure if one of the birds was named Bill, another should be named Joe. The way the copyright line is interwoven in the blanket is unique.



The January 23rd comic is my favourite, especially with the tangle of dogs and people in the final panel. That’s an awful lot of drawing. The expressions are nice, too. I like the FOINGG panel next to it. Some more nice expressions. I’ll take a pass on the poetry in the right panel, top row.



Snow bunnies appear to watch the action in the opening panel of the January 30th comic. The panel’s nicely laid out with the ranger station and jeep in the background framing Ranger Smith and Yogi on one side and fir trees framing them on the other. And there’s silhouette action in the middle row. A lot of thought went into these comics.

Next month, a rock band and skateboards. Fortunately, it’s not “Yo Yogi!” (Whew!)

3 comments:

  1. I never saw "Yo Yogi." Apparently, I didn't miss much?

    The characters all look on-model and very slickly drawn. By this time, Quick Draw and Huckleberry are such regular visitors that their appearance in Jellystone is almost taken for granted. I like the scarves on Yogi and Quick Draw.

    My estimate for Yogi's rescue from the ice would be more like twenty-five minutes, because it seems to me that only when the clock reaches 3:15 will he be fully pulled free. Of course, by that time he could probably pull himself out the rest of the way. Notice the time on the clock--2:50, the time that school lets out.

    I'm intrigued by the use of "Hey There, Yogi Bear" in the January 23rd strip. I'm wondering if the movie might have been in re-release at the time the strip was originally run?

    The Ranger's lucky he didn't get electrocuted in the January 30th strip. I guess being a cartoon character has its benefits!

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  2. These materials were drawn by Iwao Takamoto and Jerry Eisenberg.
    I saw some of these materials in other blogs, as the now-defunct Mark Chistiansen's blog - Mark Christiansen's Other Stuff (http://marksotherstuff.blogspot.com) -, the Comicrazys blog (http://comicrazys.wordpress.com) and the Ger Apeldoorn's blog (http://allthingsger.blogspot.com).

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  3. Yogi liked saying he was " smarter than the average bear" and sometimes this was an amusing overestimation of his cleverness. Yet, there were times he was right for he displayed a cleverness that rivaled Bugs Bunny's-ESPECIALLY when it came to getting food. All these strips show these various facets of Yogi's personality.





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