Yogi Bear, Sunday, March 1962

My favourite Hanna-Barbera character—besides Yowp, of course—is Quick Draw McGraw, so it’s great to see him team with Yogi in one of the Bear’s Sunday comics 50 years ago this month. Unfortunately, the versions I have with the first row of panels aren’t very viewable, so you’re stuck with scans from a paper that only published the bottom two rows.



March 4th sees an anxious and happy Ranger Smith buying Yogi a train ticket and pulling him by the tie to get into his jeep to take him to the train station. There’s a nice drawing of the jeep on an angle on a twisting mountain road in the missing first row. The bottom rows pick up the story on the train which just happens to be owned by the H. and B. Railroad. The crook’s name is a play on Death Valley Scotty, a bit of a fraud artist known in the first half of the 20th Century.



I love the ‘sploosh’ drawing from March 11th. The comic starts out with Boo Boo running into the “bee tree.” The idea of drawing the word “chop” to evoke the sound of the helicopters is interesting.



“King of the Jungle” is showing on March 18th but the movie is for Lodge guests only. So Yogi shinnies up a tree. Lots of variety in the layouts here.



The March 25th comic is somewhat reminiscent of the second-season Yogi cartoon “Lullabye-Bye Bear,” except there’s no sleeping involve. The missing top row has the Ranger annoyed that the un-sleepy Yogi isn’t hibernating. He spots some skiers and gets inspired. The sleepy Ranger trying to wake up with a cup of coffee is a nice extra.

As usual, you can click on any of the comics to make them bigger.