Okay, it never happened. Before there was Muttley, there was Mugger, the snickering dog in the feature length cartoon “Hey There, It’s Yogi Bear.” They both look the same. And Mugger is, presumably, who is chasing Yogi in this newspaper comic panel from April 4, 1965. Or maybe it’s a third dog designed the same way. Oh, wait. That’s Mumbly. Well, maybe it’s a fourth dog.
Since this post originally appeared in your browser, some three-row (complete) versions of the Yogi comics published 50 years ago this month have been unearthed. So we are re-writing the remainder of this post to incorporate them.
April 4th is the first of two Muggers. I guess “Hee! Hee! Hee!” is how you write snickering in comic strip dialogue. It would have been nice if Yogi snickered at the end.
Mugger returns on April 11th and gets the best of Yogi. Mr. Ranger makes an appearance in the top row that some papers didn’t carry.
Boo Boo returns on April 18th. The bees make a nice little pattern in the final panel, which has a good expression for Yogi.
Ranger Smith is named Bill in the April 25th comic. We get one of Harvey Eisenberg’s birds in the first two panels. In these less innocent times, the look on Mrs. Ranger’s face in the last panel may mean something to some people today than what Harvey and Gene Hazelton intended in 1965.
Mark Kausler has these comics in colour on his site, which you can reach by clicking HERE.
Nice Post!
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