Huckleberry Hound Rides Forever

Poor Huckleberry Hound gets abused in a bunch of his cartoons, but he never really seems to mind. In Dragon-Slayer Huck (1958), for example, a purple dragon breathes fire in his face and smashes him into the ground with its huge tail. Cut to a close-up of Huck’s head popping out of the ground. “Leave us face it, that ol’ dragon’s got real spirit,” he says smilingly at the audience.

The cartoon’s a good one. We reviewed it here. What we didn’t do was post a bunch of Ken Muse’s impact drawings. Muse used a jagged ovalular pattern to show impact. So let’s pair up a bunch of drawings to show you what I mean. Most of these are consecutive frames. And they are self-explanatory, I think.



The dragon’s fire has burned the handle on the axe and the mace. That’s why they come crashing down on Huck.



Here’s where the charging dragon and Huck’s horse meet.



Whether this cartoon was somewhat inspired by One Droopy Knight, which Mike Lah had made at MGM when Bill Hanna and Jose Barbera were producing, may never be known. But it contains a horse-dragon collision and the king’s daughter is involved in the plots of both (although handled quite differently).

And because we haven’t posted one in a while, here’s an endless loop. The horse’s gallop cycle is four drawings (shot one frame apiece) and it takes 16 frames for Huck to reach the same grove of trees in the background.



This isn’t the same speed it is in the cartoon, but you get the idea.