Welcome to Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies Comics. On this blog, we'll be taking a look at the overlooked side career of the Warner Bros. cartoon characters. Though beloved and celebrated on theater and TV screens for generations of fans, Bugs Bunny and his cartoon cohorts have also had an equally lengthy career in print.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
"Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies" (Dell) #14, December 1942 "Chester Turtle"
Since it's been a while since the latest update to this page, here's a reward for the patient: a story from "Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies" (Dell) #14, December 1942. A generous donor who wishes to remain anonymous recently sent me the images from this and several other very early, very rare Looney Tunes comics, and they are full of interesting surprises. Who is Chester Turtle? Well, more than likely he was inspired by Tex Avery's Cecil Turtle, who famously raced Bugs Bunny in "Tortoise Beats Hare" (Tex Avery, 1941). Other than his design, though, Chester bears little resemblance in personality to Cecil, and the story plays more like a cute 1930's Merrie Melodie, the genre Avery rebelled against. There are several of these "loosely inspired" and one-off characters who appear in these early issues and have no correlation to the cartoons whatsoever. More of these to come!
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He was used as the turtle Bugs races in LT&MM #27's adaptation of TORTOISE WINS BY A HARE.
ReplyDeleteStories like this serve to remind us that Western Publishing was very much trying to duplicate the success of Walt Disney's Comics and Stories and the other Disney titles to the point of shoehorning other studio's characters into the Disney mold.
ReplyDeleteMy gosh, paper copies of early issues! Was #19 among them?
ReplyDeleteIn Bugs Bunny #107, Cecil (or a very similar turtle) appeared in a story called "Hot-Rod Hare", but for some reason he was referred to as "Tommy Turtle". The events of "Tortoise Beats Hare" were referenced, and seemed to be a sore point for Bugsie.
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