*Update: Art by Roger Armstrong.
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.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
"Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies" (Dell) #14, December 1942 "Sniffles and Merrie Jane"
Here's an early Mary Jane and Sniffles story with a twist: they interact in their miniature form with Bugs, Porky and Elmer! To make it even more bizarre, their shadows separate from them and run off playing pranks on Bugs and co...and none of them question the absurdity of it.
*Update: Art by Roger Armstrong.
*Update: Art by Roger Armstrong.
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Mary Jane, eh? May explain a few things.
ReplyDeleteGood joke born of clearly irresistible temptation, but actually, “Mary Jane” was the name of the wife of the editor who took the Sniffles comic book series in that unusual direction.
DeleteOr, so one of the artists who actually worked on the LT&MM title in “ye olden days” told me in a letter, back in the late ‘80s. I figure he’d be in a position to know. Kinda nice to tribute her like that. I did something similar in an UNCLE SCROOGE script of a few years back.
…And whatever happened to letters, anyway?
Not only don't they question the absurdity of MJ's size-changing—they naïvely mistake Sniffles' and MJ's shadows for Sniffles and MJ themselves, despite the fact that the shadows are jet-black.
ReplyDeleteBugs, of all characters, has the nerve to complain about others not being well-behaved! And then Elmer complains about Bugs being "cwazy"... and then Elmer teams up with Bugs, no questions asked. Roger Armstrong's writer (or did he write this himself? Don't know this...) was having a really weird day.
Armstrong himself draws Elmer with his pre-CANDID CAMERA jug ears in a few scenes, suggesting he had some very early model sheets on hand.
Looks like this story is the first in which Mary Jane applies the magic sand herself. The fact that it originally came via the Sandman, a direct callback to 1934's BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (in which Mary Jane's prototype design appears), was already on the way out...
As for Bugs “not questioning the absurdity”, didn’t he once say, at the end of a cartoon with Yosemite Sam: “I don’t ask questions, I just have FUN!” :-)
DeleteBugs first encounters Mary Jane and Sniffles in "The World's Shortest Hare" (Dell, Bugs Bunny #111), and cribs he magic words for use on himself. It seems odd they would work for Bugsie without any previous exposure to magic sand, though. Think any kids reading this book tried saying the incantation aloud to see if they could turn mouse-sized too? Also, I think it's one of the few comics where we heard Mary Jane chant the spell to grow big again (I've seen it only twice that I can recall, and in each the words were very different).
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