Wayback Whensday: Comic Strips

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The Phantom’s cropped comic strips of Wilson McCoy, Al Stoffel’s three decades of writing Bugs Bunny, and Frank Willard’s doppelganger Moon Mullins.

The Phantom – The Missing Part

During World War Two restrictions were set on pulp paper usage and so newspapers were forced to squeeze their news and features into fewer pages. For syndicates that meant offering smaller, cropped versions of their comic strips. It was the beginning of the postage stamp-sized panels.

Decades later those abridged newspaper strips became a problem for those who collected and published classic comics into book and magazine formats – at least for those who cared.

Ivan Peterson, one of those who cared, writes of problems in finding the complete comics for publication in “The missing part of the picture.”

“A familiar story is not always a complete reproduction. The dialogue may be there, every daily instalment may be present, and the adventure may read perfectly well. Yet part of the drawing can still be missing.

“For me, that distinction became central to collecting and reprinting Lee Falk and Wilson McCoy’s The Phantom.”

The Stoffel Bunny

Walt Disney’s Treasury of Classic Tales, Walter Lantz’s Woody Woodpecker, Marge’s Little Lulu, and Warner Brothers’ Bugs Bunny, along with Gene Autry and Roy Rogers, all have one thing in common – other than their Western Publishing comic book connection – their comic strips were all written at one time or another by Al Stoffel.

Kamden Spies at Cartoon Research profiles Stoffel with particular emphasis on his 32 years writing the Bugs Bunny comic strip in “Writing Words for the Wabbit.”

“Al Stoffel isn’t a well-known name in the world of cartoons, but he may have written more words for Bugs Bunny than any other person. A reliable member of the Western Publishing team, Stoffel came from a varied background that included a career in journalism and in the Navy. He was a member of Western Publishing’s West Coast Office and wrote for many of the newspaper strips Western produced.”

Creator and Character – Peas in a Pod

Jean Marc Ah-Sen writes an appreciation of Frank Willard and Moon Mullins for The Comics Journal.

“It seemed that Willard shared more than a handful of similarities with his supertramping, slapstick-prone creation—a weakness for cigars, pool hall gambling, fisticuffs, and a nigh-permanent case of layaboutism”