Bugs Bunny, Inventor

Despite the 1953 copyright, they were still selling this kiddy book as
'new' in stores as late as the middle of '64 when I believe I had mine
at my grandma's house the summer before I started first grade.

I'm not interested in turning this particular blog into a scroll of nothing but publication pages and excerpts, tho' those are great, and I might love to start one one day. Here, instead, are my favorite parts of the book: the cover; inside cover blueprint 'gimmick' (it's the same front and back); and the best interior painting, in my opinion, (lots of objects to make it real). The obvious unique selling points, tho' I really can't remember if I picked the book out or if it was given to me.

The story is light stuff as per usual. The plans, as you can well read,
depict a 'hammock rocker' which Bugs soon applies to Elmer's own,
shredding it to bits and flinging his old nemesis into a tree.

The painting is from the opening when Porky Pig checks out what Bugs is doing in his shop.

Sylvester (minus any overstimulating tweety bird marking him as
dangerous), the very rarely filmed Petunia Pig, and the printbound
Cicero (yet another in the cavalcade of comfortably spawned-out-of-view 'nephews') also runabout thruout and look concerned for Golden Reason.


The clever boots behind it all, unlike with the comic stories of the day,
got to sign this outing. Perhaps the only place I knew his name from.
As buried under a bushel by a corporation as Carl Barks, et alii, he's
as personally unknown to me as any of you. Do a search on him and
you'll know as much about him as I don't.

Ralph Heimdahl self-generated the Bugs Bunny syndicated strip ( I
could only see it rarely in out of town newspapers) for over two
decades, and besides this and likely the four other storybooks
that turn up online, probably branched off often into the comic book
stories. I must have a few examples already.

He gave me and a lot of others lots of pleasure. His take on Bugs and
his peers, tho' of course dictated by mainstream ideas of what a child
audience can bear, (or it's parents), as an almost family of friends instead
of the thrillingly violent, lunatic adversaries we'd been eagerly shaped
to expect by TV's cinematic reruns is still a welcome part of my life
any time I run into his work again.

He had a fine line style I may not unerringly recognize, (for some lack
of comparative exposure), but it's worth some rooting around for
its forty carrots and guessing if its Heimdahl gold or not.

As to the difference in the comics and so on from the cartoons---
it's like the difference in running and relaxing. You don't want to lose
the ability to do either. So, find something by him, kick back into
your cozy rabbit hole, and pretend you're in a world where the disasters
aren't always so huge or fatal. I'll be in the next hutch over.

Must Leave Giant Eggs

And another not-so-belated Easter greeting from our would be friends
at Harvey Marineland, Reedville, Oregon.

I'm finally at the point I was intending a year ago, in these posts. Oh, how
long it takes a one track mind to lay his track!

Yes, an Allyn Joslyn Board Game

I know. Allyn Joslyn movies. Allyn Joslyn TV show. Allyn Joslyn comics.
Believe me, I haven't got it any worse for him than over any other odd
character actor. It just worked out this way.

So, not to flog a dead horse...the Allyn Joslyn board game! I think I
saw it on the search find immediately preceding the comics (last post).
But, I've less to say on this, like to arrange flow of pic and color, and
I am moving on to other things, honest.

And I think I'm right in calling it an Allyn Joslyn board game. The others
in the painting don't seem to be representatives of the show until you
find the overdue blowup revealing it to be 'the boys'---McKeever and
Tubby, it would seem.

I also think I'd seen this game before in one of the several toy books I used to buy. Taking it for some sort of airport game. (Whatever that would be. Customs inspector chasing saboteur? Sounds like today's imaginary insanities).

It's not as good a likeness of 'Col. Blackwell' as in the comic. It appears you're supposed to hide your pegs (all you pirates out there) from your opponent, behind the little plastic barriers. I could live in one.

It does remind me of what used to pass for a mod airport. Mighta
been some bit of fun. No doubt there was a lot of peeking going on.


Is this game the father of 'Battleship'? Will we ever truly know? Or care?

I think it was inspired by the creator spotting kids hiding behind a mailbox
from their latest victim of avoidance. That or a vaulting horse in the old
gymski where he exercised before walking up Madison Avenue to 'work'.

The movement lines on the box lid are, typically of hypesters, much more
'all over the place', in some diagrammatic map of 'mad fun' than really is
on the board itself. But, you didn't really expect to get what was shown,
did you?

Hey, I wonder if Mr. J. owned one? I think he did. Career souvenir.

'Thanks, We're All Yn...'

Before you sit down...

another few words 'around about' amiable

In looking for photos for the previous post, I happened onto 'net pics
of comic books from a '62-'63 TV show 'our friend' was in that I never
before knew existed, (and I have seen many by-now-obscure ones).

The first issue's cover jumped out instantly as by far the best of the three.
All likely publicity stills made for the show well before the comics occurred
to anyone.

I was bestirred enough to actually buy 'n' try that # from a deep sale at
Mile High Comics. (The cover scan and panel crops are mine, from that copy).

I don't know what I was expecting. Probably nothing. Just curious to see how
Allyn's likeness would fare, having tackled a few actors myself, either putting
them in actual comic stories, or grabbing someone for later by drawing directly
from the TV. It's a lot harder to capture the right (or any) 'soul' than you might think.

Usually it's the person's eyes that wind up dull ballpoint lumps and there's almost no hope of representing the unique, nuanced life in them without a still photo. Especially if theirs is a varied personality best seen in action.


Too young to be a fan of the show itself, and a smidge before my earliest
'buying' phase, I find it's not the sort of comic I would have bought as a kid.
Waayyyy too many humans, in wayyy too many uniforms, doing wayy too
much of 'the same' throughout. Give me an overwrought 'aminal' any day.

As usual then, for this and other companies, the artist is not credited. But, I'm
reminded first of Ric Estrada, who could crank out such serviceable pages by
the truckload, (whereas lazy, amateurish me would be tearing my soul's hair
out after only one page of lookalike miltary ciphers).

Whoever it is, they did an okay enough job on Joslyn's likeness. It's no worse than other TV tie-ins. Bear in mind such comic projects were seldom supplied with an abundance of morgue material from half-interested Hollywood p.r. departments. Often the artists had to cough up entire views of a person via one or two stills. And without even being fans of the shows or films involved.

Hmm. Crop two, Col. Blackwell 'fatigued' is not unlike my attempts at Robert Hutton. But, then those pencil mustaches can add a sameness to just about any dark haired white guy back then. As ubiquitous as frisky caterpillars--- (ub, the mustaches, not the white guys).


Happenstance and apropos of absolutely nothing but the thread of my previous post, Allyn Joslyn's character in the show is first named 'Harvey'.

It's hardly 'the same' as the real person of course. Such celebrity or media related representations are almost never as satisfying as whatever source the real live
actors are appearing in. And this comic is nothing to get thrilled over either.

The plot, probably supplied from a moot episode script, 'merely' involves the boy cadets of Westfield Military Academy in un-competition for team points 'cooking', 'acting', and in mock battle, that they don't really want, lest team leader friends Tubby and McKeever have to unfairly be declared victor over the other and expose their fake cadet 'Miller', whom they pose as, taking up the slack. (Hunh?). And I only spot read it.

Anyway, there's truly barely a scrap of kitschy irony to be had from the thing. It's all too mainstream for me, despite the baroque plot.


Evidently, also, the sort of television comedy ranking 'down there' in the lower
middle someplace, in sloppycat conception, with 'It's About Time', 'Mr. Terrific'
'The Chicago Teddy Bears' and 'Rango'. You know, whatever genre has been
a hit someplace gets the 'treatment'. The list of what they think America will
swallow is seemingly endless.

None of which is to put down the efforts of the actors and so on, anyone
who tried to make the thing work. It couldn't have been the worst show on
then, or certainly since. It must have had it's moments.

I don't recall the kid from anything, tho' I've since seen a blog comment that hipped me to his slightly more recognizable buddy, 'Tubby': Keith Taylor, 'Harry' on several post-'Larry Mondello' episodes of Leave It To Beaver; a couple of Lost in Spaces wearing a fringed leather jacket if memory serves; the 'Miri' episode of Star Trek; and so forth. He was the sort of a kid we all knew on the playground or the lunch line.

More notably, perhaps, as I recently viewed within the last year or two, Keith was 'Din-Din' (Oh, yeah, I get it, he was a bit chunky. Or, then again, maybe just a bit noisy at home?), in "The Young Animals" (1968), a school gang fracas before its time, convincingly panicked while strapped to the hood of a fast moving car.


Yet another unexpected aside, and proof (do we need it?), on cover #2, that Joslyn and Jackie 'Fester' Coogan had worked together before Addams Family.

From the two poses here, as the harried Colonel's beleaguered second banana, 'Sgt. Barnes'. (The black and white photo is not in issue #1; there are none inside as Dell sometimes did. And the character does not appear in the issue either).

Unlikely to ever be on tape or dvd, (I have not checked), it's all a sort of a side alley dead end in the Labyrinth of Nostalgia for me. Though some who saw the show may feel otherwise. It all depends on where you were, who you were or weren't with, and so on as to what marshals a nostalgic trip for you. God bless yas.

And, 'At ease. And hang up if my wife answers'.