Post-Mortem Post 008: New Stanley Material Discovered--Oswald the Rabbit Four Color 39, 1944

In all my years of research, I somehow overlooked this early 1944 one-shot, which is now important as containing John Stanley's first two long-form stories. This is a terrible quality scan, suitable for reading, but that's about it.

With beautiful cartooning by Lloyd White, the pun-filled main story, "Easterland," is a larval early effort, but full of Stanley tells, such as slurred language/slang, dubious authority figures, quietly absurd humor (the plight of the elderly rabbit at story's start; the out-of-control jelly bean factory and its buried inventor; the little piece of hard candy that imitates train whistles, etc.)

Stanley would include similar stories in his much-loved Little Lulu series, from 1946 on, as told by Lulu to her hellion-brat neighbor, Alvin. With this, Stanley's first fairy-tale, we see the glimmers of a street-smart, reactive retreat from the sugary tendencies of the fairy story. His humor throws a cold bucket of water on the genre, as did Tex Avery's cartoons such as Red Hot Riding Hood, Cinderella Meets Fella and A Bear's Tale.

Here is the whole issue. I will need to revise my 1940s comicography book now! I knew this would happen someday...

Easterland...

Running on Sheer Chutzpah: Little Lulu Four-Color One-Shot 158, 1947

One thing I must finish on this blog, as it reaches its end, is the remarkable run by John Stanley, Charles Hedinger and others on the one-shot issues of Little Lulu that precede its regular run.

This is the only Lulu one-shot that I own, although my copy is nothing to brag about. It is one of the worst-printed 1940s comics I've ever seen. When colors aren't wretchedly out of register, the black lines are fuzzy, clogged with ink, and otherwise bear all the signs of the end of a print run.

Thank goodness, I'll spare you a look at my version--these are top-drawer scans done by some anonymous kind soul a few years ago.

Many of the scans I've shared here, over the years, have come from such sources. I feel that I've never properly thanked these folks for all their hard, painstaking work in making these rare old comics available for study, reading and sharing (as I have done here with you).

These early Little Lulus suffer terribly when seen in black and white, as I've said before. Their simple contour lines were meant to be filled with the flat pastels and blunt primary colors of 1947 comics. Western's self-printed titles had a color palette all their own. After 1948, they are consistently well-printed comics. From 1943 to '47, buyer beware! Unless you somehow score a copy from the start of a press run, chances are the Dell title of this era will be a blurry, mis-registered mess.

But enough of that. Let's get down to brass knuckles, er, tacks. I usually choose a percentage of the stories in each of these one-shots. This book is so consistently great that I've opted to share the whole thing here today.

Casual Calamity Cubed: Three Stories From New Funnies 116, 1946

New Funnies was the most spontaneous and slapdash of the comics edited by Oskar Lebeck for Dell Publications. Its bar was set quite low. Quality of story and art material wavers dramatically from issue to issue.

In 1946 and '47, the title was a place for John Stanley to blow off steam, as he prepared for what he didn't yet realize was a 15-year run on Little Lulu. His story (and art) for that series is impeccable. Perhaps because the licensed property was of a higher status (and its creator was initially looking over the collective Lebeck shoulder), Stanley's Lulu is tighter, less risky and more grounded than any of his other work in comics.

While under close watch on the early Little Lulu one-shot issues (most of which you'll find elsewhere on this blog), Stanley catered to his chaotic, more off-the-cuff impulses in New Funnies. He did some of his best--and worst--work for the series.

At their finest, these stories are freewheeling, very funny and full of a street-wise charm, In their low points, they reveal their creator's burn-outs, hangovers or crunched-deadline hackwork. New Funnies was clearly not a high priority on either Dell's or Lebeck's agenda.

Offered today are Stanley's 31 pages of story for issue 116 of New Funnies, cover-dated October, 1946. I've isolated these three stories in a CBR file that you may download HERE. (If you don't like the CBR format, just rename the extension to RAR and open it with WinRar or other, similar programs).

Spoilers abound in the text that follows. Those who read the following without reading the stories themselves are living far too dangerously for their own good.

New Funnies Teachings: It's A Scary World Out There!

One of the key messages in John Stanley's world is this: the world is a scary place. Funny things may happen, triumphs may be scored, losses bettered, statuses and faces saved... but one never knows what's going to happen--or why.

This element, also familiar to readers of Carl Barks' comics, gives these so-called "kiddie comics" an edge seriously lacking in much of what passes for comics, period.

This message doesn't require the walking dead, heavy artillery, secret origins or super-powers... to experience the same, the reader only needs to open his or her front door, best foot forward, and step out into the world.

Culled from two issues of Walter Lantz New Funnies (113 and 120), this special "Scary World" edition of Stanley Stories features three stories, and is available as a .CBR file >>>HERE. <<< If you're not hep to the CBR revolution, just rename the file as an .RAR extension, crack it open, and read that-a-way.

Panda, Chicken Visit Land Down Under After Passive-Aggressive Outburst; Woodpecker Plays PI, Is Fall Guy For Evil Rich: two from New Funnies 112, 1946

I'm just coming off a long, complex coloring project for another artist-writer's graphic novel. This hasn't given me much time to think about ol' Stanley Stories. In my absence, the blog continues to thrive, with a strong daily readership.

With almost 250 posts on this blog, there's already plenty to read, but here's something old, something new...

1946/7 saw the end of John Stanley's work on the New Funnies title. Having begun his 15-year association with Marge's Little Lulu by then, Stanley had also honed his storytelling and humor skills. There was still much refinement to do, as today's stories show in abundance.

Lulu changed Stanley--arguably for the better, but at a price. Certain creative and comedic tendencies, tamped down by the requirements of the Lulu-verse, would disappear entirely from his work, not to resurface until the early 1960s.

Thus, most of John Stanley's work of the 1950s is compromised in some way--despite its high quality. The energy of "Little Lulu" is strait-jacketed, when compared to his work before and after the series. It suits the characters and material beautifully, but it does not appear to have been Stanley's natural inclination as a humorist and narratist.

As the 1950s Little Lulu material is Stanley's most successful and well-loved work, it creates a wide dichotomy. Is Stanley better when he is more restrained? Or is the pell-mell, impulsive Stanley of the work outside Lulu preferable? The latter includes his remarkable run on the 1960s title Thirteen Going on Eighteen, which many regard as Stanley's finest achievement in comics.

Truly a question for the ages (for the 130 of us out there who care about such things)...

Of Mice and Mensch: Woody The Exterminator, from New Funnies 115, September 1946

One of the small rewards of Dell Comics scholarship is in spotting the myriad in-jokes and self-references in which the creators indulged themselves.

The writers and artists of Oskar Lebeck's Western Publishing staff delighted in putting one another's names--and caricatures--all over their comic-book stories.

These references, given the general lack of documentation available at present, have become the only way we have to determine who's who in the Western world.

Michael Barrier has been exploring this phenomenon in his on-going research for an upcoming book on Lebeck and his genial comics empire--a book I can't wait to read.

Looking For "Tub" In All The Wrong Places: Proto-Tubby Stories from Our Gang Comics 15, 1945 and New Funnies 107, 1946

While working on my just-released bibliography of John Stanley's 1940s comic book work, I gave every non-Little Lulu Stanley story from that decade another look. I re-appraised a couple of pieces I had previously passed by. That they share a plot theme--a kid's desire to go toboggan-riding--struck me as more... than... coincidence... Thus, these two stories comprise today's post.

I've written before about Stanley's comedic archetypes. None are stronger, nor more present throughout his work, than the character I call "the Tubby type." This character is a Rosetta stone for determining whether an obscure story is--or isn't--John Stanley's work.

This archetype's mulish determination, blended with rose-colored self-regard, allows him/her to fearlessly step forward into scenarios of potential humiliation, ostracization and belittlement. Blinded by their usually flawed assumption that they're unerringly right, Stanley's Tubbies typically succeed. Not without some emotional scars, but they do win in the end.

Their victories are relevant to our daily lives. We seldom outright win, or outright lose, in personal events with high stakes. It's usually a muddled mix of the two. This, too, is the "win" scenario for Stanley's Tubbies.

Their societal rewards, always fleeting, exist just long enough to further convince these Tubbies that they're on the right track. Their stubbornness is often the agent of success.

A brief diversion: notable comics predecessors to Stanley's "Tubby Type" are the richly detailed characters of Major Hoople and Judge Puffle, from Gene Ahern's long-running features Our Boarding House and Room and Board. I've come to wonder if Ahern was an influence on John Stanley as a comedic writer.

The two share a bent for dryly absurd humor. Both also excel at escalation-comedy which always ricochets off the quirks and shortcomings of their eccentric characters. Ahern, if anything, was comics' closest equivalent to the comedic vision of  W. C. Fields. Both men shared a penchant for quirky domestic humor--tempered with unexpected doses of the surreal/absurd. As well, both Ahern and Fields wasted no time making their focus figures likable or heroic.

Stanley shows us the errant sides of his Tubby Types--indeed, that's the most interesting thing he sees in them. They suffer ridicule, but are tolerated, if not adored, by their more stable companions.

Ahern's Quixotic figures suffer a far worse fate than Stanley's. They are openly mocked by friends and family. They consider themselves learned men of the world, but are clearly regarded, at best, as dubious company by their neighbors and acquaintances. What might be heartbreaking theater-of-cruelty humor is salved, in Ahern's work, by these characters' unerring self-belief.

Poison Salads, Anyone? "Andy Panda" from New Funnies 88, 1944: story, lettering and some art by John Stanley

Here is the third in a series of rare early John Stanley stories scanned for our enjoyment by Michael Barrier, who kindly helped me complete my archive of Stanley stories with his brave efforts.

This is a significant story in Stanley's career. For the first time, we see him really getting his act together as a writer of narratives that have humor, character and stakes.

From this moment on, John Stanley's work routinely combines these three important agents. His stories have a clear narrative arc, laced with conflicts, escalations and a denouement that ties everything together with skill and wit.

Perhaps it was the added assignment of "Woody Woodpecker" that spurred Stanley into a higher bracket of comics storytelling. Certainly, the 'pecker offered him his first really forceful, wild-card pawn for the comics chessboard. He clearly needed a playful, edgy figure to push him past the kiddie doldrums that might otherwise have suffocated his earliest work.

This story features Stanley's first original comics creation (in his 10th appearance), Charlie Chicken. Charlie is Stanley's first wild-card. Stanley didn't know what to do with him until around this time. He clearly was needed, to enliven the otherwise dull doings of the namby-pamby panda.

"Send Me To The Electric Chair!": "Woody Woodpecker" from New Funnies 88, 1944: story and some art by John Stanley

Thanks, once again, to the kindness of comics and animation historian nonpareil Michael Barrier, I'm able to share with you another rare early Stanley story.

This is the second of his "Woody Woodpecker" stories. The first one, which appeared two issues earlier, can be found, in all its un-PC glory, here.

Woody was slow to appear in the pages of New Funnies--rather like Daffy Duck in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies comic book produced for Dell in California. In several pre-Stanley issues, the woodpecker makes cameo stopovers in  otherwise namby-pamby, cuddly-wuddly, icky-poo stories.

In these tentative first appearances, Woody is nutty in a gormless way, and his lunacy is much gentler than his early animated persona. He is very clearly a puzzle to the unimaginative, bland creators of the pre-Stanley original material.

Western's editors seemed initially shy about these screwball, anarchic characters. Perhaps they thought their reckless antics would have a negative influence on young readers.

Far from it--these more lively, loose mischief makers were sorely needed to pep up otherwise stale funnybooks. These more hard-hitting, screwloose figures, more in line with the official animated versions, no doubt helped make the Dell cartoon-based titles more popular.

"Hey, Can I Yell Now?" "Andy Panda" from New Funnies 84, 1944--story and some art by John Stanley

Thanks to Michael Barrier for his kind scanning of the three remaining issues of New Funnies I didn't have in my John Stanley archives. From the earliest of these issues, NF 84 (cover-dated April, 1944) comes this energetic, faintly anarchic and charming "Andy Panda" story.

Today marks my 49th birthday--and the only day of my life that I'll be 49 on 4/9. With Barrier's kind consent, I share this very rare story as a birthday present to John Stanley admirers everywhere.

It's noteworthy as the first John Stanley comics story with an overtly supernatural theme. As mentioned in my previous post, Stanley had an evident fascination with horror/supernatural themes. I don't know if he thought the supernatural was hogwash or not. He often debunks its apparent presence as a narrative twist. He also often treats such themes with considerable respect.

They are a rich part of the fabric of the numerous fairy tales told by Lulu to Alvin in issue after issue of Little Lulu. His infamous pair of early 1960s horror comics, Ghost Stories #1 and the one-shot Tales From the Tomb, take an unusual spin on such themes, but still treat them with reverence.

In his first year as a comics creator, Stanley worked more cautiously, and focused on comedy and character relationships. Genres and themes were just window-dressing, to give the stories variety. It wasn't until the untitled story in his first Oswald Rabbit one-shot, published one year later, that Stanley made his first bold step into the outright inexplicable and supernatural.

That story, posted here in 2008, is also among his only unbridled screwball stories. Dig around in this blog's back pages and you'll find it.

And now, here's the story...

Stanley handles the spook elements uncertainly in this early effort. Before the 1944 "Scooby Doo" twist is revealed, the spirits are, indeed, spirited, and prove intense, unpredictable foils for panda and chicken.

That said, among the fake ghosts are one of his first Tubby-esque characters. Robert, the apparent midget of the haunted house crew, is obsessed with yelling. This post's title quotes from the delightful moment on p.6, panel 2, where Robert requests permission to yell in the midst of a seemingly impossible physical event.

Stanley drops the first name of his friend and Western Publishing colleague Walt Kelly on the last panel of p.6. Ghost Walt, who smokes a tell-tale cigar, wears a stovepipe hat, in an apparent nod to the likes of Bill Holman's screwball comic strip Smokey Stover.

Stanley lettered this story, and I believe those are his pencils, with another's inking. The ink lines are thicker (but not slicker) than Stanley's other 1944-5 work. For a particulary gorgeous example of Stanley's ink line, see the "Woody Woodpecker" stories from New Funnies 92 and 93. (Yep, you guessed it... they're also posted elsewhere on this blog.)

Stanley's first masterpieces were a year away, but his 1944 stories show a remarkably quick development as a comic book creator. He grokked the form almost immediately, and added his own touches to the comics lexicon, as both cartoonist and storyteller.

For dessert, here's the cover--again penciled by Stanley and inked by someone else on the Western Publications staff.

Camping Expedition Incurs Casual Cannibalism, Skirmish With Bruin; Sandwiches Coveted By All: "Andy Panda," from New Funnies 86, 1944

Here's yet another early John Stanley effort, written, drawn and lettered by him in 1944.

Stanley's work in New Funnies and Our Gang Comics, in 1943 and '44, helped him assimilate the vibes of his talented peers at Western Publications. It also gave him a crash course in establishing a voice as a comedic writer.

Little Lulu, from 1945 to 1959, showed an immediate, ongoing sophistication of his distinct comics/storytelling process. In these 14 years, he achieved sublime highs in narrative stakes, compelling characterizations, and the dangerous dance of light and dark that is the heart of his work.
After a few uncertain-ish experiments in the early 1960s, Stanley emerged as a full auteur cartoonist, creating three distinct original series--Dunc 'n Loo (a collaboration with the brilliant Bill Williams), Thirteen Going on Eighteen and Melvin Monster.

That's the Cliff Notes version of Stanley's career. There are many more details, and aspects of Stanley's work, in the overall arc of his time as a comics creator. Each period builds on the one(s) before it, and masterfully incorporates narrative themes and approaches from past work, while honing it in the present.

Stanley's earliest work is well worth studying for its larval versions of the themes that define his mature output. To his credit, Stanley never wrote down to his presumed audience. Nor did his esteemed peers Walt Kelly, Carl Barks, Dan Noonan and editor-writer Oskar Lebeck.

In the years of 1943-49, their efforts for Western, published by Dell, were textbook examples of how to create successful mainstream comics that impressed and complemented their readers. It was a constant learning process for all parties involved. The quality of their collective output strengthens from year to year. Thus, a Carl Barks story from 1948 is likely far tighter and more compelling than one from 1943. The ritual application of the tools and themes of comic-book storytelling gave these talented creators a constant arc of improvement.

Digging backwards, as we 21st-century readers can easily do, it becomes apparent that the earlier work, while sometimes sloppier and less apt, does contain the same kernels of personality and inspiration that informs the later, more mature work. Missed opportunities and 11th-hour crises aside, there is always something to appreciate in John Stanley's early work.

Contemporary readers (save the addled few who saved back issues of their favorite comics) could not trace this growth back to its roots. Nor, in all probability, did they care to. Comics were part of the Great American Horn O' Plenty, alongside radio shows, motion pictures, newspapers, magazines, novels and plays--fodder for daily entertainment; filler for wayward hours. No one intended for any of this to have permanence. It was created to sell, be consumed, and left in its wake by the next, newest iterations.

The average 1943 film director would have laughed out loud at the concept of a "director's commentary." Similarly, the average syndicated cartoonist likely didn't think beyond their next deadline, nor imagine that anyone would consider their work something of lasting value.

This lack of permanence, I think, relaxed the best of these mass-market creators and allowed them to confidently, constantly produce work that both appealed, in the dollars-and-cents sense, and contained a hint of who they were as human beings.

That spark of self is what we respond to, when we encounter these works in 2011. It can be a self-aware, somewhat arrogant self (Al Capp, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder), an intentionally experimental self (Will Eisner, Edgar G. Ulmer), or a self so unaware of itself that it exposes the darkest corners of its creators' persona (Chester Gould, Alfred Hitchcock, Harold Gray, Jack Cole).

The lack of self is what makes MGM musicals, B-Westerns, et al, so damned uninteresting to our eyes.** Then, as now, the majority of mass-market material was crap. No amount of nostalgia can disguise this. Some of it is bearable crap; most of it is depressing, if not downright suicide-inducing!

That a movie, book or comics piece from 70 years ago can still speak to us at all, with any currency and vitality, is remarkable. Although we, the American Public, continue to wolf down new mass entertainments, we have trained ourselves to recognize the threads from the past that still reach us, or have the power to reach us, if we stop, look and listen.

This is all a big build-up to a rather average early John Stanley work. Thank you for indulging me while I think out loud.

The most fascinating aspect of this fair-to-middlin' "Andy Panda" story is never directly addressed by characters or creator. It's something we're really not supposed to think about. More about this after our feature attraction.

This was the first John Stanley story to utilize the four-tier page--soon to define his style as a comics storyteller. New Funnies was the first of the Dell titles to slenderize, due to wartime paper shortages. Page counts, through 1945, would ricochet from 60 to 52 to 36 pages, with no consistency. The four-tier page was an effective compromise: it gave Western's staff a chance to create rich stories in less space.

It was the best thing that ever happened to Stanley--and to Carl Barks. Both men found their rhythms as storytellers with that extra per-page tier. After the war ended, and America wallowed in its surplus of luxury, Stanley and Barks stuck with that four-tier format and achieved greatness as comics creators.

Stanley is still finding his vibe with this story. 1944 was an erratic year for him. He did not go from strength to strength. He often follows a near-brilliant story with a gormless one, and misses several compelling story opportunities. He finds his way in and out of high-stakes narrative situations, sometimes without the apparent understanding of what he's doing.

By 1946, high stakes are the keystone of his skill as a storyteller--and this understanding only gets sharper and clearer over the following decade. By 1956, Stanley is utterly in control of narrative stakes, and they seep into his stories organically. They also help to define the quirks and triumphs of his more detailed, richly delineated characters.

Stanley's narrative energy, in this issue, went into the first long-form "Woody Woodpecker" story, a more accomplished, decidely un-PC but absurdly funny piece. At this time, Stanley hadn't yet fully committed to making Andy's co-star, Charlie Chicken, a full-blown "Tubby Type" (or ASS). Andy and Charlie swap the roles of screwball in the 1943/4 stories. This adds to the hit-and-miss quality of these early entries.

Once Stanley made Andy the long-suffering Voice Of Reason, and Charlie the Aggressive/Alienated Status-Seeker, he was able to write a brace of near-brilliant stories in 1946 and '47.

Back to the fascinating subtext alluded to earlier... twice in Stanley's 1944 stories, he has chicken characters eating chicken. In a "Hector the Henpecked Rooster" story, we see the browbeating wife tuck into a large plate of scrambled eggs. In this story, Charlie Chicken has prepared sandwiches as a contingency plan for Andy's bad cooking.

The contents of these sandwiches are revealed by a thieving, self-centered squirrel who makes with some prehistoric "Tubby talk" while editing the contents:

I suppose this is one of those things we're not supposed to think about, when reading funny animal comix. Barks' duck characters frequently eat chicken and turkey, but never dine on their own flesh. Twice, in Stanley's 1944 comics, chickens commit casual cannibalism.

I'm sure this was unconscious, and not intended to raise red flags. It's just one of those creepy comic book moments that seemingly invite the reader to lose his-her suspension of disbelief and exclaim a bewildered "hunh?"

Stanley's cartooning dominates this story less than other 1944 "Panda" episodes. His hand is clearly evident in the story's lettering. To borrow a technique of Jack Kirby blogger Harry Mendryk, I have assembled a 1940s John Stanley alphabet, from the "Woody Woodpecker" one-pagers he wrote and drew in 1947/48. The look and feel of the lettering in this, and other 1944/45 stories, is identical to the characters of this assembled alphabet:

Someday soon, I'll assemble a complementary 1960s Stanley alphabet.

This story's brush rendering suggests the finishing hand of another artist. Stanley clearly wrote, penciled and lettered these 10 pages. The body language of Charlie Chicken reveals Stanley's input as an artist here. Stanley's figures are never static, even when standing still. Like his lettering, Stanley's characters have great verve and vitality--even when his early stories fail to completely hit their marks.

________

**--I can always count on Thad K. to call me out on vague statements. This is one of them, and one I feel needs appending. While I am, by and large, immune to the charm of the Arthur Freed musicals, it wasn't those, in particular, I meant to evoke. I was talking more like Maisie Goes To Rio or other unambitious, formulaic filler material.

As for Westerns, I'm a Budd Boetticher and Andre De Toth man. I enjoy John Ford's Westerns, to be sure, but I prefer the rawer, higher stakes of Boetticher's work. By "B Westerns," I refer to the churned-out Gene Autry/Roy Rogers/Hopalong Cassidy pictures of the '40s--all more or less identical; all made with an aversion to personality, aside from the box office-enriching presence of their stars. These movies were the template for TV at its most mundane; same ol' same ol', dependably issued on schedule. There might as well have been a border collie in the director's chair, for all the impersonality of the movies themselves.

Masked Rodent Serial Thief Attacks; Jam, Cookies Heisted; Several Traps Thwarted--"Andy Panda" from New Funnies 85, 1944

Thanks, once again, to that dauntless digital scanner known as "sooth." He/she has provided another early piece of the John Stanley puzzle.

I believe I have all of John Stanley's published comics work now, thanks to Michael Barrier's kind scanning of three remaining issues of New Funnies that were missing.

Back to our scheduled broadcast...

Another early New Funnies issue = another snappy, high-spirited romp from the learning-curve days of John Stanley's comics career. Stanley appears to have cartooned this story, which teems with his tell-tale character designs, poses and, most vividly, his distinctive lettering.

This ultra-cutesy cover kinda gives me the bends, but it, too, appears to be from Stanley's hand.

And now, onto our main feature...

This story seems to be a sequel (or re-think) of the "Panda" piece from two issues earlier. This story has a sounder narrative shell, but exists only as a set-up for pratfalls, mishaps and as a laboratory for Stanley's development of the "Tubby Type" (or "ASS"-- Aggressive/Alienated Status Seeker).

Like the early 10-page "Donald Duck" stories of Carl Barks, this chooses to stay close to home. The first panel has an exterior scene. From then on, it's INTERIOR: BUNGALOW. This seems to help Stanley-the-cartoonist. He keeps his figures and set-ups simple and clear.

Charlie's emergent cowardice, and the a-hole personality of "Th' Boiglar" squirrel, are the most noteworthy aspects of this early effort. His comic book swearing in the last panel gives this story a final belly-laugh.

Note the p. 7 walk-on by what appears to be Jerry from the "Tom and Jerry" series at Our Gang Comics. I'm certain he was not paid for this un-billed guest appearance.

Chaser: a one-page "Woody Woodpecker" gag page also written/drawn by Stanley. I'm curious if there is a similar page in the previous issue. (The Overstreet comics price guide says no, but it's full of wrong information on lesser-known comics, so the jury's still out.) Woody's series inaugurated with this unforgettable story in New Funnies 86.

I don't think I've run the two-pager that also appeared in issue 86. Here 'tis:

Both pieces are nice examples of John Stanley's vivid 1940s cartooning style. Nothing great was intended, or expected of them.

Stanley's love of filling a panel with humorous information--a staple of his finest work on Little Lulu, Tubby and his 1960s series--is evident in the fifth panel. Woody's visits to the cracker barrel are frequent, from the irritation shown by grocer McBooble. The grocer's irked resignation, and Woody's blatant abuse of their relationship, provide a small moment of brilliance.

Note the mouse on p.1 of this filler piece. I guess times were tough for Jerry in early 1944.