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.

This one's for Thad: "Andy Panda" from New Funnies #80, 1943

Thad K. wrote and asked me if I had the second John Stanley-written "Andy Panda" story (see last post for the third installment).

I do, and I had to confront my collector side in presenting this rare early piece to you all. In order to scan this 8-page story, I degraded a VF+ copy of this 1943 funnybook, probably to VG+. So it goes. These eight pages are the only worthwhile content in the whole shebang, aside from reprints of Otto Messmer's Felix the Cat newspaper strips. And the story does no one any good languishing in a sealed plastic bag. I doubt these early stories will ever be reprinted. So screw condition... it's all about what's printed on the pages, not what some "authority" sez they're worth!

Thad pointed out something I'd overlooked... that Andy's domestic partner, Charlie Chicken, ages in the first three stories. In #79's piece, Charlie is a chick-like thing--the equivalent of a 7 year-old kid.

In this story, he's half-grown... perhaps a teenage chicken. In the following story (again, check out previous post), Charlie is the more-or-less adult-size squab he would remain ever after.

You don't often see radical changes in such characters. I suppose that, because Charlie wasn't really an official part of the Walter Lantz world, he could be quickly re-thought. (A Charlie-esque chicken--actually, a lot of them--appear in Shamus Culhane's 1943 Meatless Thursday, the first of the innovative director's Andy Panda cartoons. This may be what inspired the idea for Charlie.)

On the other side of the continent, Carl Barks also worked non-standard, recurring characters into the world of "Donald Duck." These outside-the-box figures, including Uncle Scrooge, the Beagle Boys and Gyro Gearloose, also changed dramatically in each of their early story appearances.

In all cases, a standard design was quickly settled upon, and never again changed.

In this story, we see one of Stanley's earliest YOWs, plus a whole lotta commotion, as bear and chicken destroy their domicile, in conflict with one grade-A smart-ass insect. Said insect indulges in some mind-fudgery with Andy and Charlie, and then requests another playdate.

Charlie turns white on one page of the story. Oops!

Enjoy.