Public Domain Funnies

Robert V. Conte

A few weeks ago, Studio Chikara published its first comic book in years: Public Domain Funnies #1, featuring reimagined interpretations of iconic characters that first graced our screens and newspapers nearly a century ago. Working with amazing talent including Milton Knight, Ken Wheaton, Patrick Owsley, Richard Maurizio, Michael Grassia, and others — names I believe most of you are familiar with — we chose to celebrate and honor the original works of Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks; E.C. Segar, and the Fleischer Studios by producing stories to attract us longtime fans while appealing to an all-new audience.

The three characters who appear in our debut issue have already been adapted elsewhere, some multiple times. But most of those “reimaginings” do not show respect for them and their creators. Instead, the public is being flooded with horror, pornographic, and tasteless material. The United States Copyright Act of 1976 allows anyone to develop and publish versions of characters once they reach the Public Domain. While this new playing field will encourage all kinds of competition in the years to follow, the Studio Chikara team intends to publish stories that we believe the original creators would approve if they were alive today.

Let me explain why I am so passionate about our new book…

I recall the end of Summer 1975 as if it were yesterday. I had recently reached the milestone age of five and was soon to begin my first stage of formal education: kindergarten.

In those final weeks before Fall, I had grown accustomed to a routine of having my eyes glued to a black-and-white television set that I shared with my two younger brothers in our bedroom in East Massapequa, NY. We were usually awake before 7 a.m., so as my mother made and served us breakfast, I would watch the animated adventures of Mighty Mouse, Popeye the Sailor, Felix the Cat, Heckle and Jeckle, Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse, and others on WPIX-11. With the exception of Sesame Street and The Electric Company on PBS, and Spider-Man, Looney Tunes, and DC Superheroes on WNEW-5, Channel 11 was the default platform for most of my family’s entertainment and news.

Although live-action shows like Bozo the Clown, Wonderama, Magic Garden, New Zoo Revue, and The Little Rascals were quite enjoyable as well, I just loved the idea of watching animated cartoons where almost anything seemed possible. Often I would fantasize about being my own cartoon character, wanting to jump into the TV; watching children’s programming at that age was simply bliss.

One of my uncles owned a film projector, so it was a great treat to go to our local camera store and library to buy and borrow Super 8mm films. What intrigued me was that these particular shorts were usually not those aired on TV, and we could watch them whenever we wanted, as opposed to when a channel repeated cartoons at their discretion, which usually took weeks.

After school started, my television watching was regulated to 3 p.m. through dinner time during the week. With the exception of the syndicated Batman live-action show, my entertainment was solely animation. On Saturdays, Mom would walk my brothers and me to the local Jerry Lewis Theater for the morning Disney matinee. Those experiences were enchanting, as they were my first exposure to color films and shorts featuring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Chip and Dale. After seeing Mary Poppins there and watching Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke interact with animated characters on screen, I wanted to travel to that fantasyland and live there for the rest of my life.

By the time Jerry Lewis Theater closed its doors in 1980, we owned our first color television set. We usually watched Saturday morning cartoons on CBS, NBC, and ABC. However, I was displeased with the quality of the new programming. I could not understand or accept how cartoons from my mother’s era of the 1940s and 1950s would look superior to their modern counterparts. I distinctly remember turning the channel knob to “OFF” in disgust when The Tom and Jerry Comedy Hour debuted that September. At that point, Droopy was my favorite character from the syndicated Tom and Jerry Show that aired weekdays on WPIX-11. I expected to laugh out loud as I regularly would with “Senor Droopy,” “Outfoxed,” and “Dixieland Droopy.” Instead, “Droopy’s Restless Night” was, in my opinion, a desecration of the character. Everything was different and not for the better — story, voices, music, animation — not as good as the original MGM shorts. This was a crucial point for me. I could have walked away from watching cartoons forever and followed the footsteps of other kids in my neighborhood by spending my day at the local arcade, the shopping mall, or in the park riding bikes.

Fortunately, Cablevision was installed in our home just weeks later. Watching complete, uncut movies on Home Box Office (HBO) and replacing our testy antenna were the primary purposes for this paid service, but it also offered at least a dozen other channels my family had not been seen before. One of those channels was Montage, and I happened to stumble upon the second half of a Fleischer Studios’ Superman short, “Volcano.” I could not believe how colorfully and musically beautiful this Man of Steel cartoon was compared to Filmation’s Superman/Superboy Hour and Hanna-Barbera’s Super Friends. That was the day I became a couch potato! Montage offered a myriad of cartoons I never knew existed, including the earliest Popeye and Betty Boop shorts. Serials and films like 1941’s Adventures of Captain Marvel and 1918’s Tarzan the Ape Man starring Elmo Lincoln, had aired. My father, who did not live with us, sat with me mesmerized, explaining that Lincoln was his Tarzan as a child. Classic movies made Montage one of our family favorites, and I devoured almost everything that aired on it.

By Fall 1983, my family had our first home-video recorder/player. This device opened another world of seeing more classic animation than I had thought possible. VHS tapes cost between $39.95 and $89.95 in those early days, so renting them was preferred. This is when I started learning about early Mickey Mouse shorts like “Plane Crazy,” “Steamboat Willie,” and “Haunted House” via Disney Home Video’s Cartoon Classics: Gold Edition series. By the end of the mid-1980s, I was working at Toys ‘R Us, and the company started selling low-cost VHS tapes made by Goodtime Home Video and others with public-domain versions of cartoons for the low cost of $6.98 and up. I was hooked and studied the animation and evolution of my favorite cartoon characters from Donald Duck to Woody Woodpecker, and Felix the Cat to Tom & Jerry (including the silent-era series of the same name featuring humans instead of animals); As for Popeye, I had seen his first appearance panel inside Maurice Horn’s The Encyclopedia of Comics that I borrowed from the library regularly. Jim Steranko’s History of Comics Volumes One and Two, and Leonard Maltin and Jerry Beck’s Of Mice and Magic: A History of Animated Cartoons were among books I purchased and devoured. Before long, I developed my own encyclopedic mind when it came to comics and cartoons. I used that knowledge to work professionally in the comics industry as a retailer, distributor, writer, editor, packager, publisher, licensee, and more. One career highlight is writing “Droopy and the Red Baron,” illustrated by Bill Morrison and published in 1995. Another is contributing to the canon of Mr. Magoo and Gerald McBoing-Boing — two characters I loved so much during my youth that I pursued and got to work with UPA in my early adulthood. More on that another time!

The joy of travelling through generations past, up to and including my maternal great-grandmother and various paternal relatives, created unique connections through these early cartoons. Hearing their incredible remembrances of when they first saw Betty Boop, Mickey Mouse, Popeye, and others — and being with them to reexperience those trips down memory lane — provided me with my own lifelong memories that I hope to share with all of you.

Back to Public Domain Funnies, the first issue includes newly adapted versions of 1928’s “Plane Crazy,” 1929’s “Thimble Theater: Roll ‘Dem Bones,” and 1930’s “Dizzy Dishes.” These stories are near and dear to me, and I hope the series encourages others to adapt their favorite public domain characters as they see fit. One day, we will have dozens if not hundreds, of companies adapting their own versions of not only the three characters that appear in our new comic, but many others as well.

For now, I have to start editing Public Domain Funnies #2, featuring another Disney/Iwerks adaptation with a few more surprises. Until next time, I thank Jerry Beck for this special opportunity!

Copies of all four variant covers of Public Domain Funnies Comics #1 are available directly from Studio Chikara at www.publicdomainfunnies.com