Way back when, on my old Lost Warner Bros. Original Titles page, I posted two rare examples of the 1934 Bosko comic strip (or perhaps better described as a “comic panel”).
David Gerstein later located, in Dell’s The Funnies (#30, from 1939), a reprint of the part 1 of this serial – reconfigured for comic book standards. He did an excellent 2009 post about it here. Super-collector Martin Almeyra has since sent me over three dozen clippings of Bosko strips – and I plan to post them all (well, at least all that I have) here in several installments.
As David recounts in his blog post, the panel (syndicated by Hugh Harman’s brother Fred (Red Ryder) Harman) originally started as a gag-a-day strip (first drawn by Robert Allen). Starting here, with strip #67, a continuity was begun – in this case loosely based on the Warner’s Looney Tune Bosko Shipwrecked (embed below for comparison). I’ll be posting more continuities (and earlier gag panels) in future posts – stay tuned! For now, here are the first 12 posts in the epic saga of “Bosko on Cannibal Isle” (Spoiler Alert: Racial Stereotypes ahead!). Click thumbnails below to enlarge.
(Thanks to David Gerstein and Mark Kausler for help with this (and subsequent) posts)
That’s NOT all Folks!
SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Looney Tunes In Orlando: If you find yourself in central Florida this week, please come see me at the Orange County Regional History Center on Saturday night. I’ll be there at the opening of an incredible new exhibit of Warner Bros. Cartoon Art – original cels, storyboards, pencils, backgrounds – I’ll be giving a little speech about the great Looney Tunes characters and Warner Bros. directors; and I’ll be showing a bunch of my favorite cartoons on the big screen. It’ll be a blast.
Forget Disney World or Universal Studios – The Orange County Regional History Center is the place to be on Saturday night, January 25th at 7pm (6:30pm for cocktails). Check the website for more information. Tell ’em “Bosko” sent you.
Jerry Beck is a writer, animation producer, college professor and author of more than 15 books on animation history. He is a former studio exec with Nickelodeon Movies and Disney, and has written for The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He has curated cartoons for DVD and Blu-ray compilations and has lent his expertise to dozens of bonus documentaries and audio commentaries on such. Beck is currently on the faculty of CalArts in Valencia, UCLA in Westwood and Woodbury University in Burbank – teaching animation history. More about Jerry Beck [
Thanks, Jerry! This has some history I had not seen before.
Nice to see an instalment of Feg Murray’s Seein’ Stars column at the top here. If you want more, there’s plenty illustrating the book Holly-Would! by John Milton Hagen, though good luck finding one as it’s almost forty years out of print.
This is an amazing find, Jerry. I never knew that there was a BOSKO comic strip. I wonder if there were actual full comic books on the character. I know I couldn’t expect to find such things when I was a kid.