That’s how he was treated in a Magoo daily comic strip which debuted that year. I’ve found nice scans of comics starting Monday, December 7, 1964, so I’m going to post them in two parts.
Don’t expect any “expert swordsman” in these comics. They hew to the tediousness of the syndicated cartoons. I believe I’ve related how I used to “boooo” loudly at my TV set at the end of those cartoons for taking away valuable cartoon-watching time by giving me unentertaining slop. The comics also feature Charlie the houseboy, who I believe was an invention for the TV cartoons and didn’t appear in the theatricals. I’ll ask the same question I asked myself over 50 years ago: would anyone from China really say “Magloo” and “Bloss”?
Click on them to enlarge. Part two with the remainder of December 1964 will be tomorrow.
The cartoons are unsigned so I don’t know if UPA staffers were responsible for the story, design or inking. Click on each week of six comics to enlarge the set. Late note: the artist is revealed in the comment section. You might have seen his work in Warners cartoons.
I think it was Peter Alvarado who drew the strips.
ReplyDeleteAnd these strips were scripted by Don Sheppard.
DeleteThanks for these. I never knew that Magoo was a strip too. And as far as Charley, I was never offended by his accent. I'm from the South and people make fun of our accents all the time. Never have seen a PC police try to stop it.
ReplyDeleteJust the fact that there are so many of the TV cartoons that barely feature Magoo at all was kind of a hint that even Abe Levitow and the staff knew they were a little short on material to keep up the grind that the broadcast medium demanded.
ReplyDelete"Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol" did breathe some new life into the franchise, which with the prime-time TV show and the various commercial spots he was in, was likely why the Magoo comic strip showed up at this time. But while the Broadway play set-up was a way to nicely offer a separation between the character's normal persona and that of Scrooge, it just didn't work when NBC ordered up a series with the character playing historical literary figures, while the basic nearsighted gag could get old (and annoying) after a while.
NBC probably should have screened UPA's "1001 Arabian Nights" before they green-lit the series, which like the Dickens adaptation, showed more fidelity to the source material of the various episodes than the movie did, but also suffered from the same weakness of being unable to submerge the basic Magoo character within the various stories (and aside from the theatrical framing used in the Christmas special, Magoo-as-Scrooge actually was just a step back towards Magoo's original mean SOB personality, as John Hubley designed him).
A paperback of several of Alvarado's 1964-'66 daily strips was published in 1967.
ReplyDeleteI agree the TV show was overly formulaic, both in its use of Magoo for the mistaking-one-thing-for-another gag (repeated in endless variations which do become tiresome) and its non-use when the pets or Waldo and Prezley took over the action. Jim Backus redeemed it a lot with his "genial curmudgeon" characterization which made Magoo such a popular character for so long. Interestingly, both Mel Blanc and Bea Benaderet contributed their voice talents to the Magoo show, providing an immediate Flintstones association. For another connection to the Flintstones, Pete Alvarado drew many of their comic book adventures for Dell and Gold Key as well as drawing the Magoo strip.
ReplyDelete12/15/14
ReplyDeleteRobGems.ca Wrote:
I have both books of Magoo's strips with Alvarado's drawings (though that cheapskate Henry G. Saperstien wouldn't give Alvarado any artist's credit. ) One is titled "The Nearsighted Mr. Magoo, and is from 1967, and the other is titled "What's New Mr. Magoo" printed in 1977. Both books are nearly interchangeable, except some of the House Boy Charlie strips were either dropped or he got non-speaking panels because of the creeping PC Police that was starting around this time to ward of against complaining Chinese-American groups who thought Charlie was a negative stereotype. Odd, since Charlie was really smarter than Magoo or Waldo and was considered a voice of reasoning of the trio. His language and mis-pronounciating, on the other hand, it was no longer fashionable to say "bloss" in place of "boss" by 1977.
I ordered the "What's New Mr. Magoo" book through the school book club in the early 1980's. Charlie is in only 2 of the strips in it, and he doesn't speak in either one.
DeleteWGN was still airing the TV Magoos with Charlie unaltered in 1980.
SC33, Backus is great. The best part of the cartoons.
ReplyDeleteAnon, I think the problem is all stereotypes are deemed negative today and therefore unwelcome. Is there such a thing as a "positive stereotype"?
Scarecrow, several other voice connections to the Flintstones would be Frank Nelson and Howard McNear, both of whom were among the very first guest voices for the show.
ReplyDelete