Don't Mess with the Pig, Man!

It starts with Porky Pig giving an elephant a bath in his girlfriend's living room and ends with a medieval-style jousting match against a mysterious Black Knight. And it all makes sense.

Well, it makes cartoon sense. "The Kingdom of Nowhere" was first published in Dell's Four Color #284 (1950), though I own it as a reprint in Gold Key's Porky Pig #4 (November 1965). The writer is unknown and the fun, energetic art is by Roger Armstrong.

Like most of the comic book adaptations of the Looney Tunes universe, this story is more structured in terms of plot than the cartoons generally were, though this does not prevent the story from being hilarious. Most great comedies have structure to them. Even the Looney Tunes shorts, as anarchic as they were, usually had some sort of structure or rules to them. (The Road Runner always stays on the road, for instance--though that rule was briefly broken in a couple of the shorts.)

Each event in the story follows a bizarre but consistent logic to lead into the next. Porky is washing an elephant in Petunia's living room to impress her by winning a contest held by a soap company--whoever uses the soap in the most unusual manner wins.

But Petunia is just fed up with Porky because he's been obsessively entering contests for some time now and she's just sick of it.  She also doesn't care for having an elephant in her living room.

After taking the elephant back to the zoo (how cool would it be if you could go to the zoo and just ask to borrow an elephant?), Porky and Sylvester find a case of money. Unfortunately, this turns out to counterfeit money from a country that doesn't actually exist.

But wait! A small country with no name is holding a contest to choose a name. Sylvester wants to submit the name Boovaria--the name on the worthless cash--so that the cash would then be legal tender.

Porky thinks this is unethical, but submits a name of his own in a desperate attempt to impress Petunia. He soon finds out that he is tied for first and is flown over the the Kingdom of Nowhere for the tie-breaker.

He doesn't realize that the tie-breaker involves fighting a duel.

The duel is wonderful drawn and choreographed, with Porky and his mysterious opponent using glue and a magnet respectively to stay in their saddles. Porky actually handles himself quite well and, eventually, the battle ends in a tie. When the two opponents find out the winner has to marry the king's daughter, both immediately flee the country.

Porky finds out that the Black Knight was Petunia, who had entered the contest to show up Porky and get him to stop entering contests.

The king and queen decide to just choose a name themselves--going with Boovaria. This makes that counterfeit cash (which Sylvester had stashed away-just in case) into real money. So Sylvester stays in Boovaria to live a life of wealth and ease--until he finds out it's illegal to buy fish. That ruins everything--if you can't buy your favorite food, what's the sense in having money? Though I always thought Sylvester's favorite food was Tweety Bird.

The story ends with Sylvester traveling home by the only route open to him.

The story really is a model of how to structure a comedy, following its own logic and with each event eventually leading to a payoff. Someone (DC, perhaps, now that Warner Brothers owns both them and the Looney Tunes) needs to collect the best of the Dell/Gold Key stories and reprint them.

That's it for this week. Next week--riding dinosaurs--IN SPACE!

He's a Pig. His Partner's a Cat. Together--THEY SOLVE CRIMES!

Four Color #271--art by Robert Armstrong

Porky Pig #5--not sure if it's the original re-colored or if it was redrawn by another artist.

As I've mentioned before, the Looney Tunes comics published by Dell and later Gold Key was not set in the gleefully chaotic universe of the animated cartoons, but had more story structure and a degree of logic to the plots. This was perhaps a necessary change to make the characters work in a different medium & the comic book Looney Tunes universe was a fun place to visit in its own right.

Porky Pig #5 (March 1966) is a prime example of this. The story, by the way, is a reprint from Four Color #271 (March 1950), with art by Roger Armstrong and a script by the prolific "unidentified."

Porky and Petunia are heading West, intending to visit Petunia's uncle, who owns a big ranch. But their car is stopped by a gun-wielding cat (proving, by the way, my constantly-made claim that all cats are evil). When Porky happens to snap his fingers, the cat suddenly unmasks and wonders what the heck he's been doing.

The cat turns out to be Sylvester. Has Porky's friend gone bad? (Tweety Bird isn't in the story to voice his opinion.)

It turns out that a villain known as Hypnotic Harry is hypnotizing innocent people and getting them to commit crimes. Also, Petunia's uncle is missing.

Porky, Petunia and Sylvester begin investigating, foiling another attempt by Harry (who would prefer to be called the Phantom) to hypnotize Sylvester into committing a nefarious deed. Soon, Porky finds out the missing uncle had recently discovered a lost gold mine, but the map he made has also gone missing. It's reasonable to assume that Harry is after the gold and that he's now holding Petunia's uncle a prisoner at the mine.

So the story is indeed unfolding in a fairly logical manner, with Porky following up reasonable clues and making reasonable deductions. Mixed in with this are gags, malapropisms, and one-liners to add humor. And it is indeed a funny story. But the chaos so inherent to the Looney Tunes cartoons is toned down.

There's also a sense of real danger that doesn't exist in the cartoons. If you are shot with a gun in a Looney Tunes comic book, you are apparently in real danger of getting killed. When Porky and his friends find the lost mine, a teetering rock poses an actual threat of being crushed to death, rather than simply being squashed into a pancake shape without really being hurt.

Porky uses a tried-and-true method of identifying the bad guy as well, When the ranch foreman blurts out a piece of information he can only known if he's actually the villain, Porky immediately calls him out. It probably would have been better if he had waited until the villain wasn't armed before doing this.


At the same time, the story never completely loses track of its cartoon roots. The day is saved because Sylvester just happens to be holding a mail-order boomerang that just happened to be delivered to the ranch cook moments before. The bad guy then makes the classic mistake of telling Sylvester to throw it away.

So the Looney Tunes comic book universe is indeed a different reality from the cartoons. But it's still a place well-worth visiting. Just remember--when you're there, avoiding taking any boomerang hits to the head. It really will hurt.

Next week, we discover that going on a road trip with Hercules is rarely a good idea.

What's Up, Doc?

For the past several years, there’s been a new set of Looney Tunes released on DVD each year. The coolest thing about this, of course, is that I now own close to 400 of these classic cartoons that I can watch pretty much any time I want. (Not that this stops me from selfishly complaining that they still haven’t included the Road Runner cartoon Hopalong Casualty in any of the sets so far. That’s the one where the coyote swallows the earthquake pills and, by golly, it’s my favorite from that series. I want it!!!!)



But the extras that come with each set are pretty awesome as well. The commentaries included on some of the cartoons are always worthwhile and the documentaries on various aspects of the animation process and the characters are, without fail, both entertaining and informative.



The latest Looney Tunes set (volume 6) includes a documentary titled Mel Blanc: The Man of a Thousand Voices. This is, arguably, the best done yet in any of these sets. It takes us through the career of the world’s greatest voice artist and reminds us that Mr. Blanc was a key force in creating so many classic cartoon characters. Yes, it was the writers and animators who came up with the concepts and visuals for these characters, but Mel pretty much had carte blanche in creating the voice. The director of a cartoon would show Mel pictures of a character and the storyboards for the cartoon. Mel would then come up with an appropriate voice. Without him, there’s no way that Bugs Bunny or Daffy Duck would have had the same impact or staying power that they do have. (Which does not, by the way, take any of credit away from the directors, writers and animators. Everyone involved had to be brilliant to make the Looney Tunes as good as they are.)



The documentary also does an excellent job of stressing that Mel was not just a guy with a wide vocal range, but a great actor as well. As one of the people interviewed in the documentary suggests, watch any Looney Tunes cartoon in which Mel did any of the voices. Take note of how perfectly he hits every emotional note needed for every single line of dialogue. It’s really astounding work—done (from our point of view) with such seeming effortlessness that we need to think about it to realize just how brilliant it is.



There are also some very nice reminders that Mel was very active on radio, working with Jack Benny and other stars of that medium to produce some classic bits of comedy.


The coolest part of the documentary is learning just how kindhearted and utterly decent a person Mel Blanc was. It turns out that he was a great husband and father. He loved kids and often visited children in hospitals (without publicity) to entertain them. He liked to make people smile and laugh. He was a just plain nice guy who really seemed to regularly think about the feelings and welfare of others.




Often, entertainers we admire for their work in films or other mediums turn out to be real jerks in real life. For the most part, this is really none of our business and it’s easy to discount it and just enjoy the work they produced for what it is.




But it’s really nice to be reminded that—every once in a while—an artist we admire for their work is also someone we can admire even more as a human being. The world is an infinitely better place because Mel Blanc was in it.