Saturday, August 09, 2014

Only Forest Fires Can Prevent Bears

Saturday Leftover Day.

We interupt our regular program of Bruce Gentry for a special birthday greeting to Smokey the Bear, who apparently is 70 years old today. In the late fifties the popular bear (he had had his own Dell comic book drawn by Mo Gollub, many of which can be seen on Jim Engels Facebook page) got his own newspaper strip, which was credited to Wes Wood, but was drawn by Gollub as well. I have many scans of the Newspaper Sunday that are waiting to be cleaned up, but enough to make a selection here as well.

The drawing on the top, from an online source, is from the original series by Harry Rossell, who is credited as the creator of Smokey.According to his obituary he 'drew  "more than 1,000 "Smokey Says" cartoons, which appeared in more than 3,000 newspapers", which "were the cornerstone of one of the most successful public relations campaigns in history".

First I have two Sundays, one of them a partial one from the back of another strip.


Then, there is a pretty bad microfiche scan I found in an online paper.


And finally, here is a set of scans by an ebay seller - who scanned his series so well, I didn't see the need to but it. These samples show that this feature dropped the first tier instead of the last to turn a three tier version into a two tier one.



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