Nobody cares but me.
In linking to my Spunky the Monkey post from yesterday, Dirk Deppey does the leg work I didn’t and points out that the 1946 date of Adventures of Patoruzu reprint doesn’t match up with the 1950 date for the story’s appearance in Animal Crackers. In fact, reading the contents of Animal Crackers #31 on Comics.org reveals that this entire issue comprises the Adventures of Patoruzu reprint comic that I own.
My best guess as to what happened:
1. An article on this site mentions that, in the mid-1940s, there was an effort to introduce Patoruzu, an Argentinian comic character, into foreign markets, including English-speaking countries like the U.S.
2. As part of this U.S. push, an English Patoruzu comic was put into production, and covers (dated “Winter 1946”) were printed.
3. Since, as far as I’ve been able to determine, no U.S. version of Adventures of Patoruzu actually containing Patoruzu stories was published, the covers remained unused and were stored away.
4. A few years later, sometime after 1950, for whatever reason a comic publisher ended up with both the unused covers and a whole bunch of coverless Animal Crackers #31s, paired ’em up and unleashed them upon unsuspecting newsstands.
Now, the Green Publishing Company is credited by Overstreet with publishing that Adventures of Patoruzu comic, even though there’s no indication in the comic itself. Green Publishing also produced the initial two issues of Animal Crackers in 1946. The next issue of Animal Crackers was the #31 in question, published by Fox Features, in 1950. (There were at least two more issues, a #9 in 1959 published by Norlen (also in my collection), and another unnumbered issue with no noted publisher from the 1950s.)
This site indicates that Green Publishing often republished material from other companies, and since Fox Features was gone by the early to mid-1950s, and Green was around at least ’til the late 1950s (as per this article about Cosmo Cat), it looks like it was indeed Green what did the deed, pairing the unused covers with a bunch of leftover coverless copies of Animal Crackers #31 that they obtained from Fox.
At least, that’s my best guess. If anyone else knows a little bit more and would care to smooth out the edges of my crackpot theory, please do.
You can also read more about Fox Features courtesy Toonopedia.
In other news:
- Speaking of Dirk, he turns up what must be the single worst (or, perhaps, best) permutation of the whole Mary Jane statue boondoggle…a streaming video MSNBC interview with the “winner” of that Who Wants to Be A Superhero “reality” show. Oh God my eyes. (Two bucks says that a minute into that interview, that newscaster was thinking “what the hell has my career come to?”)
- WORST AIN’T IT COOL NEWS HEADLINE EVER…well, maybe not “worst ever,” but you ain’t gonna thank me.
- Since the promo site is down, I’ll link to the Newsarama article so you can see the revealed pic of Heath Ledger as the Joker from the forthcoming Batman flick. Hey, looks pretty neat, I think. And, as pal Dorian noted to me over the weekend, I hope all those folks who plugged their e-mails into the promo site in order to reveal the image (one pixel at a time, for every e-mail entered) enjoy their spam.
- The new DC solicits are up, and all you need to know is:
…Swamp Thing spin-off The Un-Men is finally coming out! Woo! And there’s Cranius right there on the cover…fantastic.
