Walter Lantz Cartoons Part 8: The Screwball, The Dizzy Acrobat, Ration Bored, Pass the Biscuits Mirandy!, Boogie Woogie Man

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Welcome to 1943 at Walter Lantz studios, and we open up with some classic Woody Woodpecker. The Screwball features Woody at a baseball game, and was one of the more commonly aired ‘early Woody’ cartoons when I was a kid. This is your typical 1940s ballgame, which is to say that the field has a mere wooden fence protecting it from the unpaying masses. With lots of convenient knotholes, and one very sadistic cop. I have to say seeing the cop use his truncheon to poke the eyes of all the people watching through the holes made me wince. Sadly, his wooden billy club is no match for our hero, who shortly makes his way into the game. Not that Woody’s home free. The cop is still chasing him, he’s dealing with guys with big hats (and big hair) blocking his view, and he can’t even enjoy a nice cold sody pop. Clearly he has no choice but to go out on the field and play. His screwball is perfect, but he has trouble hitting the opposing pitcher’s slow ball. All in all, a classic ‘baseball gags’ cartoon, with Woody generally acting like his usual jerkass self.

The same cast of Woody and cop appear in the award-winning The Dizzy Acrobat, which features Woody walking around the circus. After abusing a few animals, he tries to walk into a tent, but is stopped by the guard – the implication is you need money, but it reads more like he just doesn’t like Woody. Which, given Woody’s personality in these cartoons, makes total sense. Once Woody gets into the tent, though, it’s pure cop abuse, with him flying into lion cages, hurtling along trapeze wires, and finally riding a tiny bike that throws him into the middle of a shooting gallery. Woody attempts to heckle him from there, but apparently looks too much like a target – the two of them both end up dodging bullets!

Woody pretty much reaches new heights of being obnoxious in the next cartoon, the vaguely wartime-themed Ration Bored. Woody is driving along in his gas-guzzling car, ignoring signs asking whether his trip is really necessary. “Of course it is – I’M a necessary evil!”, he points out. Unfortunately, his car runs out of gas, and the gas station attendant doesn’t buy his use of a child’s ABC book as a replacement for actual A, B, and C ration cards. (Unlike The Screwball, this cartoon hasn’t aired all that often on TV, most likely due to the war references, Woody sucking on gasoline, and the ending.) Woody gets thrown into a car junkyard, and tries seeing if any of the wrecks have any gas in them, and siphoning them by sucking out the gas through a tube. He hits the jackpot with one nice-looking car. That’s because it’s a cop car, though this officer seems more gruff and less dumb than the cops we’ve seen in the previous 2 cartoons. Woody slips right into full heckle mode, and chaos ensues. In the end, Woody rides the cop as if he were a car into a high-test gas tank, blowing them both up. Surprisingly, they both end up in heaven (I say surprisingly as Woody was just HORRIBLE in this cartoon) and continue their chase up there. This was Kent Rogers’ last cartoon as the voice of Woody – he went into the Army, and was later killed in the war.

Walter Lantz, meanwhile, had scored a big coup by getting James “Shamus” Culhane to come on board as cartoon director. Culhane’s pacing, gag timing, and animation all helped improve the cartoons literally from his debut, which is the Swing Symphony Pass the Biscuits, Mirandy!. The first 2/3 of this cartoon is your typical ‘Hatfields vs. McCoys’ hillbilly schtick, with the gags and the song revolving around Mirandy’s completely inedible biscuits (using glue in the recipe might be one reason why), and how they make excellent ammunition when fighting against their neighbors. The pacing here is already a step up from previous Swing Symphonies. The fighting ends with a messenger notes that war has been declared. The two feuding families join up, and use the rock-like biscuits to take out the Axis, including caricatures of Hitler, Stalin and Tojo. Needless to say, that ending is why the cartoon was hard to find on TV.

Finally we have Boogie Woogie Man (Will Get You If You Don’t Watch Out), a completely surreal salute to Harlem-style dancing, featuring an all-ghost cast. The ghosts are holding a convention in an abandoned town, lamenting the fact that the old scares just aren’t working anymore, and they need to find some new blood to get everyone back into the haunting business. They’ve invited along 3 black ghosts who proceed to simply walk in and start singing the title song, the implication being that what the square white ghosts need is more jazz and swing. The rest of the cartoon is a combination of hot dancing and creepy ghost horror animation, usually at the same time. It’s riveting, and incredibly well-animated. In the end, of course, the clock warns dawn is coming and the ghosts all disappear.

The arrival of Shamus Culhane has certainly spiced up the Swing Symphonies, but he hasn’t gotten to Woody yet. And whatever happened to Andy Panda anyway? (The answer to that is he’s been appearing all along, just not in cartoons on DVD). Tune in next time for some 1944 classics – including Rossini!

Manga the week of 9/9

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Yes, it’s a day late at the comic shop due to the Labor Day holiday. Also, Midtown and Viz one again fail to hook up. I’m basing my list on what Viz says is coming out rather than Midtown, as Diamond tends to follow Viz’s more accurately.

In any case, Dark Horse has new volumes from two of their more male-oriented series. Ghost Talker’s Daydream has a virgin albino dominatrix who fights crime, which is a USA World Premiere Movie if ever there was one. And Gantz is… it’s Gantz. It just is. You know what I mean.

Del Rey continues to prove it exists with a bunch of new stuff. I reviewed Volume 1 of Pink Innocent and found it horribly fascinating, especially its road accident of a heroine. I hope the second volume gives me more to stare at in a sort of dull stupor! There’s also a new volume of Negima Neo, for those who like Negima but wish it had poorer writing and bad art. And omnibus volumes of the romantic comedy/drama Suzuka and the sort of insane roller blade epic Air Gear.

Udon is releasing some more of their kid-friendly titles, with Ninja Baseball Kyuma (ending here, I believe), Big Adventures of Kanojo, and two Mega Man titles. It’s always nice to see things licensed from the ‘Kodomo’ genre of Japan, i.e. things actually for little kids.

Vertical has Volume 3 of Twin Spica, a series I’m definitely enjoying. Let’s hope that the heroine can snap out of her funk and triumph against the teacher who hates her for undisclosed reasons.

And Viz has a pile of stuff, although it’s a much smaller pile than I’m used to from them in a first week. A lot of titles that came out every 2 months are down to quarterly or even less. We get lots of shoujo I like, with volumes of Library Wars and Cactus’s Secret, as well as the more adult Butterflies, Flowers. And then, in order to prove I am a MAN!, we also have Volume 2 of the food-loving Toriko.

Karakuri Odette Volume 4

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By Julietta Suzuki. Released in Japan by Hakusensha, serialized in the magazine Hana to Yume. Released in North America by Tokyopop.

First off, I have to say how much I love Julietta Suzuki’s cover for this volume. Not just because of the Utena/Rose of Versailles parody, but because of Odette’s expression as she grips the rose between her teeth. Instead of a rakish grin, which is what one might expect from a cover like this, it’s more like a ‘wtf?’. It’s awesome.

So we’ve been following the adventures of Odette and her friends, and while she does have a number of them, the only one that knows that she’s a robot remains Asao. This is problematic, as he’s the only one she can turn to in emergencies. (We see that here when she falls into the pool, and he has to take her shorted out body back to the professor. As an aside, his hurling Odette at the professor screaming “Make her waterproof!” is a comic highlight.) She really needs to meet someone else who can be in on the masquerade.

Enter Shiroyuki, a cloistered rich girl who lives in a mansion with her dolls and a stream of constantly changing maids. They’re changing as Shiroyuki can read minds if she touches someone, and thus can tell when a maid is thinking nasty thoughts at her. Naturally, she’s fascinated by Odette, whose mind she can’t read. There’s a number of misunderstandings and setbacks, but as the volume goes on these two get closer and closer, and we once again see from another person’s eyes how far Odette as come as a person since the first volume.

In fact, most of this volume is about seeing Shiroyuki go through what Odette already has, dealing with the basic social interaction she’s lacked all her life. This could be anything from learning that your friends do sometimes have OTHER friends they hang out with as well, or trying to scale a mountain just to show that you can. In the last chapter Shiroyuki goes with Odette and the others to see Yoko’s family, and the loneliness and longing she feels from seeing their happy daily interaction is palpable.

Speaking of Odette, she’s still the main character, and goes through a lot here. At times she seems more human than ever, even when doing things humans normally wouldn’t. (Check out her expression with the wildlife animals surrounding her.) But she still tends to freeze up when she runs into an emotional experience she hasn’t had herself. Of course, the balance to that is that once she gets the basic concept of what others are feeling, she’s lightning quick to adapt. Coming home to a dark and empty home in the last chapter, she has a revelation about Shiroyuki’s loneliness that she was completely oblivious to just an hour before. She’s really pretty incredible.

The author also continues to throw in little things into the title, things that are just a bit weird but help to add character. At one point when Shiroyuki is getting ready to attend school for the first time, her butler offers her a bunch of fake classmates to be her fake friends. Despite being rich, Shiroyuki isn’t stupid, and rejects them immediately. However, I found it very amusing that one of the girls, a princess-curled little moppet, hangs around anyway for the remainder of the volume, as her sort of de facto guardian and irritating clinging girl. I like the idea of taking a basic 1-panel gag and wondering what happens after.

This continues to be a terrific shoujo series, and at 6 volumes total it’s not even that much of an investment. Also, since everyone’s been talking about good manga for kids lately, I do think this series would be perfect for 12-13 year old girls looking for someone to identify with as they struggle with their own teenage daydreams.