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Bobby Bear was a British comics character in the Daily Herald newspaper starting in 1919. He was a young male bear character based on the Steiff teddy bear that was popular at the time. His friends were Ruby Rabbit and Maisie Mouse. Later Percy Porker the pig became a regular character as well as Freddy Fox on occasion. He was the first bear to appear as a cartoon character, pre-dating Rupert Bear by a year.
There were annuals issued from the early 1920s, in small format thin paperback volumes which collected their adventures. These are known to exist as year-dated annuals 1923 to 1926, and 1928-31. The 1923 annual states inside that it is their 'third book', so two more exist from 1920-1922. The cover price was fixed at 'One Shilling' on the 1923-1931 annuals.
The 1923-30 Annuals were by Kitsie Bridges (Aunt Kitsie) and pictures by Dora McLaren. The 1931 annual drawings were by 'Meg'. The 1932 annual had some 'Meg' drawings and some by Wilfred Haughton, and was the last one edited by Aunt Kitsie. For the 1933 to 1939 annuals, they were all drawn and written by Wilfred Haughton who also created the early Mickey Mouse annuals, also for Deans, from 1930 to 1939. He rarely signed his work, though his style is very distinctive. By 1939 Wilfred Haughton had fallen out with Deans as he would not draw Mickey Mouse for the Mickey Mouse comics in a more modern style. He appears to have left Deans entirely by then as Bobby Bear is created by a different unnamed artist starting with the 1940 annual. The only annual featuring his drawings with his signature is the 1936 one.
The annuals from 1932 became very elaborate by the mid-1930s with multiple colour plates and many pages to cut out, which makes the later 1930s ones hard to find complete. The most unusual Wilfred Haughton story appeared in the 1936 Annual, entitled 'Mr Nobody' which was about a bear who had no body. Several surreal pictures of the head being carried about and then the headless body running around and eventually the two were matched up.
The 1931 Annual shows '1931' on the cover, but is misprinted '1930' on the first page. The 1932-34 ones are dated on the front cover. 1935 with 'Lucky Dip 6d'; 1936 with 'Never Lets You Down'; 1937 with 'Lets All Be Merry' are only dated on the title page. 1938 with 'Out For Fun Again' and 1939 with 'Rattling Good!' on the cover are undated. The 1939 Annual is usually found missing a lot of the pages: page 48 had a Donkey & Sergeant cutout; pages 73–80 had a 'Punch & Judy' cut-out & play and page 98 a Racing Car cutout. Later books can be dated via the ComicsUK website 'Annual Gallery' linked below.
The 'Bobby Bear Club' started in the early 1930s, similar to Pip, Squeak and Wilfred and Teddy Tail clubs, and the 1932 annual states that over 400,000 members had joined. You received a 'Secret Rules' booklet revealing the secret sign to make to fellow 'Bear Cubs' which involved putting your first finger and thumb together to make an 'O' and putting both hands to make 'OO' like eyes. There was a salute and a 'Call and Rally' tune as well as a Club Recruiting Song. You could also get Free Insurance against personal accidents if aged between 6 and 16, and the motto was 'Make Friends'. You also received a numbered admittance card and a yearly Birthday Card.
Starting with the 1940 annual, different artists drew the characters resulting in variations in style through the decades, with Bobby Bear being aimed at very young children by the 1960s. The 'Golden Years' of this character are the 1932-1939 annuals, with the pre-1932 annuals having solely Bobby Bear content.
Pluto is an American cartoon character created by the Walt Disney Company. He is a yellow-orange color, medium-sized, short-haired dog with black ears. Unlike most Disney characters, Pluto is not anthropomorphic beyond some characteristics such as facial expression. He is Mickey's pet. Officially a mixed-breed dog, he made his debut as a bloodhound in the Mickey Mouse cartoon The Chain Gang. Together with Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck, and Goofy, Pluto is one of the "Sensational Six"—the biggest stars in the Disney universe. Though all six are non-human animals, Pluto alone is not dressed as a human.
Charles Alfred "Al" Taliaferro, was an American Disney comics artist who produced Disney comic strips for King Features Syndicate. Taliaferro is best known for his work on the Donald Duck comic strip. Many of his strips were written by Bob Karp.
Theodore H. Osborne was an American writer of comics, radio shows and animated films, remembered for his contributions to the creation and refinement, during the 1930s, of Walt Disney cartoon characters.
Minnie Mouse is an American cartoon character created by the Walt Disney Company. As the longtime sweetheart of Mickey Mouse, she is an anthropomorphic mouse with white gloves, a red or pink bow, blue polka-dotted dress, white bloomers and yellow low-heeled shoes occasionally with ribbons on them.
Horace Horsecollar is a cartoon character created in 1929 at Walt Disney Animation Studios. Horace is a tall anthropomorphic black horse and is one of Mickey Mouse's best friends. Characterized as a boastful show-off, Horace served as Mickey’s sidekick in Disney's early black-and-white shorts.
Disney comics are comic books and comic strips featuring characters created by the Walt Disney Company, including Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck.
The Our Gang personnel page is a listing of the significant cast and crew from the Our Gang short subjects film series, originally created and produced by Hal Roach which ran in movie theaters from 1922 to 1944.
A topper in comic strip parlance is a small secondary strip seen along with a larger Sunday strip. In the 1920s and 1930s, leading cartoonists were given full pages in the Sunday comics sections, allowing them to add smaller strips and single-panel cartoons to their page.
Donald Duck, a cartoon character created by the Walt Disney Company, is today the star of dozens of comic-book and comic-strip stories published each month around the world. In many European countries, Donald is considered the lead character in Disney comics, more important and beloved than Mickey Mouse.
Kalle Anka & C:o is a Swedish weekly Disney comics magazine, published by Egmont. The 52-page comic, launched in September 1948, is the overall best-selling Swedish comic magazine. In the early years, the comic printed translated stories from the United States, including Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, Four Color and other Dell Comics Disney titles. As Disney comics production waned in the United States in the 1960s, Kalle Anka began printing more European-produced content, from Scandinavia and Italy. Now, Kalle Anka & C:o and its Scandinavian sister editions Anders And & Co. (Denmark) and Donald Duck & Co (Norway) are identical, apart from the language.
Pip, Squeak and Wilfred was a British strip cartoon published in the Daily Mirror from 1919 to 1956, as well as the Sunday Pictorial in the early years. It was conceived by Bertram Lamb, who took the role of Uncle Dick, signing himself (B.J.L.) in an early book, and was drawn until c. 1939 by Austin Bowen Payne, who always signed as A. B. Payne. It concerned the adventures of an orphaned family of animals. Pip, who assumed the father role, was a dog, whilst the 'mother', Squeak, was a penguin. Wilfred was the 'young son' and was a rabbit with very long ears.
Mickey Mouse is a Disney comic book series that has a long-running history, first appearing in 1943 as part of the Four Color one-shot series. It received its own numbering system with issue #28, and after many iterations with various publishers, ended with #330 from IDW Publishing.
Japhet and Happy was a British newspaper cartoon strip originally appeared as 'The Adventures of the Noah Family' initially in The Daily News during 1919 and transferred in 1930 to the News Chronicle. It was originated and drawn by J. F. Horrabin, James Francis Horrabin (1884–1962) who was a British journalist, cartoonist and cartographer, and he was elected Labour Member of Parliament for Peterborough from 1929 to 1931. He wrote Political books as well as the 'Dot and Carrie' strip for The Star that ran from 1922 to 1964. The Noah Family names are based on religious names, but the cartoon strips have no religious theme.
Teddy Tail was a British newspaper comic strip about a cartoon mouse featured in The Daily Mail from 5 April 1915. It was the first daily cartoon strip in a British newspaper, The character survived until the 1960s with several artists drawing newspaper strips and the varied annuals. Such was his popularity that other newspapers created their own cartoon characters, the Daily Express with Rupert Bear and the Daily Mirror with Pip, Squeak and Wilfred.
Fred Spencer was an American animator who worked at Walt Disney Productions. He was considered an authority on Donald Duck and wrote an influential analysis of the character.
Mickey Mouse Weekly is a 1936–1957 weekly British tabloid Disney comics magazine, the first British comic with full colour photogravure printing. It was launched by Willbank Publications and later continued by Odhams Press. The comics were said to be "drawn in a slick, smooth style which was clearly influenced by American comics."
Mickey Mouse is an American newspaper comic strip by the Walt Disney Company featuring Mickey Mouse and is the first published example of Disney comics. The strip debuted on January 13, 1930, and ran until July 29, 1995. It was syndicated by King Features Syndicate until 1990, when Disney switched to Creators Syndicate, which distributed the strip until 2014.
Mickey Mouse Magazine is an American Disney comics publication that preceded the popular 1940 anthology comic book Walt Disney's Comics and Stories. There were three versions of the title – two promotional giveaway magazines published from 1933 to 1935, and a newsstand magazine published from 1935 to 1940. The publication gradually evolved from a 16-page booklet of illustrated text stories and single-page comic panels into a 64-page comic book featuring reprints of the Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck comic strips.
Gazetka Miki was a short lived weekly children's comic first published in 1938 in inter-war Poland. The publication was the first Mickey Mouse comic produced in Poland.