Number 454


Heeee-Haw!


After an absence of several months Jack Bradbury returns to Pappy's. "Bucky Burro" is from the September, 1949 Spunky, Junior Cowboy #3, a solo book by Bradbury.

"Bucky" looks like a story for an animated cartoon short. Funny characters, funny gags, great cartooning. In the words of the Gershwin song, who could ask for anything more?

...so I'll give you more, a Spunky 3-page short from the same issue.

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Number 316

Love-sick!

Speaking of love--without the sick--I really love Jack Bradbury's comic art from the late 1940s and early '50. The work he did later for Disney comics I find less interesting, but he was working in a stricter panel format on characters well established by other artists. I don't know who created Spunky and Stanley, published in Spunky Junior Cowboy, but it's Bradbury's genius that makes the strip so good.

Every panel with Stanley, the love-sick horse, is funny. Spunky's horse belongs to an animation tradition, and I'm thinking of Ichabod Crane's horse in Disney's The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow. Bradbury had a true gift for comic exaggeration and every time I look at his work I admire it more.

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Number 267

The tallest tale

I'm in need of a laugh today. I went looking for a laugh and found several good ones in Spunky Junior Cowboy #3, September 1949. The whole book is drawn by one of the all-time cartooning greats, Jack Bradbury.

I've posted another Bradbury strip, a Spencer Spook episode from Giggle Comics here.

I bought this comic book in the 1970s. What struck me immediately on re-reading this story is nowadays how much Old Bill reminds me of…me. Yup, Pappy is like Old Bill: a white-bearded windbag, full of stories of dubious veracity. Old Bill has a mule named Sal, and Pappy has a wife named Sally. Just don't tell Mrs. Pappy I said that, will you?

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