Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

– I used to love comic books when I was a kid. I read them incessantly. It grew to become an enormous thing between me an my father when he absolutely banned them in the house. Comic books back in the 50s, everyone knew, rotted out the minds of little children. I couldn’t resist and continued to sneak them into my room. I couldn’t get enough of Donald Duck or Unca Scrooge or, even, Little Lulu.

One of my earliest memories comes from myself at the age of 8 trying to imagine what this genius, Walt Disney, looked like. This is before the Disneyland television show, before the media and PR hounds poured into the mind of an 8 year old child. I mean Walt Disney signed those comics – his script name appeared just above the Donald Duck masthead on the cover – he was the one responsible.

(Click any image to enlarge.)

Well, I’ll tell you what I imagined:
An oddball version of Farmer Alfalfa (that must be what Disney looked like) stood at a large, Rube Goldberg-like machine, right out of the Industrial Revolution, and he turned out these books on a conveyor belt. That’s all I remember about it, but I do remember it. Obviously, my father was right. My mind was rotting away.

I was finally caught. It was a large, Special issue comic book. “Dennis The Menace Goes To Hawaii.” That was it, and I was punished. Two weeks to bed early without television didn’t stop me, and somehow it seemed alright a few weeks later to read comics again. My comic book craving continued. I didn’t collect them; I just read them and appreciated the drawing. (They were well drawn back then.)

The back cover

So now, every once in a while, I come upon a rarity
on ebay and can’t help myself. A few months ago I found
this Three Little Pigs comic book and had to have it. I didn’t even know there were Three Little Pigs comics! It was published in 1949.

I’m amazed at how successful The Pigs were. The short was released in 1933. Before television how did the legacy live on long enough to keep them popular?

There were only a couple of other shorts with the same characters:
The Big Bad Wolf 1934,
The Three Little Wolves 1936, and
The Practical Pig 1939.

The last, prior to 1949, was a WWII educational short, The Thrifty Pig in 1941.
Eight years later this comic book appeared.
55 years later, I bought a copy. Still rotting my brain.

There were no ads in the magazine back then. These are the
inside covers, front and back.

123
The comic book incorporates other characters from the Disney fold. The witch from Snow White appears when it’s convenient, and Br’er Bear appears.

456
The above are the first six pages of the story. It’s the first of three stories in the 32 page comic book.

14 15
These are the last three pages of the story. I just wanted to give a taste of the comic.

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