Bill Peckmann &Books &Comic Art &Disney 07 Feb 2013 04:56 am
Snow White – the original strip
Well involved with the two J.B. Kaufman books on Snow White, and about to re-read Mike Barrier‘s writing on the making of the feature, per his book, Hollywood Cartoons, you can be sure that a lot of Snow White material is going to comve your way via this blog.
Bill Peckmann offered to send the initial strip done to coincide with the release of the feature, so thank you, Mr. Peckmann, I couldn’t be happier than to offer this.
Disney had, since 1932, a Silly Symphony comic strip that ran weekly. With the release of Snow White, the strip’s regular writers were replaced with writer, Merrill De Maris, pencils artist, Hank Porter, and the inker, Bob Grant. The strip continued for a full 20 weeks, beginning on December 12, 1937.
There are noticeable differences between the story in the strip and the released film. The movie’s story, from the start, had a sequence called “Prince Buckethead” which lasted in the original storyline until the last months in making the film. Then the sequence found itself dropped from the film, but, oddly, reappears in this comic strip version. It’s a game the Prince plays was supposed to play with Snow White at the beginning of the movie. The Prince also is imprisoned in the original story in the caverns of the castle; the same is true here. Other things like the huntsman having the name, “Humbert,” return to the story. I’m curious as to who made these decisions to keep the noticeable differences. Many versions of the stirp appeared over the years and in many languages. You can check them out here.
Without wasting more time, here’s the original strip.
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Thanks, again, to Bill Peckmann for putting this all together.
on 07 Feb 2013 at 3:26 pm 1.the Gee said …
One, it is great that you the site of that glitch. There’s been a lot of swell posts since then. Thanks.
Two, it is great to see this comic strip.
So, did other features have a lead-in strip that ran for a limited time or was “Snow White†the first one?
How large was it printed originally?
I ran across this size comparison of “The Gumps†strip from 1928 and these would probably look even more impressive at a bigger size.
As something unrelated, that might of interest:
A piece about Gil Kane including an impressive description of what he tries to achieve in his art.
There’s a lot of purple prose in the entire post. But, it is interesting to see how an artist describes what value they bring to making art.
on 07 Feb 2013 at 3:28 pm 2.the Gee said …
[slightly edited to fix a sentence and to see if the comments are working]
One, it is great that you the site of that glitch. There’s been a lot of swell posts since then. Thanks.
Two, it is great to see this comic strip.
So, did other features have a lead-in strip that ran for a limited time or was “Snow White†the first one? With live-action adventure films, for instance? [I know there were the Classics Illustrated ? -like movie adaptions that came out later.]
How large was this strip printed originally?
I ran across this size comparison of “The Gumps†strip from 1928 and these would probably look even more impressive at a bigger size.
As something unrelated, that might of interest:
A piece about Gil Kane including an impressive description of what he tries to achieve in his art.
There’s a lot of purple prose in the entire post. But, it is interesting to see how an artist describes what value they bring to making art.
on 14 Feb 2014 at 11:00 am 3.1937Fan said …
Thank you for posting the full strip – how wonderful!