Again, The Bear Begins...

As we saw yesterday, The Bear's star began its ascent in the text pages of Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact. We noted how very rare it was to see a "filler" text feature take the cover of the book.

Perhaps i should have mentioned that he did it more than once...?

That was the cover for The Honest Bear (header shown yesterday).
Four issues later, the Bear was on the cover again...
 

...but this time it was to mark his start in comic formatted tales -
 

Viewed through a modern lens, Wong Fu can be viewed as a racist stereotype. But that's obviously not the intent. Instead of mocking as an outsider, the strip seeks to normalize the differences of a culture existing within a larger foreign society. After all - have you ever seen anyone pointing out that Pidgin was a Chinese word for Business to explain the term? Or did they leave you thinking it had to do with birds that many view as winged rats?
It's much more inclusive representation than one might typically find in 1953.

And now i'm feeling guilty for not having provided Chinese Translation panels for Mad Science with Dr. Nick! as they did here.

On a side note - the Bear's language abilities here compared to elsewhere is a good example of why i was so coy originally about whether or not the Bear was an ongoing character. He's really more like a regular actor appearing in multiple stories.

And another odd little note - I believe this was the only story in which the creator goes uncredited. Previous tales were from Ray St. Clair, and subsequent stories came from Eric St. Clair. I guess he was still making up his mind on the change at this point? (Probably not the actual reason why we see no credits here) The art appears to be from Paul Eismann, but there's no confirmation of that.

page art by Paul Eismann (?) from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v8 #s 18-20 (1953)

Finally, The Bear Begins (No, Really)

Okay, let's try this once again, eh? 
We're talking about the odd origins of The Bear as a feature in Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact.

One of the things that was quite unusual about the beginnings of the Bear is that he started as a text feature. And that's how he appeared for his first few years. The Grand Comics Database will tell you that The Bear first appeared in the latter half of volume 5, but that's not accurate. He had his premiere tale late in v.4 -

As you may have noticed, though Postal Regulations only require two pages of text, TC0F&F actually used those pages for more than mere filler and decided they needed three pages every issue.
 
The Bear had several tales in text form before he graduated to comics...
 

The most indicative of his popularity was El Vaquero -
 

This one would seem to show that these stories were quite popular indeed. And not simply because they promoted him from required filler text to comic stories.
After all - when's the last time you saw a comic's text pages take the cover of the book?

That's pretty freakin' amazing, as the saying goes.

Another odd little note - While the comics stories are written by Eric St. Clair, he used the name Ray St. Clair while doing the text stories. 

pages from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v4 #18, v5 #s 12 & 18, v6 #s 10 & 17, v7 #12, v8 #s 7 & 14, and v9 #1 (1946-1951)

Bears In Space?

Sleep still savagely fragmented, and now breathing getting in on the fun. Or lack of breathing, to be more accurate - bad sinuses; allergic to the planet sort of thing. So brain extra scattered, and it's time for my monthly foraging run down the hill. Not going to do a lot of writing at this point. 

Fortunately, we've already got another tale featuring Eric St. Clair's familiar Bear already prepped and ready to go. Here's No Peace For Bears -

That place sure looks better than Jellystone, doesn't it?

page art from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v10 #s 1-4 (1957)