Before The Bear came to stay at Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact, there was Booby Bear hanging out with Perky Penguin. For extra Fun - the strip was drawn (and written?) by Jim Mooney. Mooney is one of those guys who seemed "fresh" enough to my friends and i back in the '60s & '70s that we never realized just how long he'd been around in comics. These come to us from 1946 and he'd already been drawing comics for a half dozen years by then.
Perky Penguin And Booby Bear was a short feature, only two pages per. It started running in the second year (the first full year) of TCoF&F, and had 9 episodes that year. (#6 is my fave) Here are the first year's worth of the strip -
As noted above, my fave for this year is watching Jim Mooney getting meta and having fun with 'reality' almost 75 years ago...
Over the next few years, Perky & Booby returned for another 9 or 10 strips (plus one more a decade later, but that was a reprint). Booby Bear may have been there before The Bear, but he wasn't there nearly as long. Perhaps because Mooney was doing a lot of work for DC and proto-Marvel at the time. He was drawing Captain America and Batman & Robin, among others - so he did get pretty busy. Or maybe they just found out what else Jim liked to draw, and figured he wasn't a good fit. (Probably not that last one)
Or maybe somebody realized that Perky Booby wasn't a great combo for a Catholic comic? (And Jim walked off laughing at how long he got away with it?)
The World may never know...
Perky Penguin And Booby Bear was a short feature, only two pages per. It started running in the second year (the first full year) of TCoF&F, and had 9 episodes that year. (#6 is my fave) Here are the first year's worth of the strip -
As noted above, my fave for this year is watching Jim Mooney getting meta and having fun with 'reality' almost 75 years ago...
Over the next few years, Perky & Booby returned for another 9 or 10 strips (plus one more a decade later, but that was a reprint). Booby Bear may have been there before The Bear, but he wasn't there nearly as long. Perhaps because Mooney was doing a lot of work for DC and proto-Marvel at the time. He was drawing Captain America and Batman & Robin, among others - so he did get pretty busy. Or maybe they just found out what else Jim liked to draw, and figured he wasn't a good fit. (Probably not that last one)
Or maybe somebody realized that Perky Booby wasn't a great combo for a Catholic comic? (And Jim walked off laughing at how long he got away with it?)
The World may never know...
page art by Jim Mooney from Treasure Chest Of Fun & Fact v2 #s 1-4, 6, 8, 16, 17, & 19 (1946, 1947)
