Smokey Bear, A National Treasure!

In 1979 I was a movie usher for the Plitt Theatres in Richardson, Texas and one of the first shows I worked was the War/Comedy "1941" with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. In this movie a Japanese sub is set to attack the coast of California and I thought at the time..."this could never happen" but apparently it did. I should have studied harder in my history class because in early 1942, an Imperial submarine did surface and shelled an oil field near the Los Padres National Forest. Although the overall attack failed, it did bring to light that our firefighters were away at war and we needed a civil defense program to fix this problem. So the the U.S. Forest Service, the Association of State Foresters, and the War Advertising Council joined forces to create the Cooperative Forest Fire Prevention Program to figure out a solution. Later that year, Walt Disney Productions released Bambi and its phenomenal success prompted the CFFP to obtain the rights for a year to use the movie’s characters on a 1943 fire prevention poster. But after the year was up the CFFP needed a new symbol of their own. Starting out, they experimented with a squirrel as the mascot before landing on the idea of using a bear that could stand upright and demonstrate fire safety practices. So on August 9, 1944 Albert Staehle came up with the blue jean chubby bear wearing a ranger hat that became our beloved Smokey Bear. (Not Smokey THE Bear as people often mistakenly call him.) The Smokey Bear Wildfire Prevention campaign was an instant success, making it the longest-running public service advertising campaign in history. (Now in its 80th year.) 

But we all surely remember that 16 page comic "The True Story of Smokey Bear" (If not you can order 100 copies for $47 to teach fire safety to children in the classroom off Smokey's web site. He also has an Instagram and Twitter page.) It tells the story of a big 1950 forest fire in New Mexico’s Capitan Mountains where a rescued bear cub survived by climbing a tree, but suffered severe burns on his paws and hind legs. News about the little black bear quickly spread (like wildfire) throughout New Mexico and across the USA. So seeing a great opportunity, the U.S. Forest Service quickly “adopted” the cub, who was named Smokey and sent to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., as a living symbol of wildfire prevention. The real-life Smokey was such a huge hit with children, that all their letters made the post office give the bear his own zip code (20252). With his passing in 1976 the mascot was buried at the Smokey Bear Historical Park in Capitan, New Mexico. 

If you pull up Smokey Bear on eBay you get over 9400 items for sale! Smokey has appeared in print, radio, and television ads and on stamps, t-shirts, and just about everything else from ashtrays to Funko Pop toys. (Thanks to a 1952 Act of Congress that removed Smokey from the public domain, all licensing revenue is used for wildfire prevention education.) He has been featured in a radio play, songs, and even COMIC BOOKS. Most importantly, he has educated generations of children and adults about wildfire prevention. Hey, but you're thinking this should be about original art right? Well it looks like the first Smokey strip was appearing soon after the war as a one panel public service announcement illustrated by artist Harry Rossoll. I think these advisories were running at least into the 1970s if I'm not mistaken. Then the bear had an early appearance as Smokey the Fire-Preventing Bear Comes to the Rescue of Peter Porkchops, a one page public service announcement that was used in most of Nationals Periodical Publications books in 1949. The Forrest Service put out its own comic in 1950 called Forest Fire (Featuring Smokey the Bear) and was written by Malcolm Ater and illustrated by Jack Sparling and Rudy Wendelin. (Remember that last name.)  

Dell Comics jumped on the bandwagon in 1955 with their Four Color anthology series with issue #653 and had a handful of Smokey Bear comics until 1961. The writers and artist on the books set the stage for future media to follow. Smokey now had a kid, Little Smokey (Not the cocktail weenie), and there is also a raccoon, Specs (Not the liquor store rabbit), Lindy the flying squirrel, Hawkeye the hawk, Spike the porcupine, and Hammer-Head the woodpecker to round out the cast. Some interesting and often weird stories were produced for the anthropomorphic-funny animals acting out stories of carelessness and greed, including a story about two bears who are Communist spies! Morris Gollub did those wonderful painted covers but I could not exactly identify any of the interior artists.  

Next Smokey was picked up by Columbia Features who worked with various licensed properties in the 1950s and 60s. Their approach was to use the characters established by Dell in their Sunday and daily formats and copy the Mark Trail nature strip. They focused on light adventure stories involving ecology, forestry, and wildlife. The strip was credited to "Wes Wood" but I think Paul S. Newman did the scripts with Morris Gollub the artwork. Also a spin-off from the TV cartoon, Smokey Bear had a 13 issue run with Gold Key Comics in 1970 with art by Mike Roy and John Costanza that once again used the established characters from years before. I've also seen Spanish versions and I bet there are more stories of the famous bear in other languages. But really only one man is remembered today as Smokey's "caretaker" for over 30 years, Rudy Wendelin. He created a more human version with Smokey's solemn expression and now carrying his signature shovel. Government posters, postage stamps, first-day covers, television, magazines, and film were all part of Wendelin's Smokey Bear project. And the black bear still lives, as I recently saw him on a huge billboard driving down Interstate 35 in Austin...REMEMBER, ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT WILDFIRES!

The Unknown Soldier Revisited

Signing up for the United States Army together and stationed in the Philippines, two brothers are trapped in their foxhole as the Imperial Army sweep across the islands. Inspired not to lose hope by his older brother who said "one guy can affect the outcome of a whole war! One guy in the right place...at the right time..." before he sacrificed himself on a Japanese grenade to save his younger brother whose face was hideously disfigured from the blast. His tragedy becomes our victory as this one man chose to erase his identity and endure intensive training to become America's top intelligence operative, "The Unknown Soldier". Kanigher and Kubert's war-torn creation appeared first in Our Army at War #168 in June of 1966, before getting his own series in Star-Spangled War Stories #151, in the summer of 1970. This "Man of a Thousand Faces" whose head is always wrapped in heavy bandages, using make-up and latex masks to transforms himself into any individual. Only taking sensitive covert missions behind enemy lines, his only tell, scratching his face where the scars meet under his disguise to give himself away. Such a thorn in the flesh of the Fuhrer, Hitler devised a special Nazi agent, the Black Night, to deal with the lone American. But the Immortal G.I. gets the last laugh as he staged the Fuhrer's "suicide" then disappears to fight another day as the Unknown Soldier!

Korak, Son of Tarzan In The Comics

For just a brief background on the character of Korak, Jack Clayton's first appeared as an infant in the non-Tarzan novel The Eternal Lover (later retitled The Eternal Savage), in which the Ape Man and his family played supporling roles. Baby Jack next shows up in the third Tarzan novel, The Beasts of Tarzan, in which he was kidnapped and taken to Africa. The story of his youth and growth to manhood was told in the fourth book of the series, The Son of Tarzan, in which he returned to Africa and lived in the jungle, taking for the first time the name Korak ("Killer" in the language of the Great Apes). Meriem, the Arab girl Korak rescues from a beating turns out to be a love story in his first true adventure that carried over to the DC comic series for many of the early issues. The two youths run wild in the forest for years before being separated. After many adventures they are re-united and eventually marry. Burroughs later used Korak as a supporting character in the eighth through the tenth entries in the series, Tarzan the Terrible, Tarzan and the Golden Lion, and Tarzan and the Ant Men. The last of those three also briefly mentions Korak and Meriem's young son 'Jackie'. Just as a side note, The Bunduki series by J.T. Edson, was initially authorized by the Edgar Rice Burroughs estate to include Korak and Meriem's granddaughter Dawn as one of two main characters. But after three volumes in 1976, ERB Inc. withdrew Edson's permission to use the Tarzan name in future books and as a result the fourth novel and the short stories do not mention Tarzan or Jane by name. 

Gold Key Comics first published Korak, Son of Tarzan in issues #1-45 from January of 1964 to January of 1972. The early books featured some stellar work by a favorite artist of Edgar Rice Burroughs fans, Russ Manning, often thought to be one of the best ever to represent ERB's characters. Newspaper strip artist Warren Tufts did a few fill in issues in his classic style, before Dan Spiegle took over the artistic chores to finish out most of the series. When National Comics acquired the rights to the Korak series in 1972, they continued the numbering from Gold Key with issue #46-59 (June 1972 to September-October 1975), until it was later renamed The Tarzan Family. The retitled series ran an additional seven issues #60-66 (November-December 1975 - November-December 1976). Both series also included other various Burroughs' characters usually as back up features and reprints from the Gold Key issues. Initially, the DC Korak, Son of Tarzan series featured work from writers Len Wein and Roberl Kanigher and artists Frank Thorne, Murphy Anderson, and Rudy Florese. A fantastic adaptation of "Carson of Venus" written by Len Wein and illustrated by Michael Kaluta was also a short-lived backup featured in issues #46-56. Graced with fantastic covers that only Joe Kubert could produce in all its savage beauty, Korak started out with interior art by one of my favorite DC's artists, Frank Thorne.  

As the whole DC series only lasted twenty issues including the renamed Tarzan Family in that larger anthology format, I now discovered earlier Tarzan reprints from the likes of Russ Manning, and Hal Foster, not to mention new stories and art for Carson of Venus, John Carter of Mars and other delights. They were illustrated by DC's talented stable of artists including Noly Zamora, Gerry Talaoc, Gray Morrow, Jack Sparling, James Sherman, Neal McDonald, and Ernie Chan. Whether learning to speak the ape language in "Tarzan's Jungle Album" or reading the letters and comments The Ape Vine, Korak, Son of Tarzan with the other two Burroughs' DC titles (Tarzan of the Apes and Weird Worlds) were always a favorite of mine, before I discovered the back issue market and the earlier Western/Gold Key issues. Murphy Anderson who worked on Mystery in Space, Hawkman, Superman and other DC titles took over after Thorne's quick departure for five issues, but his sleek streamline style never seemed to fit the character in my opinion after the rough heavy style of Kubert and his protege, Frank Thorne. But when Filipino great, Rudy Florese was chosen to finish out the title, we had another solid illustrator with a beautiful graceful line that also could portrsy a savage undetone I felt missing in Anderson's work, as shown in another wonderful double page splash from Korak' Florese drew many Edgar Rice Burroughs features for DC, mainly over Joe Kubert layouts (providing the savage undertones I like), and also did a handful of chilling horror stories.