Yogi Bear Weekend Comics, September 1962

Who’d think Huckleberry Hound and Caroline Kennedy would have something in common? Well, they do. They both appeared in the Yogi Bear weekend comic in September 50 years ago. Personally, I think Huck’s funnier, but Caroline is cuter.

The scans of the comics this month aren’t great but you can get the basic idea.



Huck’s come over to Jellystone on September 2nd as Boo Boo practices his baseball swing. I suspect Harvey Eisenberg drew this one. The gag is really set up well in the last three panels. I keep thinking if this were in animation, they’d never cut to a close-up of Yogi catching the ball, they’d just have a running pan then a crash.



The poses are just great in the September 9th comic as a casual fisherman reels in the pic-a-nic basket thieving Yogi. Sneaking. Hat tipping. Strangulation. Really good work. Incident character wives have kerchiefs and little noses in Hanna-Barbera comics.



Interesting that the dialogue of the French swordsman in the September 16th comic isn’t written in dialect. The only indication we get that he’s French is his use of “monsieur.” The seen-through-binoculars layout is a nice variation.



Ranger Smith’s in three of the first four comics in September and in all of them, the final panel has him slapping his hand to his head. The gag in the September 23rd comic would fit one of those cartoons-between-the-cartoons on the TV show.



J.F.K. and his daughter make an appearance in the September 30th comic. Even they know who Yogi Bear is. Very nice layout of the president’s office, with the people to the left, the Capitol to the right and the two separated by a flag (with an eagle ornament on top). The patriotic shield over the cartoon title in the opening panel is a clever idea. No silhouette drawings in this comic.

The Sunday this comic came out, Kennedy was likely not spending time with Caroline, let alone talking to a cartoon bear on the phone. He got little rest that weekend. Kennedy had gone on the radio appealing for calm. He had ordered soldiers with bayonets to escort James Meredith to class at the University of Mississippi on Monday after the state’s governor defied court orders to allow the young man to enroll because he was black. Starting Sunday night, violence erupted for 11 hours in Oxford, Mississippi and two people were killed. The things yelled at Meredith the next day by some fellow students were disgusting. Any humour by the bear from Jellystone was solely needed.