Friday 23 April 2010

BRITISH-MADE FIGARO AND PEDRO THE AIRPLANE GAG COMICS (1949)

Besides the 'Danny the Lamb' strip, two other British-made gag comics published in Britain's Mickey Mouse once this comics magazine was re-enlarged to 12 pages beginning with no. 499 (dated Sept. 3rd, 1949) were a Figaro strip and 'The Adventures of Little Pedro', both of which were apparently short-lived. Figaro had debutted in the animated feature Pinocchio (1940) as the cat of the wooden-boy's father Gepetto. The Figaro strip in Mickey Mouse (the above scan is from no. 499 and the below ones from 500 and 505) had come at the tail end of a resurgence of the popularity of the feline character when he had starred in a series of six cartoon shorts (as Minnie's cat) between 1943-49 (most of these were adapted to comics or illustrated text story formats published in the US Walt Disney's Comics & Stories). Decades later, he would also star in a series of one-page gag comics in continental Europe between 1999-2001.Pedro the Airplane was the star of one of the animation segments of the feature-length compilation movie Saludos Amigos (1943).In the same year as 'The Adventures of Little Pedro' was published in Mickey Mouse (the above scans are from no. 499, 500 and 500), he had also co-starred with Dumbo the Flying Elephant in a 9-pages comics published in no. 234 of Walt Disney's Comics & Stories. However, he had earlier appeared in one cover of the British Mickey Mouse (no. 398, dated Nov. 6th, 1945), making his first-ever appearance in the cover of a comics magazine anywhere in the world:

As a bonus, I also post a Pedro cover from Turkey, the no. 6 (dated May 12th, 1958) of the 'special issue' series of Vak Vak Kardeş:

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