AMORAL PINOCCHIO GAG (1950)

In an earlier post (on April 26th, 2010) in this blog, I had covered British-made Pinocchio gag comics run in Britain's Mickey Mouse Weekly between 1949-53. The plots of most of these are didacticly moralistic as they involve the mishaps Pinocchio has to endure when he fails to act 'properly' as dictated by Gepetto and/or Jiminy Cricket. However, the gag from no. 511 (dated Feb. 18th, 1950) is rather unusual as seen in the above scan...

PINOCCHIO ON THE COVERS OF BRITAIN'S MICKEY MOUSE WEEKLY IN 1940

While Pinocchio had made its British debut on the cover of Mickey Mouse Xmas Special published in late 1939, the puppet-boy made its first appearance on the covers of the regular Mickey Mouse Weekly with no. 217 (dated March 30th, 1940) which marked the start of the reformatted serialization of the US 'Pinocchio' Sunday newspaper comics in this British magazine. The artwork of the cover was by Victor Ibbetson who had been on the staff of MMW since its early days in 1936 and was responsible for several covers after the main cover artist Wilfred Haughton left circa 1939 (Prior to his employment in MMW, he had worked in animated short cartoons by Roland Davies based on Davies' newspaper strip 'Come On, Steve'.) As can be seen in the above scan, Ibbetson's rendition of Mickey Mouse is rather substandard, not to mention the awkwardness in the sizes of the featured characters.
On the other hand, the below cover from no. 226 (June 1st, 1940), whose artist is unknown, is quite good-looking in terms of art, and the design, with the panels of the featured Donald Duck strip pasted on the fish bowl, is imaginative.

This copy was recently sold on ebay for app. 17 Br. pounds (app. 26 US dlrs); alas, having gone almost bankrupt after a summer vacation, I couldn't afford to top the highest bid... However, I still dared to snatch the below no. 228 (June 15th, 1940) for app. 13 Br. pounds (app. 21 US dlrs):

In my opinion, this is one of the most creative MMW covers ever with the very meaningful integration of the featured strip into the main illustration. The artist is again unknown, but I suspect Basil Reynolds' hand as he is known to have made similar cover works, with diegetic integration of strips into his own art, in post-war MMW issues.
The below cover of no. 235 (Aug. 3rd, 1940), on the other hand, is average and might again be the work of Ibbetson:

By the end of October 1940, both Reynolds and Ibbetson would be drafted for the 2d World War and the British art chores of MMW would be handed over to Ernest Richardson, the younger brother of Charles Richardson, a collaborator of Ibbetson from his animation days.

The info on the backgrounds of the artists is derived from Basil Reynolds' memoirs, which were kindly made accessable to me by John Wigmans.

MEXICAN PINOCCHIO LOBBY CARDS

PINOCCHIO CROSSWORD PUZZLE (1940)

Above scan is from the vol. 5 no. 5 (dated Feb. 1940) of the US Mickey Mouse Magazine.

TURKISH PINOCCHIO VINYL RECORD

This is a Turkish "children's fairy tale" vinyl record (possibly from the late 1960s or early 1970s) of Pinocchio. It's not a song record, but features an audio renditio of the tale of Pinocchio.

BRITISH-MADE PINOCCHIO COVER GAG (1949)

In a below post on April 26th, I had covered British-made Pinocchio gag strip series ran in the color central pages of Britain's Mickey Mouse Weekly between 1949-53. Recently, I've come across this issue, no. 483 (dated Jan. 22d, 1949) which features a British-made Pinocchio gag comis on its cover, predating the start of the series by about half a year.

TRACED PINOCCHIO COMICS IN TURKISH CHILDREN'S MAGAZINE FROM 1945-46

Above scan is of the cover of no. 24 (dated Apr. 24th, 1946) of a little-known Turkish children's weekly magazine titled Şen Çocuk [Merry Kid], showcasing Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket alongside Laurel & Hardy as well as a bunch of Turkish comics characters featured in that magazine. Şen Çocuk had began to serialize the first comics adaptation of the feature-length Disney animation movie Pinocchio (1940), originally run in the US newspapers in 1939-40 as a Sunday half-page comics on the eve of the movie's theatrical release, from its first issue (Nov. 14th, 1945) onwards.

As can be seen from a comparison of the first installements in Şen Çocuk (above scan) and the US newspapers (below image, taken from the outducks archive), the Turkish magazine had produced a traced version with panels of reduced length in most cases, causing a loss of detail and overall decrease in the beauty of the original art. The practice of tracing would be very common in cheap Turkish comics publications of the post-war era.

The first issue of Şen Çocuk had also promised a locally-made Mickey Mouse comics for the coming issues, but that promise wouldn't materialize in the next 23 issues and I don't know if the magazine continued publication beyond the first 24 issues available in my collection.

By the way, the art in this promo for the promised Mickey Mouse comics is a reworking of the cover art of no. 8 (dated March 28th, 1936) of Britain's Mickey Mouse Weekly.

VINTAGE EUROPEAN PINOCCHIO POSTERS

Four Pinocchio posters are among an an amazing lot of vintage European movie posters currently on sale at ebay from a Spanish seller. The most interesting is undoubtedly the above poster from Yugoslavia. The below posters are from Holland, Denmark and Spain:

BRITISH-MADE PINOCCHIO GAG COMICS

The longest-running British-made gag comics series to start in Britain's Mickey Mouse comics magazine would be 'Pinocchio'. It started in no. 495 (dated July 9th, 1949) as a single-row strip spread over the top rims of the two central pages (scan above is broken into two due to limitations of my scanner) after the end of 'The Reluctant Dragon' strip. Soon, it would be reformatted as in the below scan from no. 500:

Later, it would be reformatted once again, this time as two-columns, and continue until 1953.

In 1975, another apparently British-made Pinocchio gag comics series would appear in The Wonderful World of Disney magazine under the title of 'The Playful Pranks of Pinocchio'. The Wonderful World of Disney Annual 1977 also included an installement of 'The Playful Pranks of Pinocchio', whose original art scans are below: