Hello everyone, I'm Andrew and I’m pretty surprised that the first big comic of year is about a corny old cartoon character from 1959.
Whaddya say to that? Whaddya say to THAT?
But that’s exactly what writer Mark Russell and artist Mike Feehan have accomplished with their new DC miniseries:
‘Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles.’
Russell made a name for himself with his brilliant comic-book reboot of ‘The Flintstones,’
If you haven't read it, please go add it to your list, it's fantastic.
and now he’s reinvented Snagglepuss as a gay New York playwright during the height of Cold War McCarthyism.
So how did Yogi Bear’s second second-banana make his way to the printed page?
How has Mark Russell brought depth and complexity to a character that’s little more than a catchphrase?
And what kind of animal is he, anyway?
He’s a pink lion.
Okay, that’s one mystery solved,
but there’s plenty more to unpack as we try to figure out
Why Snagglepuss is the Perfect Comic Character for 2018
We spoke with Mark at New York Comic Con, and we’re gonna get back to him in a little bit,
but for those of you who don’t get Boomerang, a channel filled with classic cartoons,
let me answer your biggest burning question:
Who the Hell is Snagglepuss?
Heavens to Murgatroyd!
An early version of the toothy thespian was introduced as Snaggletooth in an episode of ‘Quick Draw McGraw.’
It was a Hanna Barbera cartoon where there was a horse who was also a cowboy...
It's low-brow humor, but it's oddly satisfying.
Ole! Kabong!
Like most Hanna Barbera creations,
S.P.’s voice and demeanor was based on a classic Hollywood character actor,
Oh, I implore ya! Gimme but a morsel! A tidbit!
in this case, Burt Lahr, best known for his role as the Cowardly Lion in ‘The Wizard of Oz.’
What did ya do that for?! I didn't bite him!
No, but you tried to!
His wheezy, over-the-top delivery was a perfect fit for the feline who dreams of the stage,
and they even borrowed S.P.’s big catchphrase from his role in a 1944 film called ‘Meet the People.’
Heavens to Murgatroyd!
That good? I dunno.
But Lahr wasn’t happy with voice actor Daws Butler’s homage.
When Snagglepuss became a spokesman for Kellogg’s cereal, Lahr sued.
I guess he was more of a Cinnamon Toast Crunch kinda guy.
Ohh, cinnamon!
As a result, Kellogg’s had to slap a disclaimer at the end of every ad,
Which means in an era where voiceover artists always went uncredited,
Daws Butler got his name front and center, even if it took a lawsuit to do it.
Exit, stage left!
Litigation is one of Hollywood’s uglier aspects,
but showbusiness is at the very core of Snagglepuss’s character,
He’s oviously got a theatrical background, all of his references are to theater.
Like, 'exit, stage left' is a theater reference. 'Heavens to Murgatroyd' is a reference to Gilbert and Sullivan.
He's got this theatrical background, and to me, he just always struck me.
He dresses very dapper, his closest analogue would be a Southern Gothic playwright like Tennesee Williams.
But before he could start on ‘Exit Stage Left,’ Mark had to establish himself as one of the most insightful and innovative voices in modern comics.
So let's talk a little bit more about him.
What about creator Mark Russell?
Russell’s first big work was a modernized cartoon version of the Bible called ‘God is Disappointed in You.’
It stripped away the arcane language and lengthy genealogy discussions,
and rewrote the Good Book in a way that make it both readable and funny at the same time.
God slammed the Garden gate shut forever. "Go have your children somewhere else! They'll probably turn out to be fruit thieves, too!"
And that's the story of Original Sin.
Despite the controversial subject matter, Mark’s book didn’t cause as much of a stir...
It's funny, I wrote a book about the bible, and people got more upset by what I did to ‘The Flintstones.'
As a followup to his DC debut 'Prez,' Russell and artist Steve Pugh recreated the Flintstones as
A Truly Modern Stone Age Family
In Mark Russell’s ‘Flintstones,’
Fred and Barney are war veterans who use ‘yabba dabba doo’ as a mantra to help them cope with their PTSD.
Wilma is a frustrated artist,
And the unappreciated animal appliances are recast as sympathetic, intelligent characters enslaved by a world they don’t understand.
Also, Barney and Betty have a whole side-arc where they're infertile and they have to adopt Bam Bam.
It's crazy, there's so much crazy stuff to unpack in this series.
but Russell’s take on the town of Bedrock is equal parts touching and thought-provoking,
'The Flintstones' and Bedrock is really the story of civilization, the first in the world.
All civilizations are built on the people who are no longer there, the
people who were cleared out one way or another to make way for civilization.
That’s the original sin of all civilization, I couldn’t imagine Bedrock forming without having blood on its hands.
‘The Flintstones’ tackles topics ranging from gay marriage:
Marriage has only been around for about, 10,000 years tops, but humans have been around for 120,000 years.
So what is natural then? We only find things immoral because they weren’t around when we were kids, because they’re new.
Marriage was introduced 10,000 years ago, it probably freaked people out because they weren’t used to it
to income inequality:
There’s a scene in ‘Flintstones’ where Fred spends all day making this massive pile of rocks and boulders,
And then goes to Mr. Slate to get paid and and he puts an identical shape of pebbles in front of him.
This is what economics is. You create a mountain of wealth and get a tiny cone of pebbles.
and does it without ever sounding preachy,
or giving up what made these characters great in the first place.
They're not blank slates, they have backstories imbued in them, you just need to sort of bring them out.
Treating the characters as 3-dimensional human beings.
So what happens to a six-foot tall pink lion under Mark’s insightful eye?
Lyla Lion kinda acts as his beard, they have this understanding where t’s a sham marriage that lets him live his secret life but allows him operate openly as a heterosexual married man.
That causes a lot of the conflict and tension in the story, because he’s in love with another man.
Lyla knows and understands, but it creates internal conflict in him. His art is about finding the authentic soul of human beings, and yet he as the artist can never truly be authentic.
I did a lot of research about that, about the execution of the Rosenbergs, the hydrogen bomb testing that was going back and forth between the U.S. and the Soviet Union at the beginning of the thermonuclear arms race.
Most of my research was about the world that Snagglepuss would be inhabiting at this time, not the past cartoons which I'm trying to deviate from and create my own thing.
which keep us from making changes we need in order to survive.
And I'm not talking about 'Forces.' We don't talk about 'Forces.'
‘Exit Stage Left’ is set in 1953 New York City, where all eyes are on a successful young playwright named Snagglepuss.
He has the world at his fingertips, but he knows it will never accept who he really is.
He’s married to the actress Lyla Lion. They have an understanding. He’s gay, but in 1953 New York. So he got to live a double life.
In the first issue, we see S.P. cap off another sellout performance with a trip to the landmark Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Villiage,
where he reunites with his secret love, Pablo.
Pablo is a Cuban refugee who fled Batista’s regime,
only to find an America that’s slowly sinking into authoritarianism.
Snagglepuss seems dismissive of his partner’s fears,
but soon the House Unamerican Activities Committee starts sniffing around.
S.P. is caught up in the real life witch-hunt that ruined dozens of lives through blacklisting, bullying, and blackmail.
Most of my research wasn’t watching old cartoons, it was reading about HUAC trials. He runs
afoul of the federal government and they try to destroy him. The McCarthy trials, basically.
The world Snagglepuss inhabits is a dreary, paranoid, intolerant mess,
far from the idyllic way some people envision the past.
But our nostalgia can often cloud our judgement, and prevent us from making progress.
Our greatest crime as a species often times is nostalgia. We remember things the way we imagined them, and we expect things to stay that way.
We just wrapped up a year marked by a President who’s drastically reshaping the power and prestige the office once held,
a 'Star Wars' movie that tore down the saga’s mythology to make way for fresh new faces and ideas,
and a ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ game that was actually good.
We live in a time where we have to drastically re-think our preconceived notions of how the world works,
from politics to pop culture.
That’s why Mark Russell can take these shallow, cartoon catchphrase machines and reveals the hidden depths beneath.
It’s so we can stop looking at the past with rose-colored glasses,
and understand its uglier parts so in order to build a better future.
That’s what ‘Snagglepuss’ is all about,
and why it’s the perfect comic for 2018.