Other Printed Materials

1993 Far Side Cartoon “Dumb Bunny Smart Ass.” Gary Larson. FarWorks. Universal Press Syndicate. Unknown source. The ass is ready "Animal Farm." The reference here is technically not to a fable, but it is close enough! Besides, the expressions if not the cartoon led to one of the best titles I have had for a fable presentation, "Dumb Bunnies and Wise Asses."

2017 Bill and Jeff Keane, “Family Circus.” King Features. Unknown source. The fun here rests on the presumption that every good story is made into a film. Actually, with the book that mother is reading to this precocious child, that turns out to be true!

1998? “Memories.” Bill Keane in the series “Family Circus.” Unknown newspaper. Unknown source. A colored version of this appeared in 1998. The wordplay on “hare” is ever recurrent!

1927 “Bughouse Fables.” 22 newspaper cartoons by Paul Fung and (Clarence “Billy”) De Beck. King Features Syndicate. From Wes Baldwin, Bartow, FL. I learned in researching these cartoons that “bughouse” means “crazy.” Billy De Beck was the creator of Barney Google. This is a typical case of “fable” not referring to the sort of thing associated with the name of Aesop. Since I have come across them, I preserve them here. The basic movement of these cartoons is role reversal, as when a criminal asks a police officer where he can best sell a used car. In the simplest and last of these, a child in his crib smokes a cigar. Fun still 98 years later.

2002 B.C. Johnny Hart. Xerox copy of a four-panel cartoon strip on fables, morals, and “mythical.” Creators Syndicate. Unknown source. This strip explains why careful critics of fables go crazy when people describe them as “you know, myths, fairy tales….”

1984 B.C. “Bad Hare Day.” Johnny Hart. Creators Syndicate. Unknown venue. Unknown source. Yet another play on the word “hare.” Part of the fun here is the way ants live in their below-ground home.

2012 “The Frog and the Scorpion.” Syndicated colored cartoon by Mike Keefe appearing in the Omaha World-Herald’s opinion page on September 10, 2012. Personal find. The three panels of the cartoon tell the traditional fable well. A good trip among supposed friends gets interrupted when the scorpion suddenly kills the frog. Why? “That’s my nature.” So Afghanistan is killing the country (USA) that was bringing it to supposed safety.

2008 Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton as Tortoise and Hare. Gary Varvel. Indianapolis Star. Unknown source. Obama as front-running hare is telling the slow tortoise Clinton to quit when he runs into a solid tree of negative factors. He finishes with “Quit!” just as he is being knocked unconscious. She smiles.

1996 Tom Toles, US News and World Report. Bob Dole and Bill Clinton as Tortoise and Hare. Tom Toles. US News and World Report. 1996. Unknown source. The plodding tortoise wants to talk character as the hare reads Playboy Magazine. The hare answers “Talking got me this far.”

1908 Puck cartoon cover “The Republican Hare and the Democratic Tortoise.” L.M. Glackens. Vol. LXIII, No. 1636. July 8, 1908. 10” x 13.7”. The tortoise says “If that chap only goes to sleep, I’ll win out by a mile.” Viewers may want to notice the tortoise’s hands. The two faces are very well done. Are they Democratic tortoise William Jennings Bryan and Republican hare William Howard Taft? Apparently Taft did not go to sleep!

1887 “Judge” Magazine cover for December 24, 1887. “The Grasshopper and the Ant.” “Bernhard Gillam, with apologies to Vibert.( Vol. 13, No. 323. Unknown source. This piece is a remarkable evidence of the power of tradition. La Fontaine transformed a fable inherited from Aesop. Vibert transformed a fable story into an anti-clerical indictment. Gillam transforms Vibert’s work into political satire. The central figures are remarkably faithful to Gilbert’s painting. The addition of the White House here makes all the difference! Am I correct in assuming that the “industrious ant” is Grover Cleveland? Might Lucius Lamar be the “mugwump grasshopper,” a former Confederate whom Cleveland got onto the supreme court by a bare margin in 1887?

1878 “Moral of the Russo-Turkish War.” Full-page cartoon in Harper’s Weekly, July 13, 1878. Page 553. Unknown source. Do I have my history right that the Ottoman gentlemen with a loan from Great Britain is avoiding danger and has left his Turkish ally to suffer at the hands of the Russian bear? For me, the upshot of this strong cartoon is: readers of Harper’s in 1878 knew this fable of “The Bear and the Two Travelers.” Life has changed since then!