There is a place in the cartoon part of my brain where the dream-stories of Fantastica take place. I am trying to get my goofiness all lined up to produce a more finished cartoon saga using all the goof-gas and whooey that I have stored up in that squirrel-den I call my mind. I prepared a setting already… a single set that already showed you what Animal Town looks like, where all the people are anthropomorphized animals. Here it is again to refresh your memory.
Animal Town is just one place in the larger Toon World of my silly imaginings. There are many more. I intend to draw these toons in what I call “Clown Noir”… that is, the drawings will be in pen and ink, filmed in black and white and red… especially red for noses. Got the idea? I hope I haven’t spoiled the joke already. Spoiled jokes are kinda like spoiled milk; they make you want to put a clothespin on your nose (and that kinda hurts, so it becomes harder to laugh.)
I also wanted to introduce a few of the denizens of Fantastica. (That’s denizens, not Dennis’ sons, because I used to think all the people that lived in one place somehow became the children of Dennis, but then Dennis told me that just ain’t so!)
Rugs Rabbity is a class of cartoon character I like to call a hero. I know what it looks like. I probably did steal the character from Warner Brothers, but filtered through my dreams Rugs becomes something else other than pure Bugs. He is, after all, a parody of a parody, and when that turns all parrot-y then we are looking at un-punny puns. Makes you want to put another clothespin on your nose, doesn’t it?”
And here are two more parrots that I hope you will recognize and copyright lawyers will not. They are much more insane and destructive than their counterparts from Mr. Prizney.
But cartoon dreams are not all animalized, and not all borrowed from elsewhere. I am capable of making up my own characters too that don’t satirize and plagiarize and turn me into a toon-thief. If you visit Crumpwell’s Wild West Ranch, there are one-of-a-kind characters that you might meet there too.
Flash Crumpwell is a hero character also. But unlike Rugs, he is a little dim in the light-bulb-lighting department.
Handsome Harry has always got his face covered somehow, because, after all, if you are so good-looking that women always faint at your feet and men always shoot you on sight, life can become a little too interesting. All in all, as a villain, he would rather just blow stuff up!
Princess Doe-Eyes is the real ruler of the Bignose Tribe, because, after all, she has a tiny nose, and her father is chief because his nose is the biggest in the tribe, but he can’t really see over it or around it… and when you’re in charge, that can kinda get in the way. Davy Crickett is an Indian fighter from the old days, but he cannot bring himself to fight with the Princess or her Bignose Tribe. He much prefers to play with her.
And we must certainly not forget the clowns. Here are a couple of Clown villains (as if we need more reasons to be afraid of clowns!)
The Messmaster is a Clown who loves a good pie fight. He will whirl and hurl and get you in the face with a strawberry or blueberry or Ray Bradbury pie (those Sci-Fi pies can get particularly messy and smelly… Clothespin number three… and it is getting hard to breathe.)
Badnose is an even more evil Clown bad-guy. I can’t begin to explain why his nose is so bad.
Lastly, let me share a scene with you from the rough draft of The Clown Town Caper, a detective story starring Detective Squiggy and Little Mickey (my dream-self).
Catch a Falling Star 
Milt Caniff
My 1967 Captain Action Steve Canyon action figure.
I have always been a deeply devoted fan of the Sunday funnies. And one of the reasons I read the comics religiously was the work of Milt Caniff. His comic strips, Terry and the Pirates, Male Call, and Steve Canyon set a standard for the age of action comics and adventure strips.
I read his comics in the 1960’s and 1970’s and always it was Steve Canyon. But this, of course, was not his first strip. I would discover in my college years the wonders of Terry and the Pirates. When Caniff started the strip before World War II, he set it in China, but actually knew nothing about China. So he did research. He learned about people who became oriental hereditary pirate families and organizations. He learned to draw authentic Chinese settings. His comedy relief characters, Connie and the Big Stoop, were rather racist parodies of Chinamen and were among the reasons that the original strip had to mature into his later work in Steve Canyon. But perhaps the most enduring character from the strip was the mysterious pirate leader known as the Dragon Lady.
Steve Canyon is a fascinating study in the comic arts. When he left the Terry and the Pirates strip in 1946, it went on without him. It was owned by the Chicago Tribune-New York Daily News distribution syndicate, not Caniff himself. Steve Canyon would change that. He created it and owned it himself, making Caniff one of only two or three comics artists who actually owned their own creations. Canyon started out as a civilian pilot, but enlisted in the Air Force for the Korean War and would remain in the Air Force for the remainder of the strip. Some of the characters in the strip were based on real people. His long-time friend Charlie Russhon, a former photographer and Lieutenant in the Air Force who went on to be a technical adviser for James Bond films was the model for the character Charlie Vanilla, the man with the ice cream cone. Madame Lynx was based on the femme fatale spy character played by Illona Massey in the 1949 Marx Brothers’ movie Love Happy. Caniff designed Pipper the Piper after John Kennedy and Miss Mizzou after Marilyn Monroe.
I am not the only cartoonist who was taken with the work of Milt Caniff. The effects of his ground-breaking work can be seen to influence the works of comic artists like Jack Kirby, Bob Kane, John Romita Sr., and Doug Wildey. If you are anything like the comic book nut I am, than you are impressed by that list, even more so if I listed everyone he influenced. Milt Caniff was a cartoonists’ cartoonist. He was one of the founders of the National Cartoonists’ Society and served two terms as its president in 1948 and 1949. He is also a member of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame.
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Tagged as comic art, comic strips, Milt Caniff, Steve Canyon, Terry and the Pirates