Donald Duck
Donald Duck is a cartoon character created in 1934 at Walt Disney Productions. Donald is an anthropomorphic white duck with a yellow-orange bill and feet, he wears a sailor shirt and cap with a bow tie. Donald is most famous for his semi-intelligible speech and his mischievous and temperamental personality. Along with his friend Mickey Mouse, Donald is one of the most popular Disney characters and was included in TV Guide's list of the 50 greatest cartoon characters of all time in 2002, he has appeared in more films than any other Disney character, is the most published comic book character in the world outside of the superhero genre. Donald Duck rose to fame with his comedic roles in animated cartoons. Donald's first appearance was in 1934 in The Wise Little Hen, but it was his second appearance in Orphan's Benefit which introduced him as a temperamental comic foil to Mickey Mouse. Throughout the next two decades, Donald appeared in over 150 theatrical films, several of which were recognized at the Academy Awards.
In the 1930s, he appeared as part of a comic trio with Mickey and Goofy and was given his own film series in 1937 starting with Don Donald. These films introduced Donald's love interest Daisy Duck and included his three nephews Huey and Louie. After the 1956 film Chips Ahoy, Donald appeared in educational films before returning to theatrical animation in Mickey's Christmas Carol, his most recent appearance in a theatrical film was 1999's Fantasia 2000. Donald has appeared in direct-to-video features such as Mickey, Goofy: The Three Musketeers, television series such as Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, video games such as QuackShot. Beyond animation, Donald is known for his appearances in comics. Donald was most famously drawn by Al Taliaferro, Carl Barks, Don Rosa. Barks, in particular, is credited for expanding the "Donald Duck universe", the world in which Donald lives, creating many additional characters such as Donald's rich uncle Scrooge McDuck. Donald has been a popular character in Europe in Nordic countries where his weekly magazine Donald Duck & Co was the most popular comics publication from the 1950s to 2009.
Donald is very popular in Italy, where he is major character in many comics in which his juvenile version Paperino Paperotto and his superhero alter-ego Paperinik were created. The origins of Donald Duck's name may have been inspired by Australian cricket legend Donald Bradman. In 1932 Bradman and the Australian team were touring North America and he made the news after being dismissed for a duck against New York West Indians. Walt Disney was in the process of creating a friend for Mickey Mouse when he read about Bradman's dismissal in the papers and decided to name the new character "Donald Duck". Voice performer Clarence Nash auditioned for Walt Disney Studios when he learned that Disney was looking for people to create animal sounds for his cartoons. Disney was impressed with Nash's duck imitation and chose him to voice the new character. Besides, during that period Mickey Mouse had lost some of his edge since becoming a role model towards children, so Disney wanted to create a character to portray some of the more negative character traits that could no longer be bestowed on Mickey.
Disney came up with Donald's iconic attributes including his sailor suit. While Dick Huemer and Art Babbit were first to animate Donald, Dick Lundy is credited for developing him as a character; the character is noted for his distinctive, only intelligible voice, developed by Donald's original performer, Clarence Nash. The voice actor produces sounds by forcing air through the mouth using the muscles of the cheek, rather than from the lungs as in typical speech. Nash reputedly developed the voice as that of a "nervous baby goat" before Walt Disney interpreted it as sounding like a duck. Donald's two dominant personality traits are his fiery-temper and his upbeat attitude to life. Many Donald shorts start with Donald in a happy mood, without a care in the world until something comes along and spoils his day, his rage is a great cause of suffering in his life. On multiple occasions, it has caused him to lose competitions. There are times when he fights to keep his temper in check, he sometimes succeeds in doing so temporarily, but he always returns to his normal angry self in the end.
Donald's vicious nature has its advantages, however. While at times it is a hindrance, a handicap, it has helped him in times of need; when faced with a threat of some kind, for example, Pete's attempts to intimidate him, he is scared, but his fear is replaced by anger. As a result, instead of running away, he fights—with ghosts, mountain goats, giant kites, the forces of nature. More than not, when he fights, he comes out on top. Donald is something of a prankster, as a result, he can sometimes come across as a bit of a bully in the way he sometimes treats Chip n' Dale and Huey and Louie, his nephews; as the animator Fred Spencer has put it: The Duck gets a big kick out of imposing on other people or annoying them, but he loses his temper when the tables are turned. In other words, he can dish it out. However, with a few exceptions, there is any harm in Donald's pranks, he never intends to hurt anyone, whenever his pranks go too far, he is always apologetic. In Truant Officer Donald, for example, when he is tricked into believing he has accidentally killed Huey and Louie, he shows great regret, blaming himself.
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Scrooge McDuck
Scrooge McDuck is a fictional character created in 1947 by Carl Barks as a work-for-hire for The Walt Disney Company. Scrooge is an elderly Scottish anthropomorphic Pekin duck with a yellow-orange bill and feet, he wears a red or blue frock coat, top hat, pince-nez glasses, spats. He is portrayed in animations as speaking with a Scottish accent. Named after Ebenezer Scrooge from the 1843 novel A Christmas Carol, Scrooge is an wealthy business magnate and self-proclaimed "adventure-capitalist" whose dominant character trait is his thrift, he is brother to Matilda McDuck and Hortense McDuck, the maternal uncle of Della and Donald Duck, the grand-uncle of Huey and Louie, a usual financial backer of Gyro Gearloose. Within the context of the fictional Duck universe, he is the world's richest person, he is an oil tycoon, owner of the largest mining concerns, many factories to operate different activities. His "Money Bin"—and indeed Scrooge himself—are used as a humorous metonyms for great wealth in popular culture around the world.
McDuck was characterized as a greedy miser and antihero, but in appearances he has been portrayed as a charitable and thrifty hero and explorer. He was created by Barks as an antagonist for Donald Duck, first appearing in the 1947 Four Color story Christmas on Bear Mountain. However, McDuck's popularity grew so large. In 1952 he was given his own comic book series, called Uncle Scrooge, which still runs today. Scrooge was most famously drawn by his creator Carl Barks, by Don Rosa. Like other Disney franchise characters, Scrooge McDuck's international popularity has resulted in literature, translated into other languages. Comics have remained Scrooge's primary medium, although he has appeared in animated cartoons, most extensively in the television series DuckTales and its reboot as the main protagonist of both series. Scrooge McDuck, maternal uncle of established character Donald Duck, made his first named appearance in the story Christmas on Bear Mountain, published in Dell's Four Color Comics #178, December 1947, written and drawn by artist Carl Barks.
His appearance may have been based on a similar-looking, Scottish "thrifty saver" Donald Duck character from the 1943 propaganda short The Spirit of'43. In Christmas on Bear Mountain, Scrooge was a bearded, reasonably wealthy old duck, visibly leaning on his cane, living in isolation in a "huge mansion". Scrooge's misanthropic thoughts in this first story are quite pronounced: "Here I sit in this big lonely dump, waiting for Christmas to pass! Bah! That silly season when everybody loves everybody else! A curse on it! Me—I'm different! Everybody hates me, I hate everybody!"Barks reflected, "Scrooge in'Christmas on Bear Mountain' was only my first idea of a rich, old uncle. I had made him too weak. I discovered on that I had to make him more active. I could not make an old guy like that do the things I wanted him to do." Barks would claim that he only intended to use Scrooge as a one-shot character, but decided Scrooge could prove useful for motivating further stories. Barks continued to experiment with Scrooge's personality over the next four years.
Scrooge's second appearance, in The Old Castle's Secret, had Scrooge recruiting his nephews to search for a family treasure hidden in Dismal Downs, the McDuck family's ancestral castle, built in the middle of Rannoch Moor in Scotland. Foxy Relations was the first story where Scrooge is called by his title and catchphrase "The Richest Duck in the World"; the story, Voodoo Hoodoo, first published in Dell's Four Color Comics #238, August 1949, was the first story to hint at Scrooge's past with the introduction of two figures from it. The first was Foola Zoola, an old African sorcerer and chief of the Voodoo tribe who had cursed Scrooge, seeking revenge for the destruction of his village and the taking of his tribe's lands by Scrooge decades ago. Scrooge admitted to his nephews that he had used an army of "cutthroats" to get the tribe to abandon their lands, in order to establish a rubber plantation; the event was placed by Carl Barks in 1879 during the story, but it would be retconned by Don Rosa to 1909 to fit with Scrooge's later-established personal history.
The second figure was the organ of the sorcerer's curse and revenge. He had sought Scrooge for decades before reaching Duckburg, mistaking Donald for Scrooge. Barks, with a note of skepticism found in his stories, explained the zombie as a living person who has never died, but has somehow gotten under the influence of a sorcerer. Although some scenes of the story were intended as a parody of Bela Lugosi's White Zombie, the story is the first to not only focus on Scrooge's past but touch on the darkest aspects of his personality. Trail of the Unicorn, first published in February 1950, introduced Scrooge's private zoo. One of his pilots had managed to photograph the last living unicorn, which lived in the Indian part of the Himalayas. Scrooge offered a reward to competing cousins Donald Duck and Gladstone Gander, which would go to the one who captured the unicorn for Scrooge's collection of animals; this was the story that introduced Scrooge's private airplane. Barks would establish Scrooge as an experienced aviator.
Donald had been shown as a skilled aviator, as was Flintheart Glomgold in stories. In comparison, Huey and Louie were depicted as only having taken flying lessons in the story Frozen Gold
Benito Mussolini
Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician and journalist, the leader of the National Fascist Party. He ruled Italy as Prime Minister from 1922 to 1943. Known as Il Duce, Mussolini was the founder of Italian Fascism. In 1912, Mussolini had been a leading member of the National Directorate of the Italian Socialist Party, but was expelled from the PSI for advocating military intervention in World War I, in opposition to the party's stance on neutrality. Mussolini served in the Royal Italian Army during the war until he was wounded and discharged in 1917. Mussolini denounced the PSI, his views now centering on nationalism instead of socialism and founded the fascist movement which came to oppose egalitarianism and class conflict, instead advocating "revolutionary nationalism" transcending class lines. Following the March on Rome in October 1922, Mussolini became the youngest Prime Minister in Italian history until the appointment of Matteo Renzi in February 2014. After removing all political opposition through his secret police and outlawing labor strikes and his followers consolidated their power through a series of laws that transformed the nation into a one-party dictatorship.
Within five years, Mussolini had established dictatorial authority by both legal and extraordinary means and aspired to create a totalitarian state. In 1929, Mussolini signed the Lateran Treaty with the Vatican, ending decades of struggle between the Italian state and the Papacy, recognized the independence of Vatican City. After the Abyssinia Crisis of 1935–1936, Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in the Second Italo–Ethiopian War; the invasion was condemned by the Western powers and was answered with economic sanctions against Italy. Relations between Germany and Italy improved due to Hitler's support of the invasion. In 1936, Mussolini surrendered Austria to the German sphere of influence, signed the treaty of cooperation with Germany and proclaimed the creation of a Rome–Berlin Axis. From 1936 through 1939, Mussolini provided huge amounts of military support to Franco's forces in the Spanish Civil War; this active intervention further distanced Italy from Britain. Mussolini had sought to delay a major war in Europe, but Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, resulting in declarations of war by France and the UK and the start of World War II.
On 10 June 1940—with the Fall of France imminent—Italy entered the war on the side of Germany, though Mussolini was aware that Italy did not have the military capacity and resources to carry out a long war with the British Empire. He believed that after the imminent French armistice, Italy could gain territorial concessions from France, he could concentrate his forces on a major offensive in North Africa, where British and Commonwealth forces were outnumbered by Italian forces. However, the British government refused to accept proposals for a peace that would involve accepting Axis victories in Eastern and Western Europe. In October 1940, Mussolini sent Italian forces into Greece; the invasion failed and the following Greek counter-offensive pushed the Italians back to occupied Albania. The Greek debacle and simultaneous defeats against the British in North Africa reduced Italy to dependence on Germany. Beginning in June 1941, Mussolini sent Italian forces to participate in the invasion of the Soviet Union, Italy declared war on the United States in December.
In 1943, Italy suffered one disaster after another: by February the Red Army had destroyed the Italian Army in Russia. As a consequence, early on 25 July, the Grand Council of Fascism passed a motion of no confidence for Mussolini. After the king agreed the armistice with the allies, on 12 September 1943 Mussolini was rescued from captivity in the Gran Sasso raid by German paratroopers and Waffen-SS commandos led by Major Otto-Harald Mors. Adolf Hitler, after meeting with the rescued former dictator put Mussolini in charge of a puppet regime in northern Italy, the Italian Social Republic, informally known as the Salò Republic. In late April 1945, in the wake of near total defeat and his mistress Clara Petacci attempted to flee to Switzerland, but both were captured by Italian communist partisans and summarily executed by firing squad on 28 April 1945 near Lake Como, his body was taken to Milan, where it was hung upside down at a service station to publicly confirm his demise. Mussolini was born on 29 July 1883 in Dovia di Predappio, a small town in the province of Forlì in Romagna.
During the Fascist era, Predappio was dubbed "Duce's town" and Forlì was called "Duce's city", with pilgrims going to Predappio and Forlì to see the birthplace of Mussolini. Benito Mussolini's father, Alessandro Mussolini, was a blacksmith and a socialist, while his mother, was a devout Catholic schoolteacher. Owing to his father's political leanings, Mussolini was named Benito after liberal Mexican president Benito Juárez, while his middle names Andrea and Amilcare were from Italian socialists Andrea Costa and Amilcare Cipriani. Benito was the eldest of his parents' three children, his siblings Arnaldo and Edvige fol
Fiat 500 "Topolino"
The Fiat 500 known as "Topolino", is an Italian city car produced and manufactured by Fiat from 1936 to 1955. The name "Topolino" is Italian and translates as "little mouse" in English, but is the Italian name for Mickey Mouse; the Topolino was one of the smallest cars in the world at the time of its production. Launched in 1936, three models were produced until 1955, all with only minor mechanical and cosmetic changes, it was equipped with a 569 cc four-cylinder, side-valve, water-cooled engine mounted in front of the front axle, so was a full-scale car rather than a cyclecar. The radiator was located behind the engine which made possible a lowered aerodynamic nose profile at a time when competitors had a flat, nearly vertical grille; the shape of the car's front allowed exceptional forward visibility. Rear suspension used quarter-elliptic rear springs, but buyers squeezed four or five people into the nominally two-seater car, in models the chassis was extended at the rear to allow for more robust semi-elliptic springs.
With horsepower of about 13 bhp, its top speed was about 53 mph, it could achieve about 39.2 miles per US gallon. The target price given when the car was planned was 5,000 lire. In the event the price at launch was 9,750 lire, though the decade was one of falling prices in several parts of Europe and in the 1930s the Topolino was sold for about 8,900 lire. Despite being more expensive than first envisioned, the car was competitively priced. Nearly 520,000 were sold. Three models were produced. Model A and B shared the same body, only the engine of model B had 16 hp, vs. 13 hp of Model A. Model A was produced from 1937 to 1948, while B was produced in 1948 and 1949. Model A was offered as a 2-door saloon, 2-door convertible saloon and a 2-door van, while Model B introduced a 3-door estate under the name 500 B Giardinetta; the Giardinetta was at the beginning only available as a so-called woodie, i.e. with an outside ash frame and available in seven metallic colors. When it was renamed Belvedere, the wood was replaced with metal.
This model as well as the regular two-seater Convertible-Limousine were produced in Germany by the German Fiat daughter NSU-Fiat. Model C was introduced in 1949 with a restyled body and the same engine as Model B, was offered in 2-door saloon, 2-door convertible saloon, 3-door estate and 2-door van versions. In 1952, Giardinetta was renamed Belvedere. Model C was produced until 1955. In 1955 the larger rear-wheel-drive Fiat 600 was launched by Fiat and that would become the design basis for the new Fiat 500, the Nuova 500. Fiat 500 History - Gizmohighway Auto Guide Jay Leno talks about his Topolino "Soviet-italian comic car AHCHOO-2"
King Features Syndicate
King Features Syndicate, Inc. is a print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons and games to nearly 5,000 newspapers worldwide. King Features Syndicate is a unit of Hearst Holdings, Inc. which combines the Hearst Corporation's cable-network partnerships, television programming and distribution activities, syndication companies. King Features' affiliate syndicates are Cowles Syndicate; each week, Reed Brennan Media Associates, a unit of Hearst and distributes more than 200 features for King Features. William Randolph Hearst's newspapers began syndicating material in 1895 after receiving requests from other newspapers; the first official Hearst syndicate was called Newspaper Feature Service, Inc. established in 1913. In 1914, Hearst and his manager Moses Koenigsberg consolidated all of Hearst's syndication enterprises under one banner. Koenigsberg gave it his own name when he launched King Features Syndicate on November 16, 1915.
Production escalated in 1916 with King Features buying and selling its own staff-created feature material. A trade publication — Circulation — was published by King Features between 1916 and 1933. Syndication peaked in the mid-1930s with 130 syndicates offering 1,600 features to more than 13,700 newspapers. In 1986, King Features acquired the Tribune Syndicate for $4.3 million. That year, Hearst bought News America Syndicate. By this point, with both King Features and News America, Hearst led all syndication services with 316 features. In 2007, King Features donated its collection of comic-strip proof sheets to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum and the Michigan State University Comic Art Collection while retaining the collection in electronic form for reference purposes; as of 2016, with 62 strips being syndicated, Hearst was considered the second-largest comics service, second only to Uclick. In 1941, King Features manager Moses Koenigsberg wrote an autobiographical history of the company entitled King News.
William Randolph Hearst paid close attention to the comic strips in the last years of his life, as is evident in these 1945–46 correspondence excerpts in Editor & Publisher, about the creation of Dick's Adventures in Dreamland — a strip that made its debut on Sunday, January 12, 1947. The difficulty is to find something that will sufficiently interest the kids… Perhaps a title — "Trained by Fate" — would be general enough. Take Paul Revere and show him as a boy making as much of his boyhood life as possible, culminate, of course, with his ride. Take Betsy Ross for a heroine, or Barbara Fritchie… for the girls."King Features editor Ward Greene to Hearst: "There is another way to do it, somewhat fantastic, but which I submit for your consideration. That is to devise a new comic… a dream idea revolving around a boy we might call Dick. Dick, or his equivalent, would go in his dream with Mad Anthony Wayne at the storming of Stony Point or with Decatur at Tripoli… provide a constant character… who would become known to the kids."Hearst to Greene: "The dream idea for the American history series is splendid.
It gives continuity and personal interest, you can make more than one page of each series… You are right about the importance of the artist."Greene to Hearst: "We employed the dream device, building the comic around a small boy."Hearst: "I think the drawing of Dick and His Dad is amazingly good. It is splendid. I am afraid, that similar beginning and conclusion of each page might give a deadly sameness to the series… Perhaps we could get the dream idea over by having only the conclusion on each page. I mean, do not show the boy going to sleep every time and show him waking up, but let the waking up come as a termination to each page… Can you develop anything out of the idea of having Dick the son of the keeper of the Liberty Statue in New York Harbor? I do not suggest this, as it would add further complications, but it might give a spiritual tie to all the dreams; the main thing, however, is to get more realism." Greene: "We do not have to show the dream at the beginning and end of every page… If we call the comic something like Dreamer Dick, we would have more freedom… Some device other than the dream might be used… A simple method would be to have him curl up with a history book."Hearst: "If we find is not a success, of course we can brief it, but if it is a success it should be a long series."Greene: "I am sending you two sample pages of Dick's Adventures in Dreamland which start a series about Christopher Columbus."Hearst: "In January, I am told, we are going to 16 pages on Puck, the Comic Weekly.
That would be a good time to introduce the Columbus series, don't you think so?"The last strips Hearst selected for syndication were Elliot Caplin & John Cullen Murphy's Big Ben Bolt and Mort Walker's Beetle Bailey. In the 1940s, Ward Greene was King Features' editor, he was a reporter and war correspondent for the Atlanta Jour
Mickey Mouse universe
The Mickey Mouse universe is a fictional shared universe, the setting for stories involving Disney cartoon characters Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Goofy, Donald Duck and many other characters. The universe originated from the Mickey Mouse animated short films produced by Disney starting in 1928, but its first consistent version was created by Floyd Gottfredson in the Mickey Mouse newspaper comic strip. Real-world versions exist in Disneyland and Tokyo Disneyland, called Mickey's Toontown. Since 1990, the actual city in which Mickey lives is called Mouseton, is depicted as the city next to Duckburg, the city in which Donald Duck lives. According to traditional continuity, both cities are located in the fictional U. S. state of Calisota – analogous to Northern California. The most consistent aspect of the Mickey Mouse universe is the characters; the most well-known include Mickey's girlfriend Minnie, pet dog Pluto, friends Horace Horsecollar, Clarabelle Cow, Donald Duck, Daisy Duck and Goofy, nemesis Pete.
Some Disney productions incorporate characters from Disney's animated feature films, such as Bath Day, Mickey's Christmas Carol, – most extensively – Disney's House of Mouse. The term "Mickey Mouse universe" is not used by The Walt Disney Company, but it has been used by Disney comics author and animation historian David Gerstein; the Walt Disney Company uses terms such as Mickey & Friends or Mickey & the Gang to refer to the character franchise. The Mickey Mouse universe originated with the debut of Mickey himself in Plane Crazy. Although Mickey's stories included the character Pete, created in 1925, the world in which Mickey lives holds a continuity independent from earlier films. An exception to this was the reintroduction of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit in 2010 with the release of Epic Mickey. In 1930, Disney began a newspaper strip called Mickey Mouse which expanded Mickey's world, well-known from the animated cartoons; the stories became a work of collaborative fiction with different writers working in different mediums.
This sometimes caused continuity discrepancies. For example, while Mickey and his friends live in the same contemporary setting, they sometimes appear in exotic settings including period pieces and fantasy films. One way the comics writers explained this discrepancy was to present the characters as "real" cartoon characters who are employed by Disney as actors. Walter J. Ong in his cultural research of Mickey Mouse and Americanism agreed with this opinion. In short, characters are less animal features in their characteristics; this understanding of the characters leading separate lives was welcomed by Walt Disney who, When asked whether or not Mickey and Minnie were married, replied that the mice were indeed married in their "private lives", but that they sometimes appear as boyfriend/girlfriend for "screen purposes." In the World War II propaganda film The New Spirit, Donald Duck fills out his income tax and lists his occupation as "actor", the film The Three Musketeers includes a DVD bonus feature of the characters reminiscing on their experience filming the movie.
Animation historian David Gerstein has noted that although the characters will appear in different settings and sometimes change their names, the characters are still themselves and behave in a way consistent with their natures. Mickey Mouse series movies are for entertainment purpose. Differed from traditional stories like Aesop, Mickey movies did not avoid impolite scenes. In Hawaiian Holiday, Goofy was in a scene of being in a grave. Disney arranged a laugh scene after that, its choice of scene creation can be seen as a signature of the attention to entertainment effort. In Plane Crazy, the first produced Mickey Mouse story, Mickey is seen at a farm. In all of his early films Mickey is in a rural setting, but most at a farm; this setting was succinctly presented in the first sentences of one of Mickey's first storybooks: "This story is about Mickey Mouse who lives in a cozy nest under the floor of the old barn. And it is about his friend Minnie Mouse whose home is safely hidden and warm, somewhere in the chicken house."
In the Mickey Mouse newspaper strip, Mickey's farm was most located in the midwestern United States, as indicated by characters' comments to have arrived "out west" to Death Valley and to go "back east" to conduct business, etc. This rural setting reflected Walt Disney's own childhood in Missouri and like Disney, Mickey moved to the city, although he never forgets his roots. Mickey sometimes makes references to his life "back on the farm." Mickey appeared in an urban setting as early as 1931 in the short film Traffic Troubles where he works as a taxi driver. Mickey's city was unnamed until 1932, when the comic story The Great Orphanage Robbery identified it as Silo Center; some Floyd Gottfredson stories called the city Hometown while other Gottfredson stories used the name Mouseville. But the first consistent name for Mickey's city came in 1950s Italy. In 1990, Disney Comics launched the new American comic Mickey Mouse Adventures and planned to use the name Mouseville there, but due to then-current Mighty Mouse cartoons' use of a city called Mouseville, the new name Mouseton was created for Mickey's town instead.
Tim Tyler's Luck
Tim Tyler's Luck was an adventure comic strip created by Lyman Young, elder brother of Blondie creator Chic Young. Distributed by King Features Syndicate, the strip ran from August 13, 1928, until August 1996. Lyman Young studied at the Chicago Art Institute and served in World War I before beginning his career as a cartoonist in 1924, taking over C. W. Kahles' strip The Kelly Kids. In 1927 he created a spin-off of The Kelly Kids; when Tim Tyler's Luck started in 1928, Tyler was living in an orphanage. However, he soon left the orphanage for the outside world; when he teamed with an older sidekick, they began globe-trotting for a series of international adventures. Many tales took place in Africa, as noted by comic strip historian Don Markstein: By the time the Sunday version started and Spud were well away from the orphanage, living a life of adventure. At first, their adventures tended to be light and cartoony, but with Buck Rogers, Dick Tracy and the like gaining popularity, the strip took a more serious turn.
Tim and Spud traveled the world before settling for several years in Africa, where they joined the Ivory Patrol and spent their time chasing after poachers and the like. They returned to America during World War II, where they dealt with spies and saboteurs. Afterward, they went traveling again returning to Africa, where they remained for good. In 1935, Young added Curley Harper. Young employed several artists, some of whom became successful with their own strips; the illustrators included Alex Raymond, Burne Hogarth, Clark Haas, Tony DiPreta, Nat Edson and Tom Massey. In 1972, Young's son, Bob Young, began sharing credit with his father taking over the strip after Lyman Young's 1984 death. Tim Tyler's Luck faded away and was carried by only a single paper when it was canceled in 1996. In 1937, a 12-chapter movie serial starred Frankie Thomas as Tim Tyler; the title of the Umberto Eco novel The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana is taken from the title of a strip episode, in turn inspired by H. Rider Haggard's novel She.
Toonopedia: Tim Tyler's Luck
