Occasionally, I find things that are so weird, I just have to post them. There are a lot of bloggers who post random panels of comic book weirdness. Mike Sterling does it over at Progressive Ruin; Mark Waid does it at his Boom! blog with Great Moments In Comics; and so does Steven Thompson at Booksteve’s Library. That’s just three from the many hundreds.

And I’m going to jump on that bandwagon and pretend like it’s 2002 all over again. But in my defense I did find something a little different. This comes from a Little Golden Book called Davy Crockett, produced by the Walt Disney Studios in 1955, no doubt to tie-in with their ongoing exploitation of the historical and conveniently public domain character in films featuring Fess Parker and Buddy Ebsen (aka Jed Clampett from “The Beverly Hillbillies”). Irwin Shapiro wrote the book, which was illustrated by Mel Crawford. In fact, Davy is drawn to look a little like Fess and his friend George Russel does indeed resemble Buddy.

At one point, Davy brags that he’s “got the prettiest sister, the surest rifle and the ugliest dog in Tennessee,” which I guess is the frontier equivalent of telling everyone you have a nice car. But seriously, does anyone really run around yapping about how hot their siblings are?

Davy Crockett is a pretty straightforward and simplistic retelling of the Crockett legend – all the usual suspects are represented: trying to grin a bear to death (a knife helps with that one), fighting at the Alamo (they skip over the fact that he died there), and some of the folk tales of Davy, like how he once caught a comet and later unfroze the sun. My favorite, though? That’s the legend where Davy allegedly rode a streak of lightning through the sky. If you can’t picture it, Mel Crawford can (see illustration at right).

Mere words can’t do it justice. Where oh where is Mr. Freud when we need him most? I think the nickname that Perez Hilton gave to an underpantsless Lindsay Lohan might invoked appropriately here.

[Artwork © Disney]
http://melcrawford.blogspot.com/