Real Screen Funnies #1
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeReal Screen Funnies #1 is the first comic-book appearance of Fauntleroy Fox and Crawford Crow — the streetwise, con-artist duo who would go on to anchor one of DC's longest-running funny-animal franchises. Debuting in the spring of 1945, it planted a Columbia Pictures animation license squarely inside DC's publishing line at the height of the Golden Age, demonstrating that licensed screen characters could sustain an ongoing anthology format just as well as original superhero concepts. The issue also introduced Flippity and Flop, expanding the book's bench of recurring cartoon-to-comics transplants. Over the next two decades, the Fox and Crow would spread across three simultaneous DC titles and accumulate 108 issues in their own dedicated series, making this debut issue the origin point of an unusually durable corner of mid-century American funny-animal comics.
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DC (operating as National Publications) acquired the license from Columbia Pictures in late 1944, and the first story was produced by animation director Bob Wickersham working through the Ben Sangor shop, Editorial Art Service — a production pipeline that kept the comic visually close to its Screen Gems animated source material. The characters themselves had been created by Frank Tashlin for Columbia's Screen Gems studio, debuting on film in the 1941 Color Rhapsody short The Fox and the Grapes; by the time the comic launched, the theatrical cartoon series was still active and lending the property genuine marquee recognition. Editor F. W. Ellsworth oversaw the book, with Jim Davis and Paul Sommer among the credited artists on the debut issue. In 1948, James F. Davis (no relation to Garfield's creator) took over the comic art duties directly for DC and remained on the strip for roughly twenty years, long outlasting the theatrical shorts that had originated the characters.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First comic-book appearances of Fauntleroy Fox (the gullible, refined fox) and Crawford Crow (the streetwise schemer), both named more formally in the comics than in the theatrical shorts.
- First comic-book appearance of Flippity and Flop, another Columbia Screen Gems cartoon duo, also debuting in this issue.
- Published with a March 1945 cover date; the only issue ever to carry the title 'Real Screen Funnies' — the series became Real Screen Comics with issue #2.
- The Fox and Crow characters were created by Frank Tashlin for Columbia's Screen Gems animation studio, first appearing on film in the 1941 Color Rhapsody short The Fox and the Grapes.
- Early comics art was produced by animation director Bob Wickersham through the Ben Sangor-run Editorial Art Service shop; Jim Davis took over as the dedicated DC comics artist in 1948 and stayed for approximately 20 years.
- Editor on the issue was F. W. Ellsworth; the 52-page anthology carried a cover price of ten cents.
- Fox and Crow's comic presence eventually expanded to three simultaneous DC titles (Real Screen Comics, Comic Cavalcade from 1948, and their own self-titled book launched in January 1952), with the solo series running 108 issues through March 1968.
- The anthology's title is a direct reference to Screen Gems, Columbia Pictures' in-house animation studio, which operated from 1940 to 1946 and originated all the characters licensed for the comic.
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