Looney Tunes: April 2001

Cover

• David Alvarez
• Mike DeCarlo

A view from a grave: We see Bugs' ears and look up at a tombstone that reads "R.I.P. Bugs Bunny" as detective Daffy looks back through a magnifying glass. Foghorn, Lola, Porky, Pepe, Sylvester, and Tweety are graveside as lightning flashes in the background.

The Looney Tunes Theatre Presents Bugs Bunny in

A Hare Gone Conclusion

Also Featuring Daffy Duck

Credits

• Writer: Dan Slott
• Penciller: David Alvarez
• Inker: Mike DeCarlo
• Letterer: Ryan Cline
• Colorist: Dave Tanguay
• Seperator: Jamison
• Assists: Harvey Richards
• Editor: Joan Hilty

Synopsis

Daffy looks at the credits and then puts forth great effort to change them to read:

Daffy Duck Inc. Presents Daffy Duck In

A Hare Gone Conclusion

Featuring Nobody But Daffy Duck

Credits

• Writer: Daffy Duck
• Penciller: Daffy Duck
• Inker: Daffy Duck
• Letterer: Daffy Duck
• Colorist: Daffy Duck
• Assists: Daffy Duck
• Editor: Daffy Duck

Daffy Duck vents his frustrations with Bugs by threatening and then destroying a cardboard cutout of the rabbit. A concerned citizen witnesses sound and the sight in silhouette and alerts a policeman. A group of policemen quickly haul the duck away. A newspaper article reveals that Bugs is missing, and now presumed dead, and that Daffy is the prime suspect. Also, Porky has bailed Daffy out. The duck now has a mission: find another suspect.

Daffy first visits Elmer Fudd and accuses him of doing Bugs in. Fudd protests that he wouldn't hurt a fly, but his house seems filled with hunting trophies. There is no mounted fly, however. The only rabbit in evidence isn't Bugs, and is wearing an expression that suggests that he's still quite alive and not a victim of taxidermy. Fudd further points out that it is not rabbit season, but duck season. This leads to each tear off a sign and arguing as to whether it is duck season or rabbit season. Eventually it is neither rabbit season, nor duck season, but mating season according to the sign. A disgusted, bedraggled, and lipstick-covered, Daffy emerges from Elmer's house saying that whatever happened is never to be mentioned again.

There are more folks than Fudd who might wish Bugs harm, so Daffy wants to question everybody. Of a large group of people, and a couple other things, that have done battle with Bugs, Daffy first questions a group of gangsters. When the duck asks where Bugs is, Mugsy tells him that he isn't in a trunk. To allay Daffy's suspicion, the gangsters fire a machine into the trunk, attack it with an ax, an awl, a baseball bat, and a sack of oranges. When the trunk finally opens, Daffy finds it occupied by the now very angry policeman that considers him the prime suspect.

While Daffy is dealing with gangsters, Porky has slow going interviewing Cecil Turtle. So slow that Daffy has time to go to the dogs and ask them about Bugs. As duck explains what a rabbit is, he is mistaken for a rabbit by one of the slower dogs and winds up fighting the bunch. Daffy escapes, along with K-9, and returns him to Marvin. Marvin explains he's only there to get a few things back: His dog, his space modulator, and his instant Martians - a spoonful of which Daffy accidently ingests, with painful results.

Porky finally finishes with Cecil, who gives the pig a clue in the form of a letter. It seems that someone out west claims to have Bugs. So Daffy, as Dripalong Daffy, and Porky travel west. In the west they meet Wile E. Coyote, who says he has captured the rabbit. But when he tries to show that to be the case, he only finds a fake rabbit. The fake is covered in glue and causes Wile E. to be run through his own very painful trap.

The pair leave the luckless coyote and nearly get run over by folks running from Yosemite Sam. Daffy tries to question Sam, but Sam has no desire to talk. The result is an arms race of every larger capacity, and just plain larger, guns. The duck fires into the air and bring down a very heavy parachuter on top of Sam. The flattened Sam reveals he saw Bugs taking a right turn at Albuquerque.

Porky and Daffy find a bunch of holes and set out to find Bugs. They don't have much luck finding Bugs, but find themselves going many places: Arabia, an almost-deserted tropical island, Paris, a spooky castle, and Fairy Tale Land. They leave the castle after Porky's stutter accidently transforms Count Bloodcount rather oddly. In Fairy Tale Land they meet the beanstalk giant who hasn't seen anyone. Daffy finds a few folks that the giant has sat on, but none is Bugs Bunny.

Trying again, the pair winds up in Australia where they meet Taz. They proceed to empty Taz's stomach and find a tire, a boot, an automobile bumper, Playboy Penguin, and an astonishing number of Warner Bros. characters. They even find several rabbits, but to Daffy's dismay, none are Bugs. Desperate, the duck tries to pull one more thing from Taz and manages to yank the Devil's own skeleton out of him.

Time runs out for Daffy and the policeman hauls him away again. Porky wonders where Bugs really is, since they'd look so much for him. We see that Bugs has for once turned left at Alburqueque and arrived at Pismo Beach - just in time for mating season.

Did You Notice...

• Page 2: The policeman is the unnamed Irish Cop from Baby Buggy Bunny (Jones, 1954) with Baby Face Finster.
• Page 3: Porky and Daffy are dressed up in their roles from Rocket Squad (Jones, 1956).
• Page 3: The numbering in Daffy's mug shot is curious. The numbering is usually done by year. The number used suggest that Daffy was arrested in 1934.
• Page 3: The "Hare Die/Hair Dye" gag appeared in Rebel Rabbit (McKimson, 1949), where the line was spoken in Congress by a Sen. Claghorn-type politician, from whom the Foghorn like cadence is derived. Sen. Claghorn was a character, played by Kenny Delmar, on Fred Allen's radio show.
• Page 4: The hunting trophies in Fudd's house include the lion Nero, Bruno Bear, Gruesome Gorilla, Bully (who not named in Bully for Bugs (Jones, 1953)), Pete Puma (complete with two lumps), Beaky Buzzard, and the Abominable Snowman. Nero is from Acrobatty Bunny (McKimson, 1946) , Bruno the Magnificent from Big Top Bunny(McKimson, 1951), and Gruesome Gorilla from Gorilla My Dreams (McKimson, 1948).
• Page 5: Seemingly mounted on the wall is a somewhat out of place Buster Bunny. This is a very rare instance of a Warner Bros. character not in the Looney Tunes canon appearing in the comic.
• Page 7: The mating season gag here is an example what can be permitted by an understanding editor. The interview where Dan Slott points this out is here.
• Page 8: The characters in the last panel are:
• 
  1. Unnamed floorwalker from Hare Conditioned (Jones, 1945) whose voice was modeled on Hal Peary's version of The Great Gildersleeve, which Bugs briefly refers to.
  2. Steve Brodie from Bowery Bugs (Davis, 1949).
  3. Unnamed, pompous manager of the Broken Arms Hotel in Porky Pigs' Feat (Tashlin, 1943). Bugs was imprisoned by him, as revealed at the very end of that cartoon.
  4. The doctor who brainwashes Bugs into believing that he is Elmer J. Fudd, millionaire, who owns a mansion and a yacht in Hare Brush (Freleng, 1955).
  5. The Sheriff of Nottingham, from Rabbit Hood (Jones, 1949).
  6. Could either be the Champ from Rabbit Punch (Jones, 1948) or Crusher from Bunny Hugged (Jones, 1951.)
  7. The pompous magician Ala Bahma, from Case of the Missing Hare (Jones, 1942).
  8. Giovanni Jones, from Long Haired Hare (Jones, 1949).
  9. Unnamed mean construction worker from No Parking Hare (McKimson, 1954). This is more likely than his similar counterpart in Homeless Hare (Jones, 1950).
  10. Nasty Canasta, from Barbary Coast Bunny (Jones, 1956).
  11. Unnamed Gashouse Gorilla, from Baseball Bugs (Freleng, 1946).
  12. One of the Martin Brothers, from Hillbilly Hare (McKimson, 1950).
  13. The other of the Martin Brothers, from Hillbilly Hare (McKimson, 1950).
  14. MacRory, from My Bunny Lies Over The Sea (Jones, 1948). Color nit: His hair should be more red than orange.
  15. The fact that the mouse is wearing formal attire, and the fact that this is a gathering of Bugs opponents, suggests this is the mouse from Rhapsody Rabbit (Freleng, 1946). This mouse bedeviled Bugs throughout the picture.
  16. Gremlin from Falling Hare (Clampett, 1943), with a banana peel which was used in a gag in that cartoon.
• Page 9: The gangsters are, from left to right: Rocky from various cartoons, Mugsy from various cartoons, a Peter Lorre caricature from Hair-Raising Hare (Jones, 1946) (Though it's worth noting that a similar Lorre mad scientist also battled Daffy in Birth of a Notion (McKimson, 1947)), an Edward G. Robinson caricature (called "Rocky" in the cartoon) from Racketeer Rabbit (Freleng, 1946) (Note that Lorre was caricatured as Hugo, Rocky's assistant, in that cartoon.), Baby Face Finster from Baby Buggy Bunny (Jones, 1954).
• Page 9: The trunk gag here is more or less lifted from Racketeer Rabbit (Freleng, 1946), only this time, it's the Irish Cop, and not Rocky, in the trunk. A variation on the trunk gag was also used by Freleng in the same cartoon as the Irish cop, Baby Buggy Bunny. In Racketeer Rabbit, it was the Edward G. Robinson caricature in the trunk; in the later cartoon, it was Rocky inside a stove. What's seen here in the Racketeer Rabbit version.
• Page 10: Cecil Turtle appeared in Tortoise Beats Hare (Avery, 1941), Tortoise Wins By a Hare (Clampett, 1943), and Rabbit Transit (Freleng, 1947). The design of Cecil here looks more like he did in the latter two.
• Page 11: Due to the angle, seeing the dogs from the back, it is difficult to identify the dogs in panel one. From left to right: (1) In 1952's Foxy By Proxy (Freleng), Bugs battles a beefy white and brown foxhound, which could be this one, because it's generally fatter. (2) This is the very recognizable K-9, of course. (3) Probably the beefy, unnamed bulldog from A Hare Grows in Manhattan (Freleng, 1947). (4) Possibly the mean greyhound from The Grey Hounded Hare (McKimson, 1949), though the coloring suggests otherwise. (5) Might be the unnamed dog from The Heckling Hare (Avery [uncredited], 1941).
• Page 12: The Instant Martians gag refers to Hare Way to the Stars (Jones, 1958). Note that the delayed action isn't a nit. In Hareway to the Stars, there's a few beats after the pills drop in the sewer, and before Bugs roars out of the sewer, to warn us.
• Page 13: Wile E. Coyote having a door with no wall is from Operation: Rabbit (Jones, 1952). There he used the door as a means of introducing himself.
• Page 15: In the second panel, the fellow at left, on the white horse is Cottontail Smith from Super Rabbit (Jones, 1943). Cottontail's horse is also similar to the one that he used in the cartoon. At right, on the black horse (as in the cartoon) is Red Hot Ryder from Buckaroo Bugs (Clampett, 1944). The Indian at lower right probably the Indian from Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt (Freleng, 1941) which is one of only three Bugs Bunny cartoons to get an Oscar nomination.
• Page 16: The gunfight gag is a refinement of one from Bugs Bunny Rides Again (Freleng, 1948). In the cartoon, Bugs wins via a pea-shooter.
• Page 16: The parachutist bears a slight resemblance to the Charles Laughton caricature used against Daffy in Good Noose (McKimson, 1962) and Bugs and Sam in Shishkabugs (Freleng, 1962), but it's unclear.
• Page 17: In the fourth panel, at left is Hassan (as in "Hassan CHOP!") from Ali Baba Bunny (Jones, 1957). The Genie at the far right is also likely from that cartoon. The Genie in the center is "Smokey" from A-Lad-In His Lamp (McKimson, 1948) voiced by Jim Backus, based on a Backus radio character, Hubert Updyke.
• Page 17: In the fifth panel are the two unnamed castaways from Wackiki Wabbit (Jones, 1943). The one at left is based on Michael Maltese, the one at right is based on Tedd Pierce, who provided the respective voices in the cartoon.
• Page 17: In the final panel, that is of course Napoleon. He showed up in Napoleon Bunny-Part (Freleng, 1956)
• Page 18: Daffy and Porky are dressed as they were in Deduce You Say (Jones, 1956).
• Page 18: In the second panel are, omitting Porky and Daffy, from left to right: Witch Hazel, the unnamed Mad Scientist from Water Water Every Hare (Jones, 1952), the character later named Gossamer from either Hair-Raising Hare (Jones, 1946) or Water Water Every Hare (Jones, 1952), Hyde from Hyde and Hare (Freleng, 1955), Count Bloodcount from Transylvania 6-5000 (Jones, 1963).
• Page 19: The giant is from Jack Wabbit and the Beanstalk (Freleng, 1943).
• Page 19: The characters in the last panel are:
• 
  1. Red, from Red Riding Rabbit (Freleng, 1944).
  2. Junyer Bear from Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears (Jones, 1944)
  3. Papa Bear from Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears (Jones, 1944)
  4. The Big Bad Wolf from Little Red Riding Rabbit (Freleng, 1944). His nightie is miscolored; it should be a pistachio green.
  5. Momma Bear from Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears (Jones, 1944)
  6. One of the sneering, conning pigs from The Windblown Hare (McKimson, 1949).
  7. Another of the sneering, conning pigs from The Windblown Hare (McKimson, 1949).
  8. The third of the sneering, conning pigs from The Windblown Hare (McKimson, 1949).
  9. Sir Pantsalot of Drop Seat Manor from Knights Must Fall (Freleng, 1949).
• Page 21: The Bogart caricature is doing a revised version of a line from 8 Ball Bunny (Jones, 1950). However, the cartoon gag was based on the scruffy Bogart character in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, in which he said a similar line. The much neater Bogart here is more like the Bogart in evening dress from the Bugs vs. Elmer cartoon Slick Hare (Freleng, 1947), though no coconut custard pie with whipped cream is obvious. The existence of Playboy Penguin in the fifth panel implies 8 Ball Bunny more.
• Page 22: In the first panel are several characters. At far left is Marc Antony and Pussyfoot from the non-Bugs cartoon Feed the Kitty (Jones, 1952). Hippety Hopper is at center far left (various McKimson cartoons, no Bugs references). The Do-Do is at center far left. The black and white version here implies Porky in Wackyland, and not the Freleng color remake Dough For the Do-Do. In the lower left corner are Speedy Gonzales with Hubie in brown and Bertie in Grey. At top center, Mac and Tosh (a/k/a Goofy Gophers, the names used in the cartoons). Various, though in their debut, The Goofy Gophers (Clampett/Davis, 1947), Bugs makes a cameo. Still emerging from Taz's mouth is Foghorn Leghorn, and atop him is Sniffles.
• Page 22: The third panel is evidence that Penelope Cat is chased everywhere by Pepe Le Pew.
• Page 22: In the sequence of Taz spitting up Sylvester who spits up Tweety who spits up a worm who spits up an elephant. It would be amusing to think that's the Joe Besser-type elephant ("I'll you give you *such* a pinch!") from Rabbit Fire (Jones, 1951).
• Page 23: The characters in the first panel are:
• 
  1. Taz, of course.
  2. Lola Bunny.
  3. Porky.
  4. Daffy.
  5. Possibly Daisy, from Hare Splitter (Freleng, 1948) though a picture from Schneider's book That's All, Folks! shows her without a hair style. Her dress indicates she's probably not the Mrs. Bugs Bunny seen at the end of Hold The Lion, Please (Jones, 1942).
  6. Mechanical rabbit from Hair Raising Hare (Jones, 1946).
  7. Probably Casbah, the rival suitor for Daisy in Hair Splitter (Freleng, 1948), though note the Easter Rabbit in Easter Yeggs (McKimson, 1947) has a somewhat similar design. The red nose is probably the giveaway that it's Casbah.
  8. Likely the unnamed little bunny Pete Puma tries to eat in Rabbit's Kin (McKimson, 1952) and probably not Clyde, Bugs' nephew, since Clyde is grey.
  9. Millicent, the Slobovian rabbit from Rabbit Romeo (McKimson, 1957).
• It should be noted that the first cartoon in which Bugs made a wrong turn in New Mexico was Herr Meets Hare (Freleng, 1945) in which he ends up fighting Hermann Goering. It would have been interesting to see him here! Bugs was going to Las Vegas in that cartoon...note the map on page 23 almost takes him there!
• Interestingly, the references cover the bases on all of the Bugs directors, even Tashlin, who only did two plus a cameo, and Davis' sole Bugs outing. Also, this covers a pretty decent spread throughout the years, from very early 1940s cartoons to ones late in the Classic era.
• While many of Bugs' opponents appeared in this comic, there are also many that did not appear. This is no slight to Slott and Alvarez as a non-trivial number of those omitted would be considered in poor taste (politically incorrect) today. It is, in fact, surprising that the Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt chap was used, since that is now a banned (one of the "Censored Eleven") cartoon.

Technical Nits

• Page 13: Since Daffy plans on going "in" rather than "out" he ought to speak on "ingress" rather than "egress." Note that in the final panel, Wile E. opens the door toward himself, as if allowing entry to a house.
• Page 16: The parachutist is wearing hardly a standard uniform for a parachutist.
• Page 18: Daffy's and Porky's pipes have not been colored in. Also, they seem not to be the right shape for a parody of Holmes and Watson.
• Page 19: Red Riding Hood should be wearing blue socks, a red (not blue) skirt, and brown and white shoes. Also, her glasses should not be tinted.

Thanks go to Andrew R. Mutchler for the outline drawing above, and to Eric O. Costello who is almost solely responsible for the incredibly detailed notes that are the DYNs and nits above. As usual, any errors belong to the maintainer.

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Last update 10 May 2004