Looney Tunes: December 1994
Cover
It's the Hip Fab Fun cover. The four stars, top to bottom, are occupied by Yosemite Sam, Daffy Duck, Speedy Gonzales, and Sylvester.
In the main scene Pepe Le Pew helps Penelope Cat up from a freshly painted white stripe on a road. As Penelope EEEEKs, a palette carrying artist looks on worriedly while pausing in his painting of the stripe on the road. A sign bears the words "SLOW Dept. de Roads."
Credits
Synopsis
Pepe Le Pew is taking his annual vacation, traveling by motor scooter. He barely manages to avoid a rather bored artist who is painting the center line on the road. The near miss results in the line meandering over the road, which the artist sees as an improvement as it is now art.
Meanwhile on an Acme tour bus an elderly lady (no, not Granny) is obsessing over her cat, Penelope. Next to her is a Mr. Bummer who is taking the trip to avoid bad checks catching up with him. Unfortunately for him he must pay for the trip with cash, which he doesn't have. A plot hatches in his mind: Have Penelope get lost, recover the cat, and collect a reward. A quick flip at a window latch and the first part of the plan is done, just before a rest stop.
Penelope, forgetting how cats alight, lands on her back on the freshly painted stripe in the road. Pepe finds and helps the dazed Penelope and takes her to his chalet in Switzerland so the mountain air may aid her recovery. With quite some flare, he prepares cocoa for two.
Back on the tour Penelope's absence is discovered and Mr. Bummer offers to retrieve the feline. He's told to do so quickly or the tour continues without him. The tour does so, as he finds Pepe driving off with the cat. Mr. Bummer does get a ride, by cow, and pays by check for the service.
Recovered enough to get her senses back, including sense of smell, Penelope bolts away, crashing though fencing which, in an inspired move, she uses to snowboard. She collides with Mr. Bummer who has just found Pepe's motorscooter, which he takes to return Penelope and collect the reward.
It's Pepe's turn to ride the cow, after a fashion. He travels three days nonstop(!) to Rome. At the Trevi fountain the tour, Mr. Bummer and Penelope, and Pepe all meet up again - Pepe, Penelope, and Bummer in the fountain. Mr. Bummer is taken away, amid clapping, as there is a large fine for swimming in the fountain.
Penelope's owner offers the reward to Pepe, who turns it down. He only wants to be beside Penelope. The tourists do not want this, but the lady can't smell anything due to her cold and so they are together as the bus is again underway.
Did You Notice...
The title plays off the 1969 comedy If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium which revolved around a bus tour of Europe.- Page 1: Auto Route 66 is the road taken by the tour and by Pepe. U.S. Route 66 was, and in sections is, a rather famous highway that stretched from Chicago to Los Angeles. It was commissioned in 1926 and not officially decommissioned until 1985, although it had been replaced by the Interstate Highway System much earlier.
- Page 1: Pepe has a vanity license plate "PEPE" on his motorscooter.
- Page 4: The tour needed to stop. The bus's radiator is steaming.
- Page 4: The rest stop is at an outhouse, complete with crescent moon cut into the door.
- Page 8: Pepe prepares the cocoa as James Bond would have a martini prepared: shaken, not stirred.
- Page 15: The cow is also on the tour bus now.
Technical Nits
Mr. Bummer can write and cash checks, or cheques, in various countries? Amazing, considering the difficulty of cashing a check in even the next state here.- Wildman's drawing of Mr. Bummer is very gaunt, almost as a stick figure. This is most noticeable in the lower panels of page 4. That said, the regular characters of Pepe and Penelope are drawn well.
Credits
Synopsis
As the folks of the town of San Rodento are honoring Speedy Gonzales for saving the town harvest again, Serape (Yosemite) Sam is sneaking up on the crowd. Sam attacks with a bullwhip, but Speedy quickly has him tied with it. When Serape shows sign of being too tightly bound, the mouse lets him go with a top like spin. After all this, Speedy finally gets to make his speech in which he says the townsfolk must look after themselves as he is not going to help them anymore.
Sam gives the mice warning he'll be back at dawn, this time to take the town. As they aren't fighters themselves they are worried. That is until they get the idea to hire a gunfighter and pay with food as they have no money, but they do have the harvest. Signs are posted, and as they're about to give up hope, a very scraggly Daffy appears and calls himself the duck with no name. Daffy asks about the menu and accepts the gunfighter position as it will allow him to eat rather better than he's been used to.
Daffy's first try at stopping Sam isn't with firearms, but with a net. And it works, but would have worked better had the duck not stood right where it sends Sam. After this mess the duck draws a line in the sand and dares Sam to cross it. Sam does, and Daffy draws another line which Sam crosses. Daffy keeps drawing lines and Sam keeps crossing them. The slowness of this process gets to Speedy and he speeds it up, by an action that helps Sam.
Sam, a bit surprised at having won without effort, orders a town meeting. At this meeting he lays out a few new laws, including one that demands that the only moustache in town be his own. This so enrages the crowd that they run Sam out of town, chasing him with tar and feathers. While Daffy wasn't terribly effective, he still gets his payment.
Did You Notice...
- The title parodies the non-name of Clint Eastwood's character in The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, Fistful of Dollars, and For a Few Dollars More. The last of which is also referred to in the second panel of page 25.
- Page 30: In the final panel a mouse is trying to guess Daffy's name in a Rumpelstiltskin like fashion. The first guess, Leon, may refer to Sergio Leone who directed many 'spaghetti westerns' and the second, Irving, may refer to Frank Gallop's Ballad of Irving ("the 142nd fastest gun *bang*... in the west.") while Clint can only be Clint Eastwood, as mentioned on page 27.
Technical Nits
- Page 24: Daffy is wearing gray gloves throughout the story, except for his appearance at the right in the bottom panel.
Other items:
There are two one-page fillers.
- Puddy Tats!
- A hidden word puzzle featuring feline names.
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- The Last Laugh
- Four three-panel cartoon strips featuring Sylvester and his dining habits.
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- Sylvester shows the original junk food.
- The effects of overeating can be rather embarrassing...
- There are some things Sylvester just can't abide.
- Cats shouldn't open doggy bags.
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Last updated 2 April 2003