Tuesday, October 16, 2012

If You're Gonna Do A Funny Animal, It Better Damn Well Be An ATOMIC Funny Animal!!

If I gave you one billion guesses, you could never tell me what was Charlton Comics' most successful title ever:

Atomic Mouse last nearly a decade, and 52 issues. Take that, E-Man and Captain Atom!

Al Fago created Atomic Mouse in 1953. Our rodent hero got some U-235 pills from Professor Invento (!), and he got all powerful and stuff. With his arbitrarily-varying-in-every-story-powers, he protected Mouseville from his arch-enemy, Count Gatto.

Note the slight makeover he received later, with the apparent hand-me-down of Captain Marvel's style of cape:

Thank heavens the nu52 fashion designers won't get a hold of him...

Fago and Charlton understood striking while the iron was, well, lukewarm, because two years later they launched:

But you see, it was a COMPLETELY different concept. Atomic Rabbit got his powers from U-235 carrots, and protected Rabittville from the evil Sly Fox. Totally not the same thing. Not at all.

Atomic Rabbit even got a super-special endorsement...


As of issue 12 Fago left the book, and it became...Atomic Bunny!!

Why? Who knows? Probably focus groups liked Bunny better.

Under other artists, AB began to morph into something a little more...Bugsier, shall we say? Perhaps that's the real reason they changed his name...

And in 1957, the funny animal book Tom Cat changed, and with issue 9 became...

Charlton really liked radioactive funny animals, is what I'm saying.

As far as I can tell, these characters never met, or crossed over. So there's a vast untapped potential waiting here. DC? If you can set one of the nu52 on Earth 2, one can certainly be set on Earth-Charlton-Funny-Animal, right?

And I'll bet you could convince Cartoon Network to air this, and they probably wouldn't even drop it with no notice...

And don't get me started on what Charlton did with Hoppy The Marvel Bunny...

5 comments:

Martin Gray said...

Thank goodness for Atomic Bunny, because Atomic Rabbit looks eeevil.

Am disturbed by the sight of a mouse in tighty whities ...

Unknown said...

Pretty sure the mouse is in a nappy. Whereas the rabbit and cat don't bother with trousers at all, as is the tradition of all cartoon animals and HOW IT SHOULD BE.

Whoever came up with 'Atom' is like 'Tom' is a genius!

But why does Atomic Rabbit constantly have two black eyes? Guess he might be the fastest and most powerful crusader, but he's not very good at blocking blows to the face.

snell said...

"Nappy"? You Brits are so cute when you try to speak English...

Unknown said...

I am sad now.

snell said...

Please don't be sad. Think upon this and smile!!