There’s probably a lot of ground I should cover to explain this one, so I’ll get right to it.
In doing research for a recent project (which you’ll find out about at a later date), I was pointed towards a website featuring comic book characters that are now reportedly in the public domain. While going through all those characters, it struck me that there was material there which might be worth mining for future blog posts. As a result, this will be the first of a series of posts on “Forgotten Ones,” which I may do from time to time.
For this inaugural outing, I chose Bee-29, the Bombardier. Bee-29 is unique because so far as I know, he’s the only bee superhero! He only made a few appearances back in 1945, but one of them was in a comic named for him. In the interests of saving column space, if you’d like to read the entry for Bee-29 on the Public Domain Super Heroes site, you can check it out here.
If you’ve visited this site much, you’ve probably picked up on the fact I often like to try to find an angle to approach a character like this, some kind of a different spin I can put on it instead of just reproducing something verbatim. So I thought, “What if in some alternate world, Hanna-Barbera had picked up the rights to this character?” Going down that path lead to my attempt at an HB version of Bee-29 on the faux Gold Key cover you see here, since Gold Key handled most of the cartoon-based comics back in the day.
Let me go on record here and say that I am definitely a fan of the classic Hanna-Barbera look. Yes, I grew up watching those shows, but it’s more than that. Years ago when Hanna-Barbera was located on the 14th floor of the Imperial Bank Building in Sherman Oaks, multiple times a day I would walk by these great framed cels from shows like The Flintstones and The Jetsons, hanging on the walls in the hallway. I saw how well-designed all those characters were, and how strongly silhouette-oriented they were. The HB designers took the restrictions of limited animation and small TV screens, and actually turned them into strengths.
I’ve not had a lot of opportunity to attempt that classic HB look, so this was a chance to venture onto that playground a little bit. And I’d be remiss if I didn’t tip my hat here and say thanks to my good friend Mark Christiansen, who is truly a classic HB master.
Mark, you must have taken some Vitamin B1 in order to have the energy to tackle this post, which by the way earns you not a B but an A.
Ow! 🙂
Glad you like the post.
You fooled me again, Mark. I honestly thought that was a real Gold Key cover.
Always enjoy your posts. I noticed there is a character on the Public Domain Comic site called Reefer King. Will you be doing him soon in your Forgotten Ones series? Sure hope so.
Jim,
Wow! I am hugely flattered to hear I fooled you momentarily with this one, my friend. You’re no slouch at doing these classic styles yourself, when you want to do them.
I just looked up “Reefer King” myself on the PDSH site. Kind of surprising to see a character like that back then, especially for those of us who grew up during in the Comics Code era, where any mention of drugs at all was not allowed!
No plans to do Reefer King on this end, but that’s the beauty of these characters being public domain: anyone else can take a shot at it, if they’re so inclined.
I thought this was the real McCoy too! I was going to go to comics.org to see if there were any other covers so that I could compare it with the original.
Like most of your posts, I want to read the story inside the book now! Too bad for me!
Glad you liked this, Lyle. Actually, up there in the third paragraph the words “made for him” form a link to the cover for the original Bee-29 the Bombardier comic on Comics.org. If I understand right, that was the only issue, but that lead story got reprinted a time or two elsewhere.
Recently found Bee-29 on the PDSH website and found it very interesting. I definitely would have liked to see a Hanna-Barbera Bee-29 cartoon and comic. Perhaps he and Atom Ant occasionally got together and compared notes?
Not a bad thought. It would have been fun to see a cartoon team-up.