Animal Antics #18
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeAnimal Antics #18 (cover-dated January–February 1949) sits squarely in DC's postwar funny-animal golden run, representing the mature, settled phase of a title that had spent its first several issues finding its identity before the Raccoon Kids — Otto Feuer's gang of small-time hoodlum raccoons — firmly took over as the anchor feature. As one of DC's three concurrent funny-animal anthologies alongside Funny Stuff and Real Screen Comics, the series helped demonstrate that the publisher could sustain humor lines parallel to its superhero output throughout the Golden Age. Issue #18 is also one of only a handful of issues in the run confirmed to carry cover lettering by Ira Schnapp, making it a small document of that master letterer's evolving style in the period just before his work became the visual template for DC's house look of the 1950s.
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Animal Antics launched in April 1946 as part of DC's expansion into the funny-animal genre, with Presto Pete — a hapless magician's rabbit created by writer-artist Ed Dunn — as the original lead. Otto Feuer's Raccoon Kids proved so popular with readers that the feature displaced Presto Pete and took over the top slot by issue #6, anchoring the anthology for the remainder of its run. Issue #18 was edited under Whitney Ellsworth's credited masthead, though MyComicShop's detailed indexing indicates the hands-on editorial work was handled by Larry Nadle. Feuer himself, a Cooper Union-trained artist who had come to comics from the Fleischer and Famous animation studios in the early 1940s, served as both lead story artist and cover artist for this period of the series.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Published with a cover date of January–February 1949 by DC Comics, making it part of the original 23-issue Animal Antics run (1946–1949) before the title was renamed Movietown's Animal Antics with issue #24.
- Otto Feuer provided both the cover art and the lead Raccoon Kids story, continuing his role as the series' primary visual architect; Feuer had come to DC after working at the Fleischer/Famous animation studios during the 1930s and early 1940s.
- Interior stories were contributed by a stable of DC funny-animal specialists: Otto Feuer, Rube Grossman, and Howie Post (the latter responsible for the Presto Pete feature he wrote and drew himself).
- The issue's feature lineup as reconstructed from contemporary indexes includes the Raccoon Kids (6 pages), Pete the Pup (4 pages), Goofy Goose (6 pages), Custer the Cat and Cheesy the Mouse (6 pages), and Presto Pete (7 pages).
- Issue #18 is one of the confirmed issues in the run bearing cover lettering by Ira Schnapp, DC's in-house lettering cornerstone, who worked on the title from its first issue through to 1949 before his increasing workload on superhero titles reduced his funny-animal contributions.
- The series eventually transformed entirely into a Raccoon Kids vehicle: after the Animal Antics → Movietown's Animal Antics rename, the title was ultimately rechristened The Raccoon Kids with issue #52 in 1954, continuing for thirteen more issues through 1957.
- Like all issues in the original Animal Antics run, #18 was a 52-page full-color anthology, placing it among DC's larger-format humor offerings of the era.
- Back-matter advertisements in the issue included art by Al Plastino (US Royal Bicycle tires) and C. C. Beck (Captain Tootsie candy), giving the book an incidental connection to two of DC's most recognizable Golden Age art talents.
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