Four Color #621

Francis the Famous Talking Mule has apparently claimed the bed — nightgown, hooves, and all — while his thoroughly unimpressed human companion, clad in polka-dot pajamas, gets an earful: "Go sleep in the barn, if you don't like it!" Dell's 1955 ten-cent charmer captures the mule's irresistible nerve in one perfectly staged bedtime standoff, with a bucket of oats on the nightstand and a horseshoe on the floor as the only concessions to barn life. Don Gunn's warm, expressive linework gives both characters a lively comic personality that makes this one genuinely fun to look at.