Peter Panda #1

History

The series was edited in practice by Larry Nadle (Whitney Ellsworth held the nominal credit on the indicia), and the Grand Comics Database records Rube Grossman as the penciler and inker throughout. Grossman was a New York-born artist who had trained as a Fleischer Studios animator in the 1930s before spending the bulk of his career drawing DC's funny-animal stable — titles like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Nutsy Squirrel, and Peter Porkchops. The lead scripts are attributed by at least one collector database to Sy Reit, a writer who had previously co-created Casper the Friendly Ghost and was then actively scripting children's comics for Archie and DC; this attribution is described as a belief rather than a confirmed credit. Veteran DC letterer and logo designer Ira Schnapp created the series' cover logo and hand-lettered the vast majority of its interior story titles, contributing a distinctively playful typographic personality to nearly every issue.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance of Peter Panda, Jane, Jimmy, antagonist Foxy Dan, Professor Oswald Owl, and the frog trio Hop, Skip, and Jump — the core cast of the 31-issue series.
• Published with a cover date of August 1953 (on-sale June 24, 1953) by National Comics Publications Inc., the corporate entity that would become DC Comics.
• The issue includes a one-page Binky Biggs strip produced in cooperation with the National Social Welfare Assembly — part of a DC/NSWA civic-education initiative that ran from 1949 to 1967 and appeared across an estimated 10 million magazines per month.
• Art on the lead Peter Panda story (a three-part rainbow/treasure adventure) is credited to Rube Grossman, a former Fleischer Studios animator who served as the series' primary and likely sole interior artist for its entire run.
• The series is editorially distinct from standard DC funny-animal books: Peter is a talking panda with no stated origin who interacts with human children and fairy-tale figures rather than an all-animal cast.
• A recurring backup feature, Stanley the Timid Scarecrow, also debuts in this era of the run, broadening the title's anthology structure.
• A separate character called Peter Panda had appeared in a filler strip in Funny Stuff #21, but the DC Database notes that different cartoonist handled that strip and it may not depict the same character as this series.
• Stories from the series were later reprinted in DC's Best of DC digest #37 ('Funny Stuff'), collecting Rube Grossman funny-animal work for a later generation of readers.

Cast · 1 character

Full credits