Top Cat #1

History

Dell Publishing launched the title in December 1961, simultaneous with Top Cat's prime-time run on ABC — a show that Hanna-Barbera had sold to the network on the strength of a single character drawing and that was conceived explicitly as a funny-animal riff on The Phil Silvers Show, with writer Barry Blitzer (a Bilko veteran) among the series' contributors. Dell assigned the art duties to Phil DeLara, a former Warner Bros. animator who had been a mainstay of Dell/Western Publishing's funny-animal line since 1950, drawing everything from Tom & Jerry to Chip 'n' Dale, making him a natural fit for the Hanna-Barbera stable. The series was published quarterly and ran only three issues under the Dell banner before the imprint's reorganization transferred the license to Gold Key Comics, which picked up the numbering at issue #4 and carried it all the way through issue #31 in 1970. Writers on the Dell issues go uncredited in the indicia, which was standard practice for Dell's licensed-character titles of the era.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First comic-book appearance of Top Cat (T.C.), Officer Dibble, Benny the Ball, Brain, Choo-Choo, Fancy-Fancy, and Spook — the complete cast of the Hanna-Barbera animated series.
• Published by Dell Publishing Co. with an indicia date of December 1961–February 1962; on-sale date recorded by the Library of Congress as December 10, 1961.
• 36 pages, full color, with a cover price of fifteen cents — standard for Dell's quarterly licensed-TV titles of the period.
• Art (pencils and inks) by Phil DeLara, a veteran Warner Bros. animator and Dell/Western funny-animal specialist whose credits spanned Woody Woodpecker, Tom & Jerry, Chip 'n' Dale, and later the full Hanna-Barbera roster including The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Yogi Bear, and Scooby-Doo. Writers on this issue are uncredited.
• The lead story, set aboard a cruise ship bound for Tahiti, features Spook winning passage and T.C. smuggling the gang onboard; they share unwanted close quarters with a vacationing Officer Dibble and become accidentally entangled with a bank robber's hidden loot.
• The issue also includes a Yakky Doodle backup story — an early example of Dell's practice of bundling secondary Hanna-Barbera characters into Top Cat's title.
• Dell published only three issues (December 1961–June 1962) before the license transferred to Gold Key, which continued the numbering from issue #4 (October 1962) through issue #31 (September 1970); Charlton Comics then published twenty more issues from November 1970 to November 1973.
• Material from Top Cat #1 was reprinted in black and white in the British anthology A Television Story Book (Gerald G. Swan, 1964), and World Distributors separately produced UK annuals in the 1960s drawing on Dell comic strips — reflecting the show's significant international popularity, especially in the UK (where the TV series was retitled 'Boss Cat' due to a British cat-food brand of the same name) and Latin America.

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