WOODY WOODPECKER 75 YEAR JUBILEE

The journalist interviewing me last week said that Woody Woodpecker's 75th birthday is today, 25th of November 2015, which means that this must have been the official premiere date of the short cartoon 'Knock-Knock' where he is a crazy irritating fowl. He also looked different back then with a red belly, a pointed beak with two teeth and heavy yellow feet and legs.

When I was born in 1948, Woody looked quite different. His belly was white and the legs thinner, but his lower body still had some extra bodyweight. I liked that design and I remember thinking it would be great to draw that character someday. He would have as much potential for epic comics stories as Donald Duck had.

Danish comics publisher Interpresse managed in the latter part of the seventies to launch an initiative with new production of comic albums with Woody Woodpecker. I had the pleasure working on that project for seven years.

Now I was in a grand situation. I could do what Barks did, when he started out with only a handful of ducks, around which he built a complete universe with Duckburg and all. Great challenge. I went to work with enthusiasm, and Dutch Disney for which I did 10 page duck stories with Daan Jippes simultaneously did not frown that I also worked with characters from a competing firm.

Gutenberghus would have demanded me a company man had I continued working with them, so it was a blessing in disguise that I ended up blacklisted there. Now I developed Peckburg, and a prolific new character was my own Phineas Phrogg. ‘The coming of the Blot’ was partly inspired by Spielberg’s E.T. only in my version the creature from outer space came to have extremely powerful influence upon Peckburg, due to the phony mindreading act of my frog character…

A pivoting point in the Blot album is the Blot prediction of the bankruptcy of the City Bank, which indeed go bankrupt the following day. So much for the mechanisms of self-fulfilling prophecies. The Blot does not amount to any actions on its own, only the con act of Phineas Phrogg blowing everything out of proportion to benefit his own plans.

My American friend Dwight Decker wrote in his article 'Woody Woopecker's Finest Hour' from Comis Journal 63, 1981 reprinted on my homepage ‘Never has Woody Woodpecker looked better’…
I was happy to hear that from an expert in funny animals.

The second album with Woody ‘The Happy Water’ is my disaster story on the use of narcotics. Only you cannot use narcotics in a fairy tale, so I had to invent something more acceptable, such as a drug made from licorice drops undergoing a metamorphosis due to a violent storm and some substances seeping through the ground. Before long, we have a regular prohibition angle overlying the concept…

By mistake, Woody produces too many licorice drops at his new job, and getting rid of all the drops threatening to disrupt the balance on the drops market, he drives the truckload out to his summer cabin where a lightning strikes, and the licorice seeps into the ground miraculously turning the water into a drug making everybody happy. That is as far as you can get in allusion to using narcotics and spirits. Competing producer Phineas Phrogg and Buzz Buzzard set the town on end until the happy water boom gets spoiled by the kids splashing a barrel of cod liver oil into the magic fountain of happiness. Gabby Gator also has a supporting role as Buzz Buzzard's partner.

The third disaster story with Woody Woodpecker is a story with tourists from the West deprived of their urge for exotic travel adventures with the true existence of the native population revealed to them. This story first published as installments in the Scandinavian Woody Woodpecker comic books and later compiled as an album. I was supposed to do single stories but managed making them in a way so they later combined into album length adventures…

Phineas Phrogg is starring as a manager behind the exotic tourist con act and Buzz Buzzard is the pilot flying the worn down charter airplane to the phony tourist paradise. Woody only get to see the whole picture when he himself turned into a black woodpecker… A supporting role carried by the preacher man from last album here seeing an opportunity to salvage the poor unbelievers on the island. My satirical angle to all religious activities…

My last chaos story with Woody Woodpecker was 'The Giant Trees'. I had a theme in the magazine about the threat from giant carbon age trees. If Spielberg could postulate dinosaurs coming alive, it would be no big deal to let old trees thrive today, where there is no threats to them. The Gnuffs are fighting that menace to the city and those episodes were alternating with those of Woody facing a similar problem with one single carbon age tree.

By then I had made my Gnuff characters move into Peckburg, and although each episode with Woody and The Gnuffs alternating was supposed being single stories but I managed to make them, so they could be put together in 48 page albums later. With 'The Giant Trees' I could then stretch an intrigue to take up 8 issues of the monthly magazine. My own characters then made a parallel to the Barks idea of introducing a number of supporting characters in Duckburg. Only Barks never got to tell 96 page epic funny animal stories...

One more attempt with 96 page stories was the one centered around the historic castle ruin in the park of Peckburg built by the founder of the City, Dimitrius, a knight from the Middle Ages. I have here included my own character Bossman, leading cat in the city, having a pillow factory on the adjoining lot and wanting to expand that by removing the tower ruin. Woody and the kids are involved with handling the park and the burial urn of Dimitrius discovered during the escavations. Gnuff is working at the pillow factory and the other Gnuffs are preparing for a show about Dimitrius - written by Knothead and Splinter. All this is going on separating the Woody and the Gnuff installments but carrying off the mutual epic story.

My urge to write long epic funny animal fairytales with a satirical twist then fulfilled outside the Disney universe. When the lacking profitability of the Woody Woodpecker venture gradually made clear to the producers I was under way with my own funny animal series, The Family Gnuff. For a while, I earned some money from Gnuff reprinted in Kim Thompson in his 'Critters' magazine. Here the contemporary motifs are also obvious, for instance with me predicting the consequences of a Big Brother society controlled by digital handling of information. That was a novelty vision in 1980.

Kim Thompson from Fantagraphics wanted to print my Woody Woodpecker albums in the US, but the rights tied to a number of merchandising rights made the project economically impossible. Had Kim contacted Walter Lantz personally he might have succeded, since Lantz remained having control, but before he made that happen Lantz passed away. I actually met Walter Lantz at Interpresse in Copenhagen 1979, and I have his drawing of Woody in my 'Happy Water' album to prove it...

All in all my troubles with 'The Big Sneeze' story turned out to become a benefit to me. Disney would never have accepted the adult morale twists I included all through my career, and I would have lost control over my own production to boot. Over the years, I expanded The Big Sneeze story to album length and managed to do it with Woody Woodpecker for the magazine and later with the Gnuffs for Critters. In an interview, Kim Thompson said 'You certainly got a lot of mileage out of that one'. How true.

Now are these story experiences impossible for you to reach? Not at all! They are out there for your reading pleasure. You can delve into my stories with Woody Woodpecker and some of the Gnuffs at this very homepage in the column 'English Stuff'... Maybe you will end up agreeing with Dwight Decker?

(listen here, or right click and download the mp3-file):

WOODY WOODPECKER 75 YEARS