Donald Benson wrote to inquire, with reference to animation studios…
How closely did various studios monitor comic books of their characters? I’m guessing the non-superheroes didn’t bother too much about continuity, being based on theatrical cartoons or short TV episodes that rarely bothered at all. But presumably somebody was there to say Yogi has to be a real bear in Jellystone Park, or Mickey can’t have a different girlfriend than Minnie, etc.
Most of the comic books based on animated properties over the years were produced out of the Los Angeles office of Western Publishing Company, first under the Dell Comics imprint and later as Gold Key and/or Whitman comics. The staff at Western then enjoyed very close relationships with the cartoon studios whose properties they were turning into comics. For one thing, they employed a lot of the same talent. Most of the writers and artists who worked on those comics also worked for the studios.
The Western Publishing Company office in L.A. did plenty of business and had much interaction with the cartoon studios in Los Angeles: Disney, Warner Brothers, Walter Lantz, Hanna-Barbera, etc. My editor at Western, Chase Craig, told me a number of stories of lunching with or visiting Walt Disney. Del Connell, who was also an editor there, did a lot of moonlighting for Western. (And Western Publishing was also an earlier investor in Disneyland.) When I met Walter Lantz and told him I’d written Woody Woodpecker comics for Chase, he told me how much he loved Chase and his whole long history with Western.
So the studios didn’t worry about Western doing wrong with their properties. Hanna-Barbera did hate most of what Charlton Comics did with their characters and eventually canceled that deal. Charlton was on the other side of the country, employing no one who’d ever worked for the studio and paying them just about the lowest wages in this business. That was a problem. But it all comes down to good working relationships. When you have them, things work out fine.
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