Silly Symphony (initially titled Silly Symphonies) is a weekly Disney comic strip that debuted on January 10, 1932, as a topper for the Mickey Mouse strip's Sunday page. The strip featured adaptations of Walt Disney's popular short film series, Silly Symphony, which released 75 cartoons from 1929 to 1939, as well as other cartoons and animated films. The comic strip outlived its parent series by six years, ending on October 7, 1945.
Silly Symphony initially related the adventures of Bucky Bug, the first Disney character to originate in the comics. It went on to print loose adaptations of Silly Symphony shorts, often using the characters and setting of the original shorts, but adding new plotlines and incidents. Later, it went on to print adaptations of some of Disney's feature films, as well as periods of gag strips featuring Donald Duck and Pluto. By late 1935, the strip had become a standalone half-page, and was no longer strictly a topper for the Mickey Mouse Sunday strip.
The strip was initially titled Silly Symphonies; after two years, the name was changed to Silly Symphony. The switch happened in the February 18, 1934 strip, just three weeks before Bucky Bug would be replaced with a new storyline, "Birds of a Feather".
The complete strip has been reprinted in four hardcover collections, Silly Symphonies: The Complete Disney Classics, published from 2016 to 2019 by IDW Publishing's Library of American Comics imprint.
Contents
Development
The original creative team for the strip was animator Earl Duvall and artist Al Taliaferro, with Duvall responsible for writing and penciling, and Taliaferro inking. Duvall, who wrote the Silly Symphony short Bugs in Love, created Bucky Bug as the hero of the new Sunday strip. In the first sequence, which lasts for three months, a young bug is born and sets forth into the world to make a name for himself. Stumped for a name, he asks the readers for help, and the strip encouraged readers to write to their newspapers with name suggestions. In the strip, a big pile of letters is delivered to the bug, and he spends two weeks combing through the letters to reveal the winning name: Bucky Bug. Bucky travels through the forest to make his fortune, meeting up with a "friendly tramp" named Bo, and traveling to the insect city of Junkville. Bucky falls in love with the beautiful June Bugg, and her father—the mayor of Junkville—makes Bucky a general of his army. The bug couple is happy, but just a few strips later, the alarm sounds to alert the community that war has been declared by the flies.
Duvall began an epic battle against the flies which raged for 28 weeks, but just before the story ended in April 1933, Duvall suddenly left the Disney studio. Animator Jack Kinney wrote that Duvall owed Walt Disney several weeks worth of storyboards, and Duvall simply gathered his belongings one day and left the company, "leaving Walt holding the bag". Alberto Becattini suggests that Duvall's hasty exit was due to owing money to his colleagues that he couldn't pay. Whatever the reason for Duvall's departure was, Taliaferro became the artist for the strip, and he remained in that position for six years, with Ted Osborne as the strip's writer. Osborne and Taliaferro continued the story of Bucky for another 11 months, finally ending the saga on March 4, 1934.
In 1934, Taliaferro drew the Silly Symphony story arc based on the cartoon The Wise Little Hen, which featured the first appearance of Donald Duck as a secondary character. That story, which lasted on the Sunday pages from September to December 1934, gave Taliaferro a particular liking for the Duck's character. He pitched the idea of a Donald strip to Walt Disney, and Disney allowed him a trial run in the Silly Symphony comic. Finishing up a "The Three Little Pigs" adaptation, Taliaferro and writer Ted Osborne began an extended run of Donald Duck gag strips from August 30, 1936, to December 5, 1937. Taliaferro then pitched the idea of a solo Donald comic strip to King Features Syndicate, working with writers Merrill De Maris and Homer Brightman. On February 7, 1938, the Donald Duck comic strip started appearing in daily newspapers. A Sunday version was added on December 10, 1939.
Ending
On October 14, 1945, the strip was replaced by Uncle Remus and His Tales of Br'er Rabbit, a strip inspired by the upcoming 1946 film Song of the South. The Uncle Remus strip began, like the others, as a topper for the Mickey Mouse strip, but after the first few years, almost always appeared on its own. The previous comic strip adaptations of Disney films lasted for four or five months, but the Uncle Remus strip continued for almost thirty years, telling new stories of Br'er Rabbit and friends, until the strip was discontinued on December 31, 1972.
Two more Silly Symphony-style feature film adaptations appeared in the early 50s, running 16 weeks each: Cinderella (1950) and Alice in Wonderland (1951).
A similar Sunday strip, Walt Disney's Treasury of Classic Tales, launched on July 13, 1952, with The Story of Robin Hood, a five-month adaptation of Disney's 1952 live-action film. The strip, which was principally a vehicle for promoting new and re-released Disney films, adapted both live-action films and cartoons. The strip ran for 35 years, until February 15, 1987.
Storylines
The headings in the table below refer to the IDW Publishing reprint collections, Silly Symphonies: The Complete Disney Classics. Writing and art credits are from the reprint collections.
Comic books
Strips from Silly Symphony were reprinted in Disney's flagship anthology comic book Walt Disney's Comics and Stories, beginning with some Pluto the Pup strips in issue #12 (September 1941), followed by The Boarding-School Mystery in issue #14 (November 1941), The Further Adventures of the Three Little Pigs in issue #15 (December 1941), and an abridged version of Bucky Bug Gets His Name in issue #20 (May 1942).
Three of the Silly Symphony stories inspired long-running features in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories.
Bucky Bug
In 1942–43, Walt Disney's Comics and Stories reprinted all of Duvall and Taliaferro's Bucky Bug strips in issues #20-28. Following this, the editors decided to produce new Bucky Bug stories, retaining the strip's use of verse in the story's dialogue and captions. The first new Bucky story, "A Cure for Gout", appeared in issue #39 (December 1943), drawn by Taliaferro and Dick Moores.
The second original story, "The Playground Plot", appeared in the following issue, #40 (January 1944). This story was written and drawn by Carl Beuttner, who continued as the series' main creator until 1946, with his last story in issue #72 (Sept 1946). Beuttner added new characters, such as the Ant King and the Sheriff of Junkville.
The Bucky stories published from issue #73 to #77 were written alternately by Vivie Risto and George Waiss, and then Ralph Heimdahl took over the series, starting with issue #78 (March 1947). Heimdahl created all the Bucky stories until issue #99 (December 1948). Heimdahl introduced June's younger brother Junior Bugg in #79 (April 1947), and Junior continued to appear until #100 (January 1949).
After Heimdahl's run, the remaining WDC&S Bucky stories were written by several creators, including Tony Strobl, Gil Turner, Jim Pabian and Tony Pabian. Bucky's last Comics and Stories story appeared in issue #120 (September 1950).
Following this, Bucky's final solo comic story was published in the Silly Symphonies comic #6 (August 1956), drawn by Al Hubbard and featuring Bucky and Bo the tramp trying to capture a green lake monster.
Bucky Bug stories never lost their popularity in the Netherlands, where original Bucky comics have been made continuously from the 1970s to the present day.
Bucky Bug stories came back into fashion in the USA in the late 1980s, when Gladstone Publishing occasionally reprinted 1940s Bucky tales in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories. These were followed by additional stories in Disney Comics, Gemstone, and IDW issues of WDCS over the years, as well as in various larger anthologies of historic Disney comics (e.g. Gemstone's Walt Disney Treasures paperback collection, 2006; IDW's Walt Disney's Comics and Stories 75th Anniversary Special, 2015). While some of these stories were vintage American reprints, others were new-to-the-USA Dutch stories.
Li'l Bad Wolf
"The Three Little Pigs" feature inspired the creation of Li'l Bad Wolf, the Big Bad Wolf's errant son, who wants to be friends with the Pigs. Li'l Bad Wolf's adventures began in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories issue #52 (Jan 1945), and he made continuous appearances until almost the end of the comic's original run, issue #259 (April 1962).
In later decades, while never again a continuous feature, Wolf stories continued to appear in the magazine at least several times per year, often in all-new or new-to-the-USA material. In the 2000s, the Big Bad Wolf often became the title character in the stories, though Li'l Wolf continued to play a major role.
Little Hiawatha
Little Hiawatha had his own monthly story in Walt Disney's Comics and Stories for two years, from issue #143 (Aug 1952) to #168 (September 1954).
Silly Symphonies comic book
Dell Comics also published a Silly Symphonies anthology comic book, with nine issues released at irregular intervals between September 1952 and February 1959. The series printed adaptations of a few of the Silly Symphony shorts that weren't adapted in the Sunday comic strip - The Grasshopper and the Ants, The Golden Touch and The Country Cousin - as well as stories featuring Silly Symphony characters, including Bucky Bug, Little Hiawatha, Elmer Elephant, Toby Tortoise and Spotty the Pig. There were also adaptations of non-Symphony Disney shorts like Lambert the Sheepish Lion, Morris the Midget Moose, and Chicken Little, and a large number of stories featuring characters from other projects, including Jiminy Cricket, Dumbo, Thumper, the Seven Dwarfs, Humphrey the Bear, and Bongo the Wonder Bear from Fun and Fancy Free.
Reprints
The complete strip has been reprinted in four hardcover collections, Silly Symphonies: The Complete Disney Classics, published by IDW Publishing's Library of American Comics imprint.
The first volume, published in 2016, includes all of the strips from "Bucky Bug" (1932) to "Cookieland" (1935). Volume 2, also published in 2016, includes "Three Little Kittens" (1935) to "Timid Elmer" (1939). Volume 3, published in 2018, includes "Pluto the Pup" (1939) to "Little Hiawatha" (1942). The fourth volume, published in 2019, concludes the series with "Bambi" (1942) through "Panchito" (1945).
The copyright then passed to Fantagraphics, who started republishing the strips with a different layout in a new collection entitled Walt Disney's Silly Symphonies, beginning in April 2023.