Sunday, December 12, 2010

Sunday Funnies: "The Buffoon of Lake Lagoon"


Time to get your giggles on, Groove-0philes! Here's Gold Key's final Where's Huddles? tale (they'd published 3 issues in1971), "The Buffoon of Lake Lagoon" from Hanna-Barbera Fun-In #9 (July 1971). Where's Huddles? was a shot by H/B to regain their prime-time audience--an audience that they hadn't enthralled in half a decade. Huddles wound up being a short-lived "summer replacement show" made memorable by the voice acting of greats like Mel Blanc, Jean Vander Pyl, and Paul Lynde. The premise, pretty much a modern-day Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble as pro football players was way out there--way enough out that it should have clicked, but it didn't. Still, Ol' Groove has fond memories of the show, and the comics were well-done. They certainly give you a good idea of the look and spirit of this long-forgotten show. (Speaking of looks, wonder why they made Ed Huddles look like Walter Matthau?)

2 comments:

  1. It wasn't really so unusual to have the character seem like Matthau. Let's face it, previous H-B shows starred ""Phil Silvers," "Art Carney.""Jimmy Durante," etc. The only difference is that those characters were animals, not human.

    After 15 years as a character actor, Walter Matthau had burst out as a star and was extremely popular at that time. IT made sense they would do SOME celeb and who better for this particular role than Walter?

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  2. Yeah, I know H-B used celebrities as characters, and I know Matthau was popular at the time, but I just don't picture him as a football player (not even a middle-aged one). Seemed that all of the choices H-B used up to that point made sense, but this one didn't click for me. Joe Namath, yes, Walter Matthau--not so much.

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Special thanks to Mike's Amazing World of Comics and Grand Comics Database for being such fantastic resources for covers, dates, creator info, etc. Thou art treasures true!


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