Sorry to hear of the death of Jerry Belson, a fine comedy writer who died last Tuesday at age 68 due to cancer. Obits like this one will tell you that Belson was a top scripter of TV sitcoms (The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Joey Bishop Show, The Lucy Show and many others) and of screenplays (The End, Smile, Fun with Dick and Jane and more).
What they won't tell you is that Jerry was also a prolific writer of comic books for a time. From around 1961 through 1966 — which means even while he and his then-partner Garry Marshall were writing some of the top TV shows on the air, Belson wrote Gold Key Comics for the Los Angeles office of Western Publishing Company. Among the comics he wrote for were The Flintstones, Uncle Scrooge, Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, The Three Stooges and Woody Woodpecker. I believe he wrote the one-shot comic with the best name ever on a funny animal comic book: The Tasmanian Devil and His Tasty Friends. (What? You don't believe they put out a comic with name? When will you people learn not to doubt me?)
I never met Jerry in person but I always admired his work and we had a couple of long phone conversations in the early seventies when I was writing some of those comics. He told me he enjoyed writing them because, even with the occasional editorial interference, it still felt like a vacation after days spent arguing with actors, producers and even his collaborator. I seem to recall him saying — this is going way back — that "Joey Bishop won't perform my jokes as I write them but Bugs Bunny will. Which is why the world will remember Bugs Bunny long after Joey Bishop is forgotten."
Neither will the work of Jerry Belson. If you've never seen Smile or The End, you've missed a couple of real good movies.