Three different people have written to ask me who drew those panels from Gold Key Comics that I reprinted in the first part of this series. I'm not sure of the inkers but the Yosemite Sam and Daffy Duck comic was drawn by a gent named John Langton, who did a number of these for Western Publishing. His work was also seen for years in the New York Daily News and also in Cracked magazine among other outlets..
The panel with Bugs Bunny and the Tasmanian Devil was drawn by Tom McKimson, whose family gave the world three top cartoonists….and hearing about that family may be of interest to some of you. In addition to Tom, there was Robert and Charles. All three worked at times for the Warner Bros. cartoon studio and Robert was one of its major directors, supervising a lot of Bugs Bunny cartoons as well as films with Daffy Duck, Foghorn Leghorn and others.
Tom worked for Disney and Harman-Ising before settling in at the WB cartoon operation, working mostly on Bob Clampett cartoons and later in Bob McKimson's unit. Tom designed some very significant model sheets for popular characters like Bugs and Tweety before moving over to Western Publishing Company. Here's one of his, which you can make larger by clicking on it. Note the signature of "Tom"…
For Western, he drew and/or art-directed a lot of their comic books printed under the Dell and later the Gold Key logo, and also worked on coloring books, activity books, puzzle books and other things Western produced. For a long time, he was the artist on the syndicated Bugs Bunny newspaper strip.
Charles McKimson went to work for Warner Brothers cartoons in 1937, mainly in Tex Avery's unit. Then he went off to fight in World War II, then returned and joined brother Robert's unit until 1954 when the studio was closed down. It didn't stay closed for long but by the time it reopened, Charles had also gone to work for Western as an Art Director. And Robert wasn't above occasionally moonlighting for Western on activity books and books for kids.
A few years ago, someone wrote asking me about Al McKimson, who drew a Roy Rogers newspaper strip for a while. There was no Al McKimson. That was the joint pseudonym of Tom McKimson, Charles McKimson and one of Western's most prolific cartoonists, Pete Alvarado. And there you have most of what you need to know about The Brothers McKimson. Much of this will become very relevant in future installments in this series.