All Top Chambers

All Top Comics from Fox (not that Fox) ran for 18 1/2 issues starting in the spring of 1946. After that, it changed the title and format to My Experience for four issues, then to Judy Canova for a trio of issues before ceasing publication with issue #3. (23, 24, 3 - comics!)
But, we don't really care about any of that today - just the beginning.

For the first seven and a half issues, the format was Funny Animal comics. Perhaps most significantly, Cosmo Cat began his first adventures in All Top, starting in the first issue.

Those early issues of All Top featured - we think - four tales drawn by Ellis Chambers, including the aforementioned Cosmo Cat story - though that was is merely presumed, not confirmed.
The first two stories ran previously on the main blog. I suspect we'll copy more over time so as to collect it all here.

All Top Comics #1 - Cosmo Cat / The Lollipop Fiend:

For this second tale, Ellis Chambers is the 'best guess' by historians on who drew the tale. When some are trying to deduce the artist,  they note that the bottom of panel two contains what appears to be an box with artist's initials semi-obscured by white-out. While some say it looks like an E.L., they also note that there was nobody with those initials known to be active in the field at the time.

However, that EL could just as easily be a more completely hidden EC, and Chambers was known to draw a box around his initials at times. (He even signed with just an empty box on occasion, but that's not what we're looking at here.)

All Top Comics #3 - Cosmo Cat / The Fourth Dimension:

These next two tales he signed, so there's little doubt to the artist. There are others that he may have drawn during the early run of All Top, but we're sticking with just the four that are presumed to be his work. At least, until convincing arguments are made for other stories.

All Top Comics #5 - Señor Tamale / What Magical Magic!:

All Top Comics #6 - Cosmo Cat / Real Heavy Artillery:

With issue number 8, the format switched to Jungle Comics and Matt Baker was the new look of the book. The animals weren't so funny any more...

page art by Ellis Holly Chambers for All Top Comics #s 1, 3, 5, & 6 (1946, 1947)

Bonvenon!

The 1940s Funny Animalphabet now has 500 entries listed. Not all have the data assigned as yet, but the majority do and gaps are rapidly being filled. (If the fields are blank, it hasn't been processed, if there's question marks, the information is unknown, Exception - Other Appearances is left blank if none are known)

Some information will be slower to fill in than others. For example, the most recent stumbling block was Tabby. I prepped the image for Tabby's entry when doing the original blog posts for The Voice Of ODD!. At that time, the sources weren't very relevant so i wasn't meticulous in my notes. Going back to fill in the data, i couldn't find any reference to the character or strip in any comics database, despite hours of searching. (Much time can be spent searching for possible typos that could be hiding the information.) Finally, i came to realize that the comic from which it was sourced, Nutty Comics #3, remains un-indexed in the databases. (So, yeah - i'm compiling a complete issue index to submit.) It was only randomly flipping through old issues that finally found the source.
Hopefully, we'll eventually get it all.

And, yes - please do feel free to volunteer information not currently present, or suggest corrections where appropriate.

As noted to the right, this all started as a carried-away blog post after noticing how amazingly many Funny Animal characters were running around in comics back in the '40s. Even with 500 entries, we're nowhere near complete at this stage. We haven't even started to list the Big Names, like the Disney, Warner, and MGM critters, for example. Folks know them anyway, so they need listing the least. We'll get to them eventually.

Now that we've reached the 500 mark, it's time to go ahead and open up the doors, so we'll stop hiding from the search engines and Blogger. To celebrate, here's a lovely little poster of Cosmo Cat i found, signed by both Ellis Holly Chambers and Leonard Brandt Cole, both of whose work you can find throughout the Funny Animalphabet.

Here's a little bonus - I recently added Uncle Wiggily's first cover to his listing, but that image only shows the front of a wrap-around cover. Here's the entire cover to Animal Comics #2 for you to enjoy:

As always, throughout the Funny Animalphabet images are reduced to fit on the page, but full size viewing is only a click away.

The Navigation Menu is always at the top of the column to right, but here's one you may use now to get you started. Jump straight to the introduction or to any letter to view the listings. There's also a simple text list of entries on the Index page, as well as a text listing of applicable entries at the top of each letter's page. Hopefully that'll make browsing easier for you.

Introduction

A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y-Z

 INDEX

Cosmo Cat by Ellis Chambers & L.B. Cole (circa 1950), Funny Animals cover by unknown (1943)