Happy Birthday Taz!

65 years ago today - June 19, 1954 - Warner Bros. Pictures releases the Looney Tunes cartoon "Devil May Hare" starring Bugs Bunny.
This is the first appearance of the ravenous, spinning maniac, The Tasmanian Devil. Taz would go on to co-star in four other cartoons with Bugs and one with Daffy Duck, "Ducking the Devil", my favorite of the original 'toons with Taz.

100 Years of Barney Google

June 17, 1919, one hundred years ago today, Billy DeBeck debuted his classic newspaper strip character "Barney Google".
Barney was very popular appearing in hundreds of newspapers around the world. A very popular song was written about him and twice he was adapted to animation. In the silent era of movies a series of live-action shorts was produced starring Barney and his famous race horse, Spark Plug.
In the mid-1930's, DeBeck introduced the hillbilly character Snuffy Smith into the strip. He who would become so popular that in the mid-1950's Snuffy and his family at Hootin' Holler would take over the strip and continue to this day.

85 Years of Donald Duck

June 9, 1934 was the debut of Donald Duck in the Silly Symphony cartoon "The Wise Little Hen".
Donald would go on to surpass Mickey Mouse in cartoons, comic books, newspaper strips, merchandising and so forth.
My favorite version of Donald are the classic comic book stories written and drawn by Carl Barks where he also debuted the multi-billionaire, Uncle Scrooge McDuck.