By: Annna
[2001-07-03]
The Complete Petey, Part Two
January 1966 - April 1966
January 1966 - There is no dialogue balloon. The artist has either been reading
The New Yorker or
The Family Circus. Petey has no nose, but his fourth strand of hair has returned.
February 1966 - The comic is seasonal for Valentine's Day. This is the second comic running in which we do not see Petey's eyes, but his nose is back.
April 1966 - There are only five (possibly four) adults shown in the
Petey canon. They are either portrayed full body and in shadow or they're only shown below the waist. Petey's father, clearly the source of Petey's rabbit fixation, has a truly huge umbrella. Not one to be beaten, Petey's antennae are also much larger than usual, perhaps compensating for not only the renewed loss of his fourth hair but also the truncated title - the ellipsis is gone.
Petey has "digits of convenience." when he grasps something or points, he has fingers, but if his hands are not part of the action, he has fleshmittens. I like how his dad, the consummate professional, wears his dress shoes whenever there's a chance of being seen in person. his profile is somewhat Bob-esque, but then again, most men in '50s cartoons can be compared to Dobbs in some way or another.
"in public" would have made more sense than "in person," pity I didn't type it, since I was thinking it.
I must cast my lot with the Velma as a girl school of Patty explanation. her jaw is too square for her to be a relative of Arthur's. was she referred actually named by the Pel-Freez artist, or was her name added more recently? I like calling her Friend the Girl, as was done in the first Petey week - this gives me my daily Dame Darcy dosage, without actually having to wait for those huge scanned strips to load, or spend the money to buy the books.
It seems that Petey can switch between two physical forms: the four-haired eyeless mute form, and the three-haired eyeful vocal form.
Alternately -- and this is a disturbing notion, but must not be dismissed out of hand -- perhaps there is more than one Petey? This would explain "digits of convenience": the film crew got footage of this particular Petey pointing at the Alpha-Petey in the background simply because this was the one Petey capable of doing so.
In the Peteyverse, I suspect there is no greater challenge to a person's ego than to question what they can do with rabbit meat. Note Patty's clenched fist: she has murder in her heart. First she chose to destroy Petey's self-image, and now she's out to beat the life out of him.
We can but speculate as to what Petey did to incur her wrath. My inner Dennis Franz suggests: he rejected her sexual advances because it would interfere with rabbit.
It's cute to have a contrived mascot, but it might have provided more impact and been a more compelling advert in the 1960's if there had been a celebrity photo endorsement by June Cleaver professing the nutritional virtues of rabbit, and how "The Beaver" just couldn't get enough! Or "Rabbit! The Official Meat of the NASCAR Driver's Training Table!" Or a photo montage of Mt. Rushmore, fireworks, carpet-bombing in Viet Nam, a dead water buffalo floating in a rice paddy: "From Our Founding Fathers to Our Front-Line Freedom Fighters: It's Rabbit!"
The oscillation between the three-haired Petey and the four-haired Petey distracted me from the five-haired Petey at the top of page!
The idea of the existence of multiple Peteys, and the refernce to an alpha-petey strikes a disturbing chord with me ... I have visons of packs of them roaming the great Americam savannahs, within howling distance of brightly-colored housing developemnts sheathed in injection-molded vinyl siding. Their deceptively flabby rear legs propel them in a powerful lope across the grasslands, antennae tasting the wind; their stubby forelegs, shoggoth-like, grow fleshy pseudopods to scrabble and turn madly after frantically leaping prey. Their chops are rosy with blood and their gullets are stuffed with rubbery gobbets of succulent RABBIT ...
Sounds like Cherry Hill, New Jersey!
The weirdest thing that I saw yesterday was a stretch HumVee! Yep! Some local loony has taken an Army HumVee, and stretched it to a good
35ft or so and painted it black. I think it would look cooler camo with 4 gold stars on the front. But ya gotta admit, ya don't see a stretch HumVee every day.
1) Petey society seems to involve three classes, and possibly more: the females (denoted by rings around the eyes); males (with horns / antlers / antennae); and the alpha-Petey (whose antlers have developed to the point of resembling a beach umbrella).
2) I put it forth that we now know what happened to the Neanderthal: evolution has brought him to us in the creature we now know as the Petey. Observe the pronounced chin, the post-occipital bun, and the supraorbital tori.
3) The Petey has been known to the Native American tribes in Arkansas for many thousands of years; they were known to the Native Americans as "Man of the Small Stone" (describing their favorite weapon for killing lupine prey at long distances). As settlers moved in and became exposed to the Native American legends (and even the odd sighting), transliteration occurred: "small stone" became "Petey", and the settlers even even named the capital of Arkansas after him ("Little Rock").
4) Of course, this is just speculation, and should not be taken as proven. Just as evolution is ultimately a hypothesis that is difficult to test under laboratory conditions, the Genesis of the Peteys is as of yet an unknown quantity. But the anthropological evidence as yet presented, points to these conclusions.
A cow orker of mine, bless her, found this:
http://www.pelfreez-foods.com/
Enjoy!
Hey, Lou--I looked at the Pel-Freez website, and what they are calling a whole rabbit definitely has some of the parts missing! Also, I wonder if Pel-Freez has more "Petey" graphics...
"Savory Rabbit with Noodles". If I ever start a rock band, I think that's what I'll call it.
$135 for a rabbit pituitary? Sheesh! Still, if they advertise "Whole Rabbit," I want the whole damned rabbit. I mean, if I get into the middle of assembling the damned rabbit, and then have to leave off due to incomplete rabbit parts... I don't care if it's "batteries not included," that's to be expected.
That's a pack of one hundred pituitaries! A bargain at twice the price.
Oh! a dollah thiry-five each...I was getting ready to go into Elmer Fudd mode.
ain't no gobbet-rending maniacs in Cherry Hill, just uptight yuppie folk. they'd probably go for the stretch Hummer, but speaking of camo, I'd like to have a 3-piece suit made of camo cloth. flame retardant, stylish, and invisible amongst foliage. 'tweren't flame retardant in the '70s though - a friend who was in the Army then was told by his instructors never, ever to let flame come into contact with his uniform. guess polyester wasn't just for disco dancing, back then.
