By: Annna
[2001-07-04]
The Complete Petey, Part Three
October 1966 - November 1966
October, 1966 - Petey's ellipsis and his hair are back as he peddles rabbit meat to some lumpen proletariat. This comic is notable for both Petey's jubilance and the fact that this is the first in-character mention of the Pel-Freez name, here used as a synonym for "rabbit meat." It seems that Pel-Freez, unlike Kleenex, Band-Aid and Xerox, eagerly anticipates their name becoming a generic. The sea of barely individuated humanity (I do not count them as "adults" in the
Petey canon) nicely underscores that wish.
July, 1966 - The ellipsis has vanished again, and Petey's head has taken on a disturbing shape. His attitude towards theft does him credit, since we know that rabbit meat is his entire reason for living.
November, 1966 - I assume
Good Housekeeping came a month early, hence the October-themed comic. Petey, oddly enough, is not in costume, unless his new, traditionally cute features are done with makeup. Petey has looked different in every comic, but one thing his faces have in common is that they do not look like a Kewpie doll or anything else traditional. This Petey could be a friend of Betsy McCall. He is also looking less squat, although his left forearm is still strangely bulky.
That's one of the two I got. Cool.
i think the elipses are there, they are merely covered by petey's dialogue balloon.
annna, i know you are the forensics enthusiast in the know, so i have a question to ask. would an induced air embolism be detectable? you know, injecting air into the bloodstream to cause a heart attack. would a coroner be able to tell that from a regular ol' heart attack?
someone may have noted this but i don't know for sure.
why the quotes around "'farm-raised'"? did they hear it was farm raised but aren't too sure? are they being sarcastic and are actually raising them in milk crates stolen from the dairy farm? who knows? I'm sure robert dubbell would
also: free recipe book: http://www.pelfreez-foods.com/request.ihtml
i requested one!
Maybe they're going for a Popeye inference; that rabbit is to Petey what spinach is to Popeye. But not George Ade, he seemed not particularly bulgie of arm, although plenty bandy of leg. Audubon himself never banded the leg of a bird nor brought a budgie to harm.
The "Coniglio Barese" recipe sounded good to me: raisins, pine nuts, fresh rosemary, until I started wondering whether I wanted rabbit and raisins on the same plate.
you are safe, sir, as long as they are not Raisinettes.
Pel-Freez could market a product similar to Raisinettes(tm) and call the "Rabbit Pel-ettes" I wonder if the ants at the rabbit picnic counts as "bug porn?"
hmm... I see your point. Patty has assumed a pose that seems more appropriate to the boudoir. I wonder why the artist chose to draw the rabbit pieces as amorphous blobs; I'd find them more appetizing with some definition between meat and bone. 'cause you know, cartoon meat is supposed to have visible bone. the monster meat in Final Fantasy Legend made me especially hungry.
Speaking of rabbit bits that don't look at all rabbity, take a look at that first comic. I'll be jiggered if it doesn't look like Petey with Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo.
But the more I think abut it, it could be a panel out of a Jack Chick comic: Petey has found Jesus (or rabbit, same thing), and gets to walk a platform over the damned.
Well, to me the stated inference is that Patty is going to get ants in her panties, so screw you Dr. Rorshach and your bleeding Thematic Apperception Test! Any case, it reminds me of the previous picnic scenario with the blue and white chequered cloth and the pitfall.
I had missed that one before, but caught it while reading through the archives last night. I also discovered that I'm not the only one who had the strap break on my para boots. Project: Bootstrap! part one, the class action suit.
Petey's feet are disturbing.
I just still think it's so bizarre, this method of promoting rabbit meat. I mean, it could've been eased into the North American mainstream cuisine.
But no. They had to go full-bore. I don't think we were ready for that kind of a change. Not at that point in history, anyway.
On the other hand, I don't think we ever will be.
Maybe "farm raised" is in quotes because rabbits aren't really raised on farms
per se, but "farms" (re:
"cat drive" comment from
The Complete Petey, Part One). I guess I just kinda begged the question there, tho, cos who's to say what these "farms" are? Labs, I guess.
it could be that these rabbits are "farm raised" because they aren't actually raised per se: in keeping with the lab theme, mayhaps they're grown in vats. Then when they're ready they're, well, farmed.
On the way home today, after visiting my kin, I found an emaciated cat crossing the road. So I was able to get him into the car (this cat seems to have no fear of humans -- almost certainly was a pet that got lost), and took the cat home. First order of business was to get some food into him.
So I asked myself: What Would Petey Do?
That's right, I fed him rabbit! My "regular" cat is a spoiled beast and he eats only two kinds of canned cat food: Julienne-cut beef, and Julienne-cut rabbit. (Nature's Recipe brand, in case you were wondering.) So I went and opened a can of rabbit cat food, which new cat is happily devouring.
Thanks, Petey! As always, you show us the way.
The subtext of the Halloween installment above just occurred to me. Our Petey lives and works in the perfect Pel-Freez world. Not only does Petey eat, live and breathe rabbit meat, his neighbors fill his bag with cartons of frozen rabbit for Trick or Treat.
The picnic scene behind our little pitchman just emphasizes the point. The four ambiguous figures aren't eating Petey's meat (watch it!); they must have brought their own. Everyone eats rabbit in the ideal world, whether they're four costumed tykes out for a Halloween picnic or whether they're the dead.
I'd forgotten Poe's short-story wherein they dine upon rabbit au-chat!
THE SYSTEM OF DR. TARR AND PROF. FETHER (1840)
http://spiffy.net/poe/s/system_tarr_fether.html
Ha! The above piece by Poe also contains some Bellini!
Actually, what I think the deal is -- and what satisfies all queries -- that the rabbits are, in fact, raised on farms: rather, "farms" as in chain gangs. For transgressions against the law certain some rabbits are rounded up and punished with back-breaking ear-flopping labour (until they're too tired to work, at which point they are subject to, well, experimentation). Our friend Petey, that is, the Petey that we see, is no more than a hastily cooked-up PR facade: outside the ads he is the Walking Boss.
What strikes me about this period is the way that Petey, perhaps after some sort of metamophosis, has developed the black, soulless eyes of Mother Nature's perfect predator, the shark. Also note that the goblins in the last panel do not appear to be wearing sheets, as their arms smooth emerge from their columnular trunks, merging smoothly into what staniel has termed their fleshmittens. Either they are the spirits of the damned, or these costumes are beyond the state of the costumer's art, produced by alien technology; a fact which makes me suspicious of their eyes. Are these the Greys of many an abduction story?
Maybe they're just well-tailored costumes? Ghost costumes, mind you. Not goblin.
Actually, I don't think the ghosts are interested in eating the rabbit meat... rather, they seem to be enjoying just looking at it in a bemused sort of way. The aesthetically-pleasing qualities of Pel-Freez are well-known to most denziens of the underworld. "Gosh! Enjoying the soothing visual texture of these frozen rabbit parts is -much- more fun than chasing around that Pac-Man fucker!"
And, er, *why* does he have antennae?
