"Bobo the Elephant"

(This being part four of a nine-part series covering the stories in Volume Three of Fantagraphics' Floyd Gottfredson Library.)

It's interesting: this story is comparable in length to the others around it, but it has almost no plot.  Here, let me sum it up: "Eli Squinch claims ownership of a baby elephant that Mickey accidentally purchased, but then he agrees to sell it to a circus so it can be with its mother."  Yup, that's about it.  This is more a gag story than a plot-based one.  It is, however, endlessly charming.

Is this the first time the hoary old "accidental auction purchase" contrivance ever appeared in a Disney comic?  Probably--and not the last by a long shot!

Look, no sense trying to build suspense.  We all know it's an elephant.  And a damnably cute one, at that.  I saw baby elephants in Zambia ("oh, Mr. Big-Shot, one damn safari trip and suddenly he's some sort of hifalutin expert"), and I can verify that they are indeed extremely cute (although it's generally hard to get a good look, since they stick very closely with their mothers).  And boy oh boy is Gottfredson's rendition ever cute too.  Gonna skip over a lot here, though, because the bulk of it's just "elephant causes chaos" jokes.  Amusing, but a bit repetitive to try to gloss.

One interesting thing is the fact that the future Goofy is just a goddamn fucking asshole in this story.  Wow, you modified the horn so it wouldn't make noise.  What a genius joke, jack-off.  From this, it's really, really hard to believe that the character would ever become widely beloved.  At least as payoff, we get to see Bobo inflicting damage on him.  I'm a big fan of his enraged expression there in the last panel.

Interesting thing in some of these early comics: the other characters don't even seem to particularly like Dippy.  You may remember at the beginning of "The Lair of Wolf Barker," he's treated like a somewhat dimwitted subordinate; certainly not someone you would actually take along on an adventure.  Of course, he redeems himself in that story, but there still seems to be an extent to which he's still being written as that sort of character.  That was changing, though, as he played a large role in "The Crazy Crime Wave" and would again in "The Sacred Jewel."  Me, I'm very firmly on Team Horace; I don't hate Goofy, but I do keenly regret the fact that he edged out the other guy as Mickey's de facto partner.

INTRODUCING: ELI SQUINCH!  Per the book, he's supposed to be using a stereotypical New England dialect; I would not have guessed this on my own, but I can buy it.  Good ol' Eli.  Well, "good" might be pushing it.  But, as has been widely pointed out, he's generally more small-time than Pete, making him not just an unusual Mickey villain, but an unusual Disney villain period.  Possibly a unique one--though he's not devoid of menace, as he attempts to poison Mickey and Horace in "Race for Riches."  I enjoy his cantankerous demeanor.  Obviously, I'd be anyway, but I'm especially looking forward to volume four of this series for "In Search of Jungle Treasure," the character's third and final Gottfredson outting.

Horace is awesome in this story.  I love the way he's able to get shit done, figuring out what's what.  In later years, I feel like he was unfairly pigeonholed as "practical joke guy" and nothing more.  But here, he just rocks.

"Just the kind o' night elephant thieves like best!"  Love that line, though as we'll see, this plotline turns to be a bit of a cul-de-sac.

The idea, of course, is that Horace commandeers Bobo so as to hide him from Squinch.  "You don't look exactly like a woman" is a funny line, which is just as well, since the actual punchline here is pretty feeble.

But see, then the "hide Bobo" business goes nowhere, as Mickey decides, welp, better give him up!  I would've hoped for an involved tale of subterfuge and legerdemain as Mickey and Horace try to keep him hidden, but no such luck.  You can see why they didn't go in that direction, though; it's hard to know where this would lead if there's no endgame; no way that they can legitimately (and, being a Mickey Mouse, it would have to be legitimate) way to keep him away from Squinch.  It certainly indicates the limitations of Mickey's ethical system: do any of us really believe that using trickery to keep Bobo away from Squinch would be a dishonorable thing?  Betcha Donald wouldn't have such qualms.  I would say some rewriting might have been in order, but Gottfredson and his associates did have a tight schedule to meet...

Floyd turns the adorable up to eleven.  Probably pretty realistically, too, as elephants, per my understanding, really do have strong familial bonds.  Was this story an inspiration for Dumbo?  Well, it should've been.

(Yes, I know Dumbo was based on a 1939 book--but you tellin' me that couldn't have been influenced by this?  Well I never!)

So Squinch ultimately sells the little guy--but for less than he wanted!  Pwned!  A small-time comeuppance for a small-time crook.  Actually, I guess he's not even a "crook," per se, in this story, unless lying about how much he paid is a crime.  Don't know why he couldn't just ask more money regardless of how much he himself paid, though.

A lightweight story no doubt, but still lots o' fun.  Next time we get controversial, maybe, with the one story here that Gladstone couldn't print!  Ooh!