Who's Out There?

Mr. (Quincy) Magoo was born in 1949 in the United Productions of America (UPA) animation studio. His creation was a collaborative effort – in other words, no-one really knows who came up with the idea, although we can mention Millard Kaufman, who wrote the script for Magoo’s first outing in a cartoon titled “The Ragtime Bear”, director John Hubley, and of course Jim Backus, the actor who voiced Magoo and was encouraged to ad-lib and generally jazz up the dialogue in any way he wanted. He became a comic book character in 1952, and appeared in Dell Comics for a dozen issues or so.

In case you’re not already familiar with him, Mr. Magoo is wealthy, short, and nearly (and catastrophically) blind, which he stubbornly refuses to acknowledge. Needless to say, Magoo’s immoderate myopia leads to many madcap adventures and increasingly improbable situations; as far as I am concerned, the zanier, the better!

In 1964, the Chicago Tribune syndicated a Mister Magoo comic strip that was drawn by Pete Alvarado and written by Don Sheppard. Here’s one of them, a Sunday strip in (glorious, right?) colour, 1964.