YOGI BEAR NEVER HAD A DOG TO GREET HIM IN THE SUMMER OF 1972 - NOR DOES HE NOW...

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When younger, I sometimes bought comics that I was really too old for.  Comics like Little Star, Esmerelda, and Yogi & His Toy.  Strangely, I also bought football comics like Shoot and Scorcher, even though I was never into the 'beautiful game'.  I guess I just liked buying new comics.  Almost 50 years ago I bought my original copy of the one above, which was the Summer Special for the aforesaid Yogi comic.  I received its replacement today, and it's with a sense of amazement that I realise three dogs (Prince, Tara, and Zara - not at the same time) graced my family's household between me buying my first copy and purchasing its stand-in.  (The third dog, Zara, died in 1998.)

Is that significant?  Not to you, but I'm used to often being able to say when I replace a long-lost comic that "I first got that one when we had Prince" (or Tara, or Zara), so to acquire a comic with absolutely no doggie-association in my life is a bit of a strange feeling.  Only because, with this particular comic, we got our first dog only around 6 months later, so it's not too far removed from the timeframe of my family's doggie ownership.  In the case of much earlier comics, the time between buying them and getting our first dog is much greater and therefore doesn't really 'connect' in my mind in the same way.  (Although now that I'm aware of it, it might do so from now on.)

I really hope I'm explaining myself coherently as I find conveying precisely what I'm trying to say extremely difficult sometimes due to 'brain fog' caused by a medical condition.  Anyway, in short, this comic comes from a time when I was 'Douglas' (dug-less - get it?) and that's never really quite registered with me before.  It predates my status as a dog owner and, consequently, seems to transform an already lengthy nigh-50 year period into an even longer one.  Having waded through all that, you may now be either relieved or disappointed to learn that it's not really relevant to what this post is about.

No, I wanted to show you what can be done with a comic that's in less than pristine condition, using the seller's photos in comparison to my own once I'd performed a little 'work' on it.  There was a time when I'd have given an inferior condition comic like this one a miss, but I've learned to grab 'em while they're going in case a better one never comes along.  So the premise of this post is quite simple.  I'll show you the before and after photos just so you know that even imperfect comics can be greatly improved if you know what you're doing - and I flatter myself (well, who else is going to?) that I know what I'm doing when it comes to salvaging old periodicals from the scrapheap of history.

Ready?  Then let's go!  The above cover is the after, the one below is before.  The rest of the images are presented in before & after sequence.

And in case you're interested, below are my three dogs who never saw me read this Yogi Summer Special on account of me not keeping it before we got our first canine chum.  (None of them ever met, but the photos of each pet were taken within a few feet of the same spot in our back garden.)

Posted in: Cartoons