A Pet Eagle

 

The last story in Animal Comics #4 (Aug.-Sept. 1943) is the one "realistic" tale in the comic, in which the animal in it is not given dialogue or anthropomorphized in any way. Kyree the eagle is pretty awesome, but he's still an eagle. 

The story (writer unknown, art tentatively credited to Morris Gollub) begins with Kyree, still not quite old enough to fly, falling out of his next. Indian boy Little Otter tries to make him a pet. At first, he's driven off by Kyree's mom, but the boy returns at night to finally claim his new pet.

The eagle grows up and learns to trust his owner. A white trader named Bull Durkin offers ten dollars for Kyree. Little Otter doesn't want to sell, but Otter's dad figures ten bucks is ten bucks. The deal is made. But Little Otter partially cuts through the rope that confines the eagle, allowing Kyree to escape when Bull tries to claim him.

You can probably argue that Little Otter is being less than honest. After all, Bull had paid for the eagle. But it had been mentioned earlier that Bull had traded dishonestly with the Indians in the past. This, combined with Bull's murderous behavior later in the story, is meant to cover over Little Otter's technical dishonesty.

And it is indeed hard to feel sympathy for Bull. When he sees Kyree and Little Otter fishing together later on, he actually tries to strangle the child to get possession of the eagle. But it soon proves to be unwise to threaten a boy whose best friend is a large predatory animal with equally large talons.

With Bull driven off, Kyree and Little Otter are free to continue both to their friendship and their fishing.

That brings us to the end of our look at this issue of Animal Comics. The scripts for the stories were always servicable and often very clever (most especially in the case of the Uncle Wiggly tale). But it is the consistent high quality of the art that brings the book to life. In each case, the art style matches the story being told perfectly and the various characters (both animal and human) are given real personalities. Animal Comics #4 is a wonderful example of a type of comic book that, sadly, has largely disappeared from the comic book racks of today.

Next week, we'll visit with the comic book version of cowboy star Rex Allen.