Andy Panda and Woody Wood Pecker

At a New Year's parade sometime in the 1960s, as the Woody Woodpecker float passed by, the reporter said "Almost everybody agrees that Woody Woodpecker is their favorite cartoon character."

WTF?

Everybody I knew hated that psycho bird, in spite of his risque name.

He was a relic of my early childhood, off the air by the time I was six.  But that was long enough for his maniacal "ha-ha-ha-HA-ha" laugh to scare me to death.

And the Wood Pecker didn't work alone -- he had "friends":
Chilly Willy, a penguin who sold cigarettes.
Andy Panda, modeled after 1940s teen star Andy Hardy
Homer Pigeon, who sang and tap-danced.

"Apple Andy" (1946) has Andy Panda stealing and eating green apples, whereupon he dreams that a devil panda in a dress drags him to a purgatory for gluttons.

I was scared by both the drag-queen devil and the apple-core chorus girls.

Although the song by Louis Jordan was jazzy:
When temptation comes around, don't listen to the Devil in the White Nightgown.

In the early 1970s, the comic book industry was in decline due to rising paper costs and changes in distribution patterns, and Gold Key started scrounging for properties to adapt.  Like Walter Lantz cartoons.


I didn't want to devote my comic book budget to the stuff that scared or disturbed me as a little kid, but sometimes my friends and cousins had a few issues on hand.

In the comics, Woody Woodpecker was no longer a psycho: he was a Donald Duck wannabe, a single father raising his orphaned niece and nephew.  Stories involved terrible jobs, nasty neighbors, and vacations that go wrong.  He even had a girlfriend, Winnie.

Occasionally he resisted heterosexism, as when this cave man drags him off to be his "mate."
But Andy Panda, now an adult, shared his house and his life with a same-sex partner named Charlie Chicken (apparently there was an age difference).

Their stories involved spies, monsters, pirates, aliens, with buddy-bonding and nick-of-time rescues.
And risque jokes that subtly illustrated the more physical side of their relationship.

Why are you so surprised, Andy?  Anybody who hangs out with a guy named Woody should know that these things happen in the morning.

Especially when you're sharing a bed with a "chicken."

See also: The Subtext in Casper the Friendly Ghost; and Bugs and Porky Meet a Drag Queen.