Saturday, March 17, 2012

St. Patrick's Day: Darby O'Gill and the #009900 People

For your St. Patrick's Day pleasure (because I can't email you a corned beef and cabbage dinner or ask the Pogues to personally appear in your living room), here's several panels from Dell's comic book adaptation of the 1959 Walt Disney film Darby O'Gill and the Little People, starring Albert Sharpe, Janet Munro, and that most Irish of actors, Sean Connery. And to allow you to get to get back more quickly to your choruses of "Haul Away Joe" and your perfectly poured pint of delicious, creamy, black-as-the-grave Guinness, I'll abridge it by only posting the panels that are overwhelmingly green. (And as always, hover over the images for some alt-text that will no doubt have me a the defendant in a suit by the Irish Anti-Stereotype League.)

It's a well-documented fact* in comic publishing history that this book used up so much green ink that Dell had to cancel their long-running Green Hornet and Tales of the Green Beret series. I hereby proudly bring you, in all its Alex Toth-pencilled, evergreen emerald elegance...


























from Four Color #1024 [Darby O'Gill and the Little People] (August 1959), pencils and inks by Alex Toth

I can not tell a lie: t'was my little stuffed self who tinted that Dell Pledge to Parents a lovely shade of green, but the rest of the overwhelmingly-verdant comic book panels I've posted were as kelly as the day they were published. And in the spirit of O'Photoshoppery, I've also tinted this inside front-cover photosummary with that most lovely of shades as well. Never let it be said that Ted Turner has a monopoly on colorizing movies!


I've left the most delightful part for last: a lovely back cover pin-up of that comely Colleen, the ever-radiant Janet Munro.


'Tis true as far as Disney heroines go that Janet Munro is no Hayley Mills, but I've proudly and unabashedly ruined the value of my copy of One Four Color #1024 by cutting the pin-up out and hanging it on my wall. Happy St., Patrick's Day, Miss Munro! Happy St. Patrick's Day, Sean Connery! Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone!


*No it isn't.

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