HB Characters: as drawn by Harvey Eisenberg

Harvey Eisenberg was involved in the making of cartoons since the 1920s.  He eventually worked with HB, working in layouts and other such things, and eventually drew the Yogi Bear newspaper comics... both daily, Sunday, and single panels.

He also drew a ton of HB comic books.  His son Jerry also worked for HB from the early 60s until the late 80s.  Harvey died in 1965; his son recently did an interview for Yowp!

Personally, Harvey Eisenberg is one of my favorite cartoonists.  Whereas his earlier works incorporated the rounder, much more action packed style of the times when he got the HB gig he adapted his style quickly to suit their tamer material.  I've always loved the result.  Refer to Yowp! for loads of examples of his newspaper comic work.

I found an auction site selling several of Harvey's pencil roughs... "rough" is a funny word.  Eisenberg was so meticulous that his "roughs" are several orders of magnitude better than anything I could ever do.  But these roughs, set up for the inker, now collect a pretty penny.  Unfortunately I can no longer find that auction site... maybe they found out guys like me were downloading the displays rather than buying the product (believe me, if I were a wealthy man I'd buy all the Harvey Eisenberg pencil roughs and frame each of them!)

Here are a few of my impressions of Harvey Eisenberg's impressions of HB characters:

Have you ever seen a more cute, adorable Boo Boo Bear?

I call this "guy with hitler mustache."  That look was at one time much more common than now.

Ranger Smith with a stylish hat.  Didn't know the Park Service offered them that way.

Yogi Bear nice and comfortable against some rocks.  If you try drawing this one notice the drape of the tie.  It has to drape naturally in conformity with gravity and the rather rotund contours of Yogi's ample stomach.  If it lays out straight down it'll look like either (a) it's glued to Yogi's body or (b) the laundry used too much starch.