We should always remember that during the McCarthy hearings and the Communist witch hunts, Hollywood studios willingly complied. They fired creatives, blacklisted them, greylisted them, and destroyed their livelihoods, sometimes on the back of nothing but vague rumors (or hanging around with the "wrong" people or having the "wrong" names). Creatives also capitulated: Elia Kazan and Sterling Hayden famously named names, and spent the rest of their careers asking for forgiveness. (Note also that the attack on Hollywood Communists, or anyone suspected of being one or of holding "radical" opinions, came after a number of unionizing efforts and successes. Sound familiar?)
Hollywood capitulated to censorship. The Hayes Code was not a legally binding document; it was not law. The studios happily self-censored so they could continue to sell their product to the masses.
What the Trump Administration is doing, and the way that especially the powers-that-be in Hollywood and in other creative industries are reacting, has happened before. And in five or ten years' time, they will try to pretend it never happened.
WHY MUST GREAT GATSBY BE IMPOSSIBLE TO READ #fuckenglishclass
Though many modern readers find The Great Gatsby difficult to read, it's the earliest works of F. Scott Fitzgerald that are truly impossible to read because they are 'lost' literature.
Fitzgerald's disputes with his editors were notorious in their day, and his first nine novels were not only unpublished, but destroyed by his own agent and editing team. Politics, capital, and accusations of unamericanism were rampant and we only have a partial list of his intended stories and their basic contents.
His early censored works include Altar of the Cum God; Zombie Sluts From Uranus; Zombie Sluts 2: Space Jam; and the entire Seven Tongues Of Asslord Rimmington trilogy. All these novels were banned for their graphic depictions of functional socialism.
On November 17, 1947, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) implemented an anti-Communist loyalty oath for its officers fueled by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). #OnThisDay Pictured: Guild officers in 1947: VP 2nd George Murphy, 1st VP Gene Kelly, President Ronald Reagan, 2nd VP William Holden,
Ronald Reagan, an FBI informant, testifies before the House Un-American Activities Committee against other his fellow actors. 1947
He wasn't JUST the worst president ever (maybe 2nd worst after trump?)...he was also a horrible human being that ruined people's lives when he was still an actor.
Credit to @lucks-eterna for this discovery. Definitely suggesting Cooper got scrutinized by the House Un-American Activities Committee, and explaining that guy calling him a "pinko" under his breath.
From the shoulders of cheering, singing supporters, Dalton Trumbo and John Howard Lawson make farewell speeches as they prepare to leave Penn Station for Washington, where they were to start serving one-year prison terms for contempt of Congress, June 9, 1950. The "Hollywood 10" had appeared before the House Un-American Affairs Committee in October, 1947, and refused to answer questions regarding their possible affiliations with the Communist Party. After they were released, they were blacklisted by the Hollywood studios.
Pride Month 2025 Finale: Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles: The Fights that Need Fighting
Hello all you happy people and welcome to my grand finale for pride month this year. I haven't covered as much as I wanted to but i'm proud of what i've covered: DC's First Trans superhero Coagula, the excellent and revlatory I Saw the TV Glow and as my final act, we're looking at a concept that's insane, creative and should not have worked, let alone easily been the best comic of it's line.
Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles was part of DC Comics Hanna Barbera Beyond line, a late 2010's line using the fabled animtion studio's characters in new exciting radical ways. Scooby and the rest of mystery inc became adults dealing with the end of the world.. an end Velma had a hand in without realizing what her brothers were planning, the Jetsons became a climate change parable, and the Fred.. well i'll let him tell it
These comics easily could've fell into
Territory, the kind of edgy bullshit that takes an innocent property and tries to make it dark and bloody for the sake of money. This did happen in the line with Wacky Raceland, which somehow wasted the dope surefire concept of "Wacky Races but it's mad max" by taking itself way too fucking seriously. The recent attempt by dynamite is also not great. Just let it be nonsense guys, come on. You can add mythology and depth but remember what your working with.
Instead these themes were handled well: Scooby Apocalypse didn't forget the camp, while still focusing on powerful men making decisions for the little people without their consent and having intresting takes on the cast. Future Quest was an okay attempt to create a shared superhero universe. Jetsons had some really wild swings that paid off.
The best of these by far were the works by Mark Russel, who wrote today's comic and the Flintstones, easily the biggest breakout of the bunch and the one that still holds up the most. Out of context and in lazier hands, Fred and Barney participating in the genocide would be edgelord nonsense. Instead it takes the idea of society itself, the empowering of the rich and everything and uses it for clever satire, as the society in this version of the flintstones is still forming. We see some ideas sink in, how our heroes are adapting from hunting gathering to the horrifying captalist hellscape we live in. It's changes are purposeful: the genocide makes a point about how some wars, ESPECAILLY a lot of the US's military intervention, are done for money or to make a quick enemy for the more powerful, the stress vetrans go through, and gives bam bam a powerful and heartrending origin. They also took the Great Gazoo from weird punchline of a character to a space game warden who looks out for us. They also took the "animals as objects" thing and made it a heartbreaking subplot. Russel took a huge gamble, something that could easily have been a punchline and ot many out of context was.. and made it a masterpiece.
So it's weird and wonderful he pulled it off TWICE. For his encore, and sadly last gasp with the Hannah Barbera characters as HB Beyond would end soon after. (Though DC was smart enough to keep him around), he went with an evern bigger ask. Flintstones but as a dramedy.. was a reach, but one that was bold and within the specs of the adult tone of the earlier franchise. What he had in mind next... was truly bonkers in the conkers and I love it.
So Exit Stage Left is an exploration of the red scare, timely in 2018 mid trump and even more timely once again mid trump as he actively hunts queer people for sport and plans a war for the reasons you'd expect
It does so.. using Snagglepuss as a thinly closeted playwright , Huckleberry hound as his miserable closeted novelist best friend, Peter Potumus as his director, and many more we'll get to in supporting roles, as he deals with HUAC's attempts to destroy him. And while there are some jokes here and there, it's primarily a tragedy. With a hopeful ending, but still a very sad, soulful work. And.. it works. Similar to bojack horseman it uses the animals alongside humans and as actors trope masterfully. IT dosen't have as much time for worldbuilding, but it still manages to be engaging, flesh out it's cast and be moving, relevant and heartbreaking all in 6 issues. It's a work that's high concept in a way I hope gets done more and I hope Dynamite considers. While I do love their comics for Space Ghost and Captain Planet, both taking the idea and modernizing it without going too edgelord, I wouldn't mind more weird, wonderful experiments like this and i'll show you why under the cut. Featuring Sasquatch Detective:
I Wasn't Kidding About Sasquatch Detective
So before we adresss the main feature when the comic ran it had a delightful backup feature, you can guess the name. Sasquatch Detective is a fun breezy backup about Tonya, the titular detective, her surly but supportive partner, and her hyjinks. It got a reprint as a 64 page special complete with a feature story I won't cover for now but seems to have just vanished into the either after. Creator Brandee Stillwell advertises it on her socials, as she should, having written and drawn it all but it seems DC just didn't want more than this. It seemed like they were gearing up for a full mini with the special and leaving the backups out of the snagglepuss trade, but it just didn't happen. There's a lot of reasons why this might be: Stillwell might of just left the company, COVID might of meant DC simply didn't have the budget for it, or the George Floyd protests made the idea of a polcie procedural with a light breezy tone impossible. It's shame as the work was just before the big quirky detective boom we've had with Poker Face, Elsbeth and High Potetial, all bangers and all telling me James Gunn should seriously consider adding Tanya to the DCU as soon as possible. The man loves weird obscure characters, let him know she exists.
The backups have Tonya, perky as ever and her more dour very tired partner Berzek solve arious mysteries, with Tonya opening the series getting added to the force then a year later disgusing herself in her best pretty woman. Tonya is a wide eyed kind sasquatch who works hard, is an ace at what she does and is simply at worst awkward in a world of human stuff that isn't sized for a sasquatch. Brotoman's faviorite installment, and mine has a lady they came to interview calling animal control.. forcing Tanya to deal with Gary
And you may be thinking my asking for the DCU is weird. I mean this is the kind of goofy premise that would've been perfect for an actual Hannah Barbera cartoon..and still would be. Well ate the end of the gary debacle, after he's tased and arrested for shooting Tanya with a tranq for his incel racisim.. this happens
So while this work could easily be standalone if James Gunn dosen't want it to be, it could at the very least be a fun cartoon and a nice side piece to canon dealing with the weirder corners of the DCU. I also want to see her in the main dc universe again. I mean the justice league just took on an EVERYONE IS HERE mentality, give Tanya a card. Let her team up with the creeper in a buddy comedy. WE need more creeper two dammit. Though props to dan slott for possibly giving us more.
I highly recommend checking these out if you can find the special online or want to snag a copy or something. Or your a singles person. Either way check these out. It was a fun concept that REALLY needs a comeback.
So onto our main event. I COULD have covered each backup as they came up. While I adore Sasquatch Cop.. it just dosen't fit tonaly. It's good stuff... but why they put it in the back of a mildly serious reboot I don't know.
And now our feature presentation, entering stage left
We begin our story not in the mini series itself but in a teaser that's part of the trade, a little prelude published in Suicide Squad/Banana Splits
It follows Snagglepuss as he goes in front of Huac, the kind of sentence that makes me thrilled that this is something I got paid to write. He runs circles around them, responding to their every attempt to paint his plays as garbage or him as subversive with sarcasm and a witty one liner. They look. .bad and this will be important for the mini series.
For now Snag talks with a young writer who idolizes him and wants to change the world like he does, Auggie Doggie, I assume senior given what we'll see at the end.
So filling in these characters as we go along, Snagglepuss was one of Hanna Barbera's first breakouts, having a succesful small role on the Quick Draw McGraw show before getting his own shorts as part of Yogi Bear's show> He was known for his camp nature, snappy patter, many catchphrases and when hannah barbera became a collection of characters doing stuff with yogi bear rather than their own things in the 70's and 80's, he became a part of the gang. He later made it to Jellystone played by Dana Snyder> He's not used a ton but is still a valuable part of things and like a huge chunk of the cast is very gay.
Auggie Doggie was part of a double act with his proud father Doggie Daddy..
I haven't seen much of them but they were added to the touring company all the same. He'd become a large part of Jellystone and one of it's best alongside a gender flipped Auggie, apparently having lived out every disney movie to get a daughter and being hilaroiusly clingy.
So Snag relates a story: he was doing summer stock directed by Peter Potomus, who had his own show where he drove around in an arc with a chimp sidekick making movies makin songs and fightin round the world. Here he's a director and was doing some light follies when the theater caught fire. When Snag told peter this.. he didn't exactly take it well.
So Snag tried to warn the audience, dressed as a clown.. only for them to laugh, taking it as all part of the shows and leading to one of the worst disaster in Kentucky Theater History till the Ghostly Rampage of Col Sanders in 83.
Snag uses this to illustrate an important, all too resonant message
It .. it hit like a truck. Because it's the truth: We may not win, it's a long game and being a queer person in a country that hates and fears you has been historically a long hard road to getting a shrug of acceptance at best. But you fight anyway because every inch you gain, every ground you get or get back, is worth it.
Proving Snag's point... while I liked the work at the time.. I didn't see the deeper meanings or let them sink in. I saw it as thought provoking.. then let the thoughts it provoked scatter. I didn't see that just because you win one fight and get rid of one tyrant dosne't mean he can't come back.
So we open the series possible with two people late to see the show... and you can just tell it's not the show we're about to see. More on them later. For now we see the arrival of the man of the hour, the vip who gets the first slice of the p-i-e. Snagglepuss in this unvierse is an award winning playwright, married to actress Lila Lion, Snag's love intrest from the cartoons now his beard as he attends the last performance of one of his plays, Heart is a Kennel of Theives. Snag admits his inspriations are the Algonquin Round Table, a group of actors, writers and others whose jokes, japes and witty banter were world wide legend and to a small boy in misssipi with not much else, it was everything.
We see the play best summed up as
Though a nice touch I like is that the actors all wear dog ears, both the humans and the pink puma playing the lead role.
The finale's a smash and Snagglepuss bids his wife adew.. and goes to see his boyfriend at the Stonewall. The Stonewall is a historic gay bar, a safe haven for queer folk. Sadly it would not last forever, being destroyed thanks to a three day riot after Police did a homophobic raid and many queer people rejected owned by the mob, but is thankfully back, having reopened in the 90's and being rightfully declared a historic landmark.
At the Stonewall, Snagglepuss and his boyfriend Pablo watch a hearing from Huac on the tv for novelist and playwright Lillian Hellman, who refuses to sell out anyone she knew while in the Communist party to huac. SHe's a friend of Snag's but he dosen't take HUAC seriously assuming SURELY it couldn't happen here. Pablo.. is quick to correct his dumbassery, pointing out he once dealt with a politican who was a buffon too: Batista, the dictator of cuba and the reason why he's here. They assumed he was a clown, a has been who had no real power.. and his crackdown on meetings of queer people and killing one of his friends who stood up to them proved otherwise. Pablo fled.. but feels horrified by it. And when snag tries to brush it off
This line is not only brilliant.. but gutting as .. it's what we're dealing with now. We thought Trump couldn't come back. Even I, utterly nerverwracked about the apocalypse that would happen if he won again thought surely the nation couldn't do this. Surely we wouldn't surrender to this monster again.
I was wrong. Many were. From people like me who simply wanted to reassure themselves he can't win to the dumbasses who helped him: the throngs of people who could care less about the trans people or immigrnats trump would harm as long as he helped them, something he's completely and utterly failed to do and was never gonna do but he sure has harmed immigrants, trans people and anyone who dares speak against him. The democratic party who treated this like a normal transition of power and not a fight for the future till the other shoe dropped and who could care less about the people getting hurt due to their waffling. The lefter than thous who refused to vote for anybody, refused to compromise, and now STILL blame Biden as much as trump does for their own shortcomings when we have bigger problems to deal with. And of course the rabid assholes who always existed but we assumed were the minority. All of this lead to the shit sandwitch we're all stuck in now. We all have a tendency to belivie the worst can't happen and then it does. And while things have held.. we can't be complacent. I wish I knew what to do but I badly want to find it, a way to fight back against this. But for now I was warned the house was on fire... and didn't grab a bucket till it was already nearly gone.
Snagg has lunch with legendary writer and his hero dorthy parker, who warns him both that his idols have faded.. and that it'll happen to you.
That night an old friend of Snag's stops by, Hanna Barbera star, cartoon legend and thanks to the simpsons, this work and Jellystone gay icon Huckleberry hound. They party.. but it's clear Lillian isn't in a great place after everything.
We finally see where that couple was going.. an execution
It works as unsubtle as it is, the simple idea that america loves a spectacle.. that their just as entertained with thought provoking life changing material.. as they are watching death and treating it like a late show.
We end the issue on our main antagonist, Gigi Allen, whose joind the hearings and plans to target Snagglepuss, claming a nation becomes what it enjoys.. which isn't wrong but in her mind means SNagg must go. The comitte is hesitant given he beat their asses last time.. but she has an ace in the hole.. a picture of him going into the Stonewall.
We open issue two with Gigi saying a whole not of nothing loudly. before Snagglepuss gets through his day: dealing with an actor criss as the actor, Marion aka John Wayne himself, can't find his motivation, visits a man in hospice whose son also went into theater and has a noose next to his bed because he used to be a judge.
He ends the evening introducing the future king of assholes to Huck, who delightfully is enjoying a tv dinner. Snagglepuss has been a good friend not asking questions till now but to be a true friend you have to ask your buddy sometims why they suddenly showed up out of the blue after not talking to you for months.
The short and less heartrending version?
The long soul punching version, Huck was a closeted novelist. His wife was suspscious and sent detectives after him.. who caught him with a man and for some reason rather than just you know.. blackmail him or.. maybe don't, they agreed not to get him arrested if he left town and never came back, forced to abandon his son. It's a contrast to snagglepuss who does the same things.. but tells his wife about it. Still it's hard not to feel for Huck: He couldn't exactly be out, he had few choices and unlike Snagglepuss didn't leave home where it's easier to find someone willing to be your beard. He didn't want to leave his son like his father left him. Still Huck is shown to have some poor choices, trying to hit up a guy.. and getting punched in the face by what turns out to be a bigot with it easily going much worse for many other queer people. It's why for so long I repressed by attraction to men more.... part of me told me I could take my time which I could.. but i've realized this month that part of it was just being afraid of being myself, that I know my family will accept me.. but I can't say the world will. I haven't hid it.. but I also haven't explored it for fear of being beaten up or catfished.
Snag offers to take Huck to the Stonewall some night. For now he fist runs into his friend from earlier.. whose leaving the US. She received 5 rejection letters... all in the same print so she's going to Paris.. and warns Snagglepuss that the first comittee meeting is simply to see if they'll bend the knee. The second is to destroy them for their insolence.
It's proven too as Gigi invites Snaagglepuss to dinner.. and to try and get him to play ball. It goes as well as you'd expect
It's brutal as it is honest and it's really what any culture war is about: It's not about OH WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN, it's not about real moral honesty.. you just want to control what people think. Trump didn't bomb iran because it was the right thing to do he did it because right now he's the enemy and he wants to give the people who voted for him who aren't drinking the kool aid anymore something to boo and hiss about while he dismantles the country from the inside out. It was the same then it's the same now: they go after people they other because their easy targets and "hollywood" because it's creators are often fucking honest and do everything they can to get past censors. Even now we get shit like Disney censoring queer content, firing a queer creator and trying to say nothing while brave men , women and everything inbetween and beyond fight to actually say their stories.
So we end the issue with war being delcared: HUAC sends a letter calling Snag back
We begin issue 3 with a jumpscare
So we open with Snagglepuss being interviewed on a tv show, bringing Huck with him to try and help revitalize Huck's career. When asked about his low opinons of tv, Snagglepuss gives us the diffrence between an actor and a star, a stage actor and a tv actor. A star is who we want to be, an actor is who we are.
Snagglepuss wakes up from his afternoon nap by the pool to deal with two problems: The first is that one of the actors in his current play is bad and should feel bad. Snag decides to deal with it.. but has to deal with something else: Playwright arthur miller, the man who made the crucible among many other thought provoking plays.. and also had a longstanding relationship with screen idol Marilyn MOnroe... and her current boyfriend and soon to be first husband Joe Dimaggio is coming to murder the second before it gets that far. Snag is brought in because well.. yeah. It's really that obvious so being seen with him is a smokescreen. He reluctantly agreres and we get WHY Joe adores her so much: as a son of immigrants who had their livelyhood taken away just for being immigrants, she's his american dream, the kind of acceptance he craves... yet he can't see he's objectifying, her a means to deal with his pain instead of actually dealing with it himself. Snag defuses things.. but tellingly for the first time all comic we see him PISSED when he calls arthur afterword
Artist Mike Feehan who does the full mini series does a fantastic job making the characters look realistic. The humans can sometimes look a bit dead eyed, but it helps the animals pop more. And this might be my faviorite panel, showing Snag feral and pissed.. and for good reason. Arthur abused their friendship to use Snag's sexuality as a prop to get him out of a problem he got himself into.
He lets it slide off though shifting back into his charming usual self efortlessly and introducing Huck to the stonewall... his reaction is beautiful.
As unrest grows in Cuba snag is glad Pablo is here.. but Pablo isn't, pissed and lashing out that Snag would rather he be a kept man than fighting for somethign he belivies in. It's telling Snag just.. can't understand that Pablo wants to fight and wants to be there with his people trying to make something better instead of hoping to ignore the rising tides till they wash him over.
Next day, Snagglepuss visits his friend in the hosptial, bringing LIla along this time, with said friend resenting his son for leaving his mother.. and seemingly killing her with grief. More importantly Snag's going to another party and until sitting down to write the review I never realized that there's one in every issue. Huck takes Quickdraw Mcgraw as his date, having been el kaboining him. Quickdraw has been seen a few times at the stonewall, a closeted police officer who collects the bribes. Huck is.. happy for the first time since he got here, not wallowing having found someone and thanking snagglepuss for it.. and knowing what's coming... it fucking hurts. You'll see why shortly but if you've read this comic you know and you can see why it took me this long to go back.
Snag runs into Marilyn who apologizes for the whole mess. She explains what she sees in Joe.. that he's a person, not some dumb brute but someone with complexity and pain we saw earlier. The problem is .. Joe dosen't see hers: like most men he sees Marlin as either a sexual prize to be won.. or a dumb bimbo to be torn down instead of a person... which is what Arthur sees. Snag not only makes it clear he's not going to tell joe but thanks Marilyn for being this vunerable for him, for showing the part of her that few get to see. It's a tender moment and one of the best in the comic.
This whole subplot could be cut... but it makes a point about people , especailly in snag and huck's case as queer people in the 1950's, have to cut part of ourselves off, segment ourselves, and how being seen.. is seeing all of a person. Unlike some of the celebrity cameos like John Wayne or as we find out Clint Eastwood as the actor Snag realized wasn't good for stage (but does hook him up with a western as he sees his talent as a star and for talking to empty chairs), it feels necessary, not only hooking snag to the world but into things. There's a LOT of cameos here and i'm not skilled enough at the 50's to spot them all and i'm only googling the ones that impact the plot. As the interview ends we get a truly magificent line i'll let speak for itself
We end issue 3 with everything going pretty well even with the hearing. Now's the part where it all goes to shit.
We open issue 4 with Gigi again and another scene that's more tone setting than actually plot relevant. She's in Nevada after assuring the comittee she'll have leverage on snagglepuss. For now after another jingoistic classroom lecture she talks with a tecncian at a test sight who makes it clear why their buliding so many fallout shelters: it's not because the goverment ever thought they'd work.. but it gives the ILLUSION of victory, that america really would be stupid enough to start nuclear war and MIGHT survive it. It's letting your oponent THINK you'll pull the trigger when neither of you can, and letting people think their safe when really... no. Their dead and their fate isn't in their hands.
So let's stop a second and talk about Mark Russel's writing style: Mark likes to take breaks like this to set the tone and to say stuff about society to really go off about a topic. Sometimes it works, sometimes it dosen't, but he's good at intercutting it with panels and showing the insane underpinnings of our society. It mostly works here, with everything tying in thematically: the cold war their using to do this prosecution bullshit.. is just smoke and mirrors. Theirs no war just two countries darring each other to "end the world pussy!"
At the play we find out it's about Snag and Huckleberry, complete with masks.. and it makes Snag reflect on his past. he and Huck knew each other as kids. Were best friends.. but Snag had to go. As he poignantly puts it
So Snag left.. and deals with it.. and into present day as while he's mostly cast the mask off privately... he still wears one. Lila had zero idea till this play he and huck were lifelong friends, with Snagglepuss barely letting her in. She was completely aware she was his beard going into the marriage, she's fine with that. .but she wants to at least be let in emotionally... which is a fair ask and Snag knows it as he dodges the questions. He knows he's not being fair but it's very clear across the story Snagglepuss.. has trouble opening up. His viacious personality is part who he is.. but part another mask. A way to put a wall up so he never has to deal with his emotions or issues. He geniuinely if platonically loves lila.. but he can't be vunerable with her or Pablo, he can barely be vunerable with himself. He talked about parts of yourself you hdie from everyone.. but he hides his pain in his work and in himself.
And this extends to Pablo whose tired of hiding, tired of the masks and wants to be himself... or at least something more than meeting one place every day. And Snagg..s naps for the second time this series, and in a way that's heartbreaking as it is telling
It's a line I honestly didn't notice on my initial read for this review, a line that proves what i've been saying: that Snag WANTS to be free but is constraind by a society that would destroy him for being queer. He's a caged lion unable to be who he deserves to be.. but he's boxing in others to do it.
Snag.. does end up doing the right thing in a truly heartwarming moment that in other works may be a turning point for his life: Instead of the stonewall.. he realizes Pablo was right and that he's hurting the people he loves.. so he introduces Lila and Pablo. He may be closeted.. but he can live and have the loves of his life, his best friend and his boyfriend, his family.. be family.
Sadly... this is intercut with a tragedy. While Snagglepuss embraces who he is as much as he can... Huck alraedy has. His relatoinship with Quickdraw is going great, everything seems fine... then Gigi lowers the hammer. See she intended to go after snagglepuss with the stonewall, pressuring the cops into a raid knowoing their taking bribes, but his change of heart saved him.. but dosen't save Huck.. who has his heart broken
McGraw chooses his career over Huck and instead of warning him and moving on with his life.. destroys him. Huck is arrested and humiliated , forcibly outed by a horrifying world.. and by Gigi who ruined his life just to get at his friend.. and is closeted herself. It's a damming statment.. that it's one thing to struggle with not being out, the world can be hard and as seen with Snag sometims you do the best you can and find a way around till the world will let you be who you are. But as McGraw and Gigi show... sometimes.. you sell out your own just to get ahead. McGraw is broken by what he's done while Gigi..s leeps peacefully entirley okay with having destroyed a man and preparing to destroy him further for her own goals.
Huck is understandably not doing great, the cop discharging him to Snag, who leaves practice at once to go bail his friend out, making homophobic remarks. But he at least admits.. he's out. That a man can't hide forever.. but he also admits that you can change the world or be destroyed by it.. and god help him Huck can't decide which.
Kruchev has a general arrested for daring ot speak up against him.. the moral is important to this: dance to the beat the goverment once.. or else.. and how the us despite claming ot fight communisim.. is using the exact same tactics.
Back to the main event. The Comittee is a bit pissed as Gigi misssed her target. They want to call the hearing off.. but it's too late and Gigi makes a valid point: The goal was leverage and while they dont' have our hero directly.. they have one of the few people he'd die for in the crosshairs.
So the two enemies meet again. And while she TRIES the "we're sorry we didn't mean to" card... Snag shuts that shit down on sight
Gigi offers to make it all go away for huck if he bends the knee.. and it becomes clear her right wing bullshit about "the culture war determining if we win the cold war".. isn't bullshit for her. Some part of her GENUINELY seems to belivie this is a battle for america's soul and if they all dont' bend the knee and obey, we loose. The sad truth is the real powers controlling the right like hers, then and now don't want any moral victory. These crusades are so they can other people to create enemies. They go after queer people because we do not fit into the mold that's easy to control. We do not bend the knee as easily. As this work and real life has proven some do. But it's a lot harder to control and control is the whole game. A war, culture or real isn't the goal.. its blind obidence. It always has been. She's deluding herself thinking this is about anything else.
The worst part though.. is it's actually working. Snagglepuss is considering bending because she has his best friend held to the fire. Lila is concerned he might while Pablo is just furious at the notion. Yet whlie he's right that the monsters will never stop begging for a pound of flesh and want more and more.. Snag has a point. It's easy to call someone a monster when they sell out for their own comfort like Quickdraw or because they've deluded themselves into thinking it's the right thing like Gigi. But Snagglepuss wonders if his work is at all worth the life of his best friend. It'd be very easy to condem him but the story and the world has backed him into a corner he cannot get out of.
Huck is likewise stuck. It's been clear all story Huck has depression: his stories are all about how miserable he is, he can't stop about it, but there's just not a lot of language to help him. He was almost doing better.. but loosing his lover, his ablility to write, it's destroyed him. He points out he's a goldfish in a glass bowl.. even with Snag's offer for him to move in.. it's just moving the bowl. And while Snag admits he could make it go away, Huck has doubts. Huck.. is a complex character: he's naive, depressed.. but always had a current of hope. A tv dinner is a modern marvel, love is something he needs and yearns for and embraces when he gets it. That hope is gone.
The final breaking point is that HUAC reveals to snag their suppoening Huck. He calls LIla , planning to fully sell out.. but as she tries to tell him before having to shout it
It's the reason this review has been so damn hard to write, not helped by being a person with depression whose had suicidal ideation. Huck hung himself, not able to deal with this anymore.. and HUAC might as well have handed him the noose. They knew he was vunerable and they pushed simply to win a political fight. A man died... because they broke him all to get at someone else.
Snag is devistated, the art doing a perfect job capturing his shock.. before he decides to go down fighting. They nearly had him and they pushed too hard.. and now he's going to break them back. But he also makes it clear he's going to push LIla away, something she's devistated by and worried about.. but he has no choice. Anyone attached to him will be destroyed and it's a truly devistating sacrifice, giving up his friend.. for her saftey.
He also has to give up opening night, with Peter talking him up: after the fire incident his rep was understandably done, justifably so.. but Snag gave him another chance. So while he'll have to pretend like they never knew each other.. for tonight... this is for Snag.
Snag's demeanour is diffrent. It's a change I hadn't noticed before but hits like a truck once you do: he's colder, angry. He does make a joke or two, i'd be impossible for him not to.. but the jokes are less pithy and light. He's thrown away the mask, the playwright, the jokester, the man with the iron wit.. and is speaking plainly, bluntly and nobly. The him before wasn't bad and is a good way to deal with facists.. but it's not the snagglepuss their getting. They thought that snagglepuss would be their downfall... instead their getting him with his teeth bared ready to tear them apart and when asked about his arts subersivness..
It's a beautiful statement. It's the truth. All these idiots saying ART SHOULDN'T BE POLITICAL are really just saying "I don't like this art's politics". The best they can muster is stuff like Mr Berchum which isn't art but someone screaming their opinon at you. The whole point of art is to crack open your world view, to help you see beyond it. The reason the widening perspectives we're getting is so great.. is that we see beyond ourselves. To use a recent example i'll be covering for next year's Juneteenth, Sinners tells an entertaining action story and has wonderful memorable characters... by framing it through the black experince, through the south and through the commodification of black art and people. The rich history embeded in the film makes the work what it is. I"m sure some jaggoffs are claming "OH WELL IT'S WOKE OR DO THEY HAVE TO TALK ABOUT THIS". which.. yes they do. When we stop thinking just in what we know and open our world, the world is better for it. There's so much queer content and queer coded content these days.. because our stories matter. They deserve to be told. And the harsh truth of what the powers in this coutnry, the very white powers that run it have done NEEDS to be laid bare so we can fucking change it.
Gigi is pissed , trying to frame the thing as "obdeicne or oblivion..a nd snagglepuss obleterates her. He explains WHY entertainment is so important and I wish I could use more panels here but the final scene o fthe issue is several pages of back and forth I simply can't properly put on screen. It's well worth reading. But he points out pop culture puts people's fanaticism somewhere somewhat healthy. And otherwise.. it turns to goverment, the state, to tolataranisim.. and that isn't healthy. he can't say there isn't an exestital threat, the cold war was and the threat of nuclear Armageddon still is.
So Gigi brings up huck.. and it HORRIBLY backfires as she had no idea he committed suicide and then says "If he just kept it private". Snag explodes... pointing out that keeping it private destroys people. having to hide who we are is a cage, a mask we can never take off that eventually becomes part of us and consumes us
As snag ends his speech Pablo leaves, his divorce papers are sent.. and he decides to live with himself rather than hide in shame. Issue 5 is an explosive climax to the story, the big final confrontation between two powers.. and while Snagglepuss wins the moral victory and easily smokes his opponents.. he ultimately dosen't win. It was good to have this, full of iconic lines and fantastic moments.. but it also shows how easy it is to win.. and still loose.
We begin the next chapter years later. Nixon is talking with kruschev and Kruschev makes a valid point: while america props up our culture.. we also abuse it, comodifying stars of color or who are queer than treating them as lesser
This is of course hypocritical given the soviets werne't exactly friendly to quee rpeople.. but it dosen't make it not true.
Issue 6 is more of an epilogue: it's valuable and important to the story and good it didn't end here, but it ends sometime later and deals with the aftermath, the rubble left and the good and bad of Snag's brave stand.
The bad is evident early on: a bunch of gawking idiots rescognize him as "from being on the communism show". They missed the point entirely and Snag is understandably bitter. He meets with Augie Doggie, now a succesful novelist having written a book about snag and disgusted he got blacklisted, and giving him a copy. He may be lightly comodifying his friend.. but it's clear he did so for the art.
Snag once again says something profound: when Auggie reflects that maybe writers strive for happy endings because the unvierse is cruel and uncaring and we don't want to admit that. he offers something diffrent
Snagglepuss returns to his lonely apartment, consigned to the same frozen dinner Huck once had, and suprised to find Lila has remarried... happy for her too. She finally got the ending she deserved.
Someone who dosen't get what they deserve in that moment is McGraw who shows up at the door and is VERY lucky he dosen't get a punch to the face. He's here to make amends.. though Snag isn't in the mood. While McGraw feels guilty... Snag points out the why: Quickdraw was caught a few years later so what he did to huck amounted to nothing, and he feels bad in part because of that.. rather than because he choose the badge over his boyfriend.
Still he at least offers what he has: a cartoon show. He's gotten a role somehow, and offers snag one. I'ts a brilliant twist I didn't see coming reading this first run: that the hanna barbera cartoons snag would star in.. are canon to this universe. As in universe productions, sure, but given how cheap they were I can buy they were shot in live action with genuine furries. Snagglepuss objects this as nonsense.. but it's only if he wants it to be. For now he reads Huck's suicide note: that we should forgive ourselves.. and find forgiveness.
He then gets a call: his friend that he's been visting all story, the cranky old mah has passed.. and turns out.. it was his father. It's heavily hinted and I can't belivie I missed it on my read throughs but it's another thing lost in a painful life... the two having reached SOME kind of peace but never having the courage to tell his dad who he was. Maybe he knew.. maybe he didn't.
Snag in his depression goes back ot the stonewall, where a bear witha n eyepatch serves cocktails. Snagg feels his fight.. was for nothing. He proved nothing, the world is still cold.. what did he exactly win. And the stonewall bartender reveals exactly what; More bars. It used to be the only place.. but more and more sprung up while the stonewall istself persisted. The bust didn't kill it.. it showed these places exist and mroe people found and created them. You can't kill an idea.
And he figures they'll win> Why, because w'ere not going anywhere. Snagg spots pablo on tv, having participated in the revolution against batista and won. Also there's a farmer telling nixon to stay out of his corn. I refuse to give you any context.
So Snagglepuss realizes he can't just.. lay over and die and that maybe just getting back out their, existing in spite of the blacklist is enough.. and he takes the job.
So we end on Quickdraw bringing SNag in. Since they need all the stars they can get to crank out stories they don't care but just as a precaution we get a fantastic mythology gag: they paint him gold and call him snaggletooth, what snagglepuss was called in his first apperance and how he looked. It's a stupid trick.. but one that should work, it gives them deniablity and if no one cares, then he can perform under his name and color again.
Snag has one non negotiable... another star he wants brought on. Huck's son Huckleberry Hound Junior... who takes huck's name as a stage name in his honor. So we end as the duo visit huck's grave
It's a beautiful ending an da postscript tells us the show was a success, both would get their own cartoons.. and they'd have a long happy career. It's as close to a happy ending as I need.
Exit Stage Left is a masterpiece. A beautiful work that takes a batshit concept that should not work... an dmakes it work swimingly. It feels like it'd make an excellent companion piece to bojack horseman, the same use of animals who are a bit jarringly real in places as actors to deal with our own fucked up world and an ending tha'ts not exactly happy.. but still better than we thought following a flawed, if not as fucked up character. It's a fantastic piece of art that proves wild swings do work you just have to know where your aiming. It's well worth a read if you can find it, and should be held up as one of THE comics of the 2010s and reprinted as soon as possible. I doubt warner will but hey, stranger things have happened. If nothing else they could do a dc by mark russel omnibus and include this, prez, and his other works like flintstones. It's painfully timely, beautiful, and biting and i'm honored to have covered it. Thanks for reading
