Alfred (Fred) Abranz started his career as an animator on Warner Bros cartoons in the late 1930s and 1940s. After doing some animation work for Disney, he switched to illustration and comics, and became a staff artist at Western Publishing. For this company, he continued to work with the Warner characters, illustrating for the licensed comic books starring 'Bugs Bunny', 'Daffy Duck' and 'Porky Pig', among other characters. Abranz also illustrated for the 'Bugs Bunny' Little Golden Books, as well as the Tell-a-Tale collection.
Big Bad Wolf (Walt Disney's Comics and Stories issue 285, 1964)
In addition to the Warner characters, Abranz worked on other licensed properties. He was in fact the first artist to illustrate a 'Tom and Jerry' comic for the Our Gang comic book in September 1942. During the 1950s, Abranz worked on stories with Walter Lantz's 'Woody Woodpecker' and 'Oswald the Rabbit', as well as Disney characters like 'Little Hiawatha' and 'The Big Bad Wolf'. In the early 1960s, he worked mainly on Western's Hanna-Barbera titles, and was also active for this company's animation studios.
He then became an artist for the Walt Disney production of comic stories for overseas publicatons. His 'Goofy' and 'Big Bad Wolf' comics were easily recognizable, as were his Duck comics, which he drew with characteristic twisted beaks. Abranz worked for Western until 1967, doing jobs on 'The Little Monsters' and 'The Cave Kids', before returning to animation. He worked on productions like 'Ruby Spears', 'Fangface' and 'The Heathcliff and Dingbat Show' (based on the character created by George Gately) until the early 1980s.
