'Li'l Bad Wolf' (Walt Disney's Comics and Stories #73, 1946).
George Waiss was an American Disney comic artist and animator. He worked for the major animation studios during the Golden Age of Animation. As a comic artist he is best remembered for the Disney comics he made at Dell Publishing and at the Walt Disney Studios' story production for foreign licensees.
Early life and career
George C. Waiss was born in 1907 in Chicago, Illinois as the son of a medical doctor. When he was two years old, his father died of a burst appendix. Waiss' mother later remarried and moved to Colorado with her family. He started his career as a boxer, but eventually became a newspaper cartoonist for The Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post. Despite having no formal education he managed to keep this job until the 1930s.
Animation career
In 1936 Waiss became an inbetweener at Walter Lantz' animation studio, where he worked on 'Andy Panda' and 'Woody Woodpecker' shorts. Two years later he joined the Walt Disney company, where he animated mostly on the feature 'Fantasia' (1940). In 1940 Waiss worked at Warner Brothers' animation studio, where he contributed to Chuck Jones' 'Tom Thumb in Trouble' (1940) and Tex Avery's 'Wacky Wild Life' (1940). In 1941 he left Warners for Max and Dave Fleischer's Studio, working on their animated feature film 'Mr. Bug Goes to Town' (1941). Unfortunately the picture flopped and drove the studio into bankruptcy.
Disney & Looney Tunes comics
In 1942 Waiss returned to the Walt Disney Company, albeit not as an animator. Instead he became inker and letterer for Al Taliaferro's 'Donald Duck' newspaper comic, both the daily strip and the Sunday page. By 1946 he created a couple of Disney comics for Dell Publishing with characters like 'Li'l Bad Wolf' and 'Bucky Bug'. Waiss also inked the 28-page story 'Mickey Mouse and the House of Many Mysteries' for Dick Moores. During the same period he also created comics based on Looney Tunes characters like 'Porky Pig' and 'Mary Jane and Sniffles', as well as 'Oswald the Lucky Rabbit' for the Walter Lantz title 'New Funnies'.
Between 1976 and 1979 Waiss joined the Disney Studios' foreign market comics department. He was a scriptwriter for series like 'Uncle Scrooge', 'Donald Duck' and 'The Junior Woodchucks', most of which were drawn by Tony Strobl or the Jaime Diaz Studio. Waiss wrote 10 stories for the Italian-language Disney branch, starring 'Paperi' (Donald Duck) and 'Archimede Pitagorico' ('Gyro Gearloose').
'Oswald the Lucky Rabbit' (New Funnies #71, 1943).
Later film and animation career
In 1958 Waiss created the special effects for the short film 'My Milkman Joe' for Rainbow Pictures. The next decade he became a designer for Martin Marietta, designing silos for Titan rockets. As a freelance designer and animator he worked on various educational films about medical topics. For Playhouse Pictures, the veteran collaborated on 'The Night Before Christmas' (1968), while at Fine Arts Films he worked on 'Shinbone Alley' (1970). Waiss spent most of his later animation career at Filmation, where he was employed from 1969 on. One of the more memorable TV series he lent his talent to was 'Fat Albert & The Cosby Kids' (1972-1985).
Final years and death
In 1966 Waiss moved to Brighton, Colorado. In 1990 he passed away from pneumonia at age 83 in the city Thornton.
'Bucky Bug' (W WDC75-02).