Smokey by Name, Smokin’ by Style

14 Comic Book Appearances by Smokey the Bear

1. “I can tell you how to get out of this stew!” (1949)
Smokey made his first appearance in 1944 as part of a campaign by the U.S Forest Service to promote fire prevention. In the first posters featuring Smokey, he’s depicted wearing jeans and a forest ranger’s hat while pouring a bucket of water on a campfire and the message underneath reads, “Smokey says — Care will prevent 9 out of 10 forest fires!” The connection between bears and forests is obvious, and the campaign was an almost immediate hit, with Smokey appearing in ads everywhere, including the comics. Here, “Smokey the Fire-Preventing Bear” appears in a 1949 public service announcement from one of DC’s funny-animal comics, popping in to help Peter Porkchops avoid getting eaten by his wolf neighbor. “Thanks for the idea, Smokey. But what if Wolfie hadn’t been dumb enough to let me out of the net? Couldn’t you have just ripped the net with your claws while his back was turned?” “Uh… whoops, I smell something burning. Gotta run. And remember: only you can prevent forest fires!”

2. Forest Fire (1950)
Smokey’s first starring role in a comic book was this 16-page PSA comic published by the American Forestry Association. After putting out his “third man-made” fire that day with his trusty shovel, Smokey sits down with some of the other forest animals to talk about the 9 out of 10 forest fires that are caused by “careless or thoughtless human beings.” After wowing them with that statistic, he goes into a history lesson about a pioneer family who destroyed the land they lived on by allowing a brush-clearing fire to burn out of control, and follows that up with story after story about fires in Wisconsin, California, Ohio, and Maine that wiped out millions of acres of forest — “all because of carelessness!” Geez, Smokey, okay! We get the point already. I’ll make sure my campfires are completely out, I swear. Just please stop before you haul out the charred finger puppets.

3. “Look, Dad, that’s Smokey who got burned in a forest fire!” (1951)
From Archie Comics’ Suzie #80, here’s Katy and her boyfriend K.O. telling Sis the story of Smokey the Bear while they talk about fire safety. A few years after the Smokey the Bear campaign started, it received a massive boost from news reports about an actual bear who survived a forest fire. In the spring of 1950, after a wildfire burned through the Capitan Mountains of New Mexico, a three-month old black bear cub was found by fire crews; he had climbed a tree to escape the blaze, but his paws and hind legs had been burned. Firefighters retrieved the cub from the tree, and the story of “Smokey’s” care and recovery was picked up by national news outlets. As seen in this story, he later arrived at the National Zoo in Washington, DC, where he spent many years serving as the official living symbol of the Forest Service’s fire prevention campaign.

4. “Special 5th anniversary issue” (1957)
You’ve already asked where’s Waldo, now it’s time to play Spot the Smokey. By the time MAD put out this issue celebrating its fifth anniversary (by cheekily placing their grinning mascot at the same table as Betty Crocker, the Jolly Green Giant, and other legendary ad icons), Smokey was a genuine celebrity. During the 26 years that the real-life Smokey lived at the National Zoo, he received millions of visitors and had so many letters addressed to him (more than 13,000 a week at one point) that in 1964 the U.S. Postal Service gave him his own ZIP code; a 1952 doll of him included a mail-in card for children to become Junior Forest Rangers, and within three years half a million children replied. He ended the decade with a 14-foot tall animatronic version of him at the Ohio State Fairgrounds in Columbus, OH, which was installed to (what else?) help teach fire prevention to children and their families. He’s nothing if not consistent in his messaging.

5. “How to avoid poison ivy” (1959)
With appearances in comic stories, children’s books, and every kind of public service announcement channel you can imagine, a newspaper comic strip starring Smokey the Bear wasn’t that far-fetched an idea. Execution-wise, on the other hand… Operating from 1953 to 1994, Columbia Features Syndicate specialized in comic strips starring licensed characters like Nero Wolfe and Bat Masterson, with Smokey easily the biggest “get” in Columbia’s stable. From blogger and comic strip historian Allan Holtz: “Since the character of Smokey the Bear doesn’t really come with any iron-clad plot background, the syndicate was basically free to come up with a plot from scratch. This they chose not to do. What they did was copy Mark Trail whole cloth… The Sundays even include a cut-out feature, called ‘Smokey Says,’ to mimic Mark Trail’s ‘Trailways.'” Other non-exciting editorial decisions involved giving Smokey the job of park ranger and bringing in two other characters, Little Smokey and Specs the raccoon, to share his woodland wisdom with. Despite Smokey’s popularity, the strip lasted only three years. Maybe he should have copied Mary Worth instead…?

6. Smokey the Bear Nature Stories (1959)
“What?? A bear walking around in my forest and he’s not shirtless? Not on my watch, buster!” Smokey’s star arguably shone the brightest in the 1950s; aside from the books, toys, and newspaper strips already mentioned, he starred in a series of PSA radio ads featuring Smokey “in conversation” with celebrities like Roy Rogers and Dinah Shore. Naturally, Dell wasn’t going to not try and make him a comic star as well. A total of nine issues of Four Color Comics starring Smokey appeared between 1955 and 1961, all of which carried stories about Smokey as well as educational strips about forestry, bears, and other outdoorsy topics like how to construct an ant house. This issue, Four Color Comics #1016, finds Smokey, Little Smokey, and Specs the raccoon out inspecting emergency fire stations in the forest when they come across an illegal trap line. Gimp, the bad guy bear seen here, rolls a boulder toward Smokey, then plans on leaving in his truck with his poached animal skins. Smokey gives chase in his jeep, leading Gimp to drive off a mountain road and accidentally start a forest fire. After helping to fight the fire (hey, he’s a bad guy, but he’s not a monster), he tries to escape again, leading to this climactic showdown on a log in a river. Three guesses who comes out on top, probably while saying “You just got… smoked.”

7. “Smokey tells them how he hates forest fires!” (1964)
Published in 1960 and reprinted in 1964 and 1969 by Western Publishing, The True Story of Smokey Bear delivers what it promises by telling the story of how a young bear cub rescued from a forest fire became a national symbol for fire prevention. There aren’t any credits in the book (typical of Western at the time), but whoever was behind the project knew their audience; kids love images of dead animals and charred landscapes almost as much as they love images of an adorable bear cub wearing bandages on its four little paws. After he grows up, Smokey tells us how much he hates forest fires, not just because they destroy his animal friends and deprive both animals and humans of their homes, but also because they waste wood that could have been used to make furniture or (gasp!) even comic books! No! Not the comic books! I’ll never play with matches again, Smokey, I swear!

8. “Super Saturday on ABC” (1969)
This two-page ad for ABC’s Saturday morning lineup appeared in books that would have been on sale near the start of September 1969. Alongside other brand-new shows like Hot Wheels and The Cattanooga Cats, The Smokey Bear Show debuted September 6, 1969, as a part of ABC-TV’s Saturday morning lineup. Produced by Rankin/Bass and starring broadcaster and voice actor Jackson Weaver as Smokey, the show finds Smokey living in the forest with his animal neighbors like Floyd the fox, Benny the hare, Hiram the snake, and Mayor Owl. No surprise, the show leaned heavy on teaching fire prevention and encouraging conservation among its young viewers. Each of the 17 half-hour episodes contained three cartoons: two featuring Smokey as an adult bear, and one showing Smokey in his cub days titled “Smokey Bear’s Album” (which established that Smokey has been rocking the shirtless look since his cub days).

9. “Prevent forest fires” (1970)
Published as a tie-in for the cartoon, Smokey Bear was a quarterly comic series published by Gold Key Comics. (Why “Smokey Bear” and not “Smokey the Bear”? His official name is Smokey Bear, and the “the” was added in 1952 by songwriters Steve Nelson and Jack Rollins when they wrote “Smokey the Bear” to keep the song’s rhythm). Over the course of 13 issues, Smokey has typical funny-animal adventures with his woodland friends like Lionel Lion and Sammy Skunk, with a sprinkling of tips about fire prevention and outdoors living. One of the ways the series stood out was the not-so-subtle pro-environment messaging on each cover, with signs and banners within each cover image imploring young readers to “keep America green” and “prevent forest fires.” (Hold on, “Lionel the Lion”…? Where exactly is this forest located?)

10. “Can I look now?” (1980)
I don’t know if this is something that already exists, but I would love to see someone do a tally of the animals that Gary Larson has featured in his Far Side strip, with a ranking of which species were the most common recurring stars. My guess for the top five would be: cows, dinosaurs, bears, chickens, and dogs. (And yes, I’m counting the Thagomizer cartoon as a dinosaur.) Running from 1979 to 1995 (not including an online revival in 2020), The Far Side is famous for directing its surreal brand of humor towards the animal kingdom — that is, when it’s not poking fun of some of our most famous cultural icons. With this 1980 cartoon starring Smokey the Birthday-Having Bear, Larson managed to squeeze two of his favorite subjects into one cartoon. Yes, that’s exactly the kind of candles I’d expect my wiseguy buddies to get for my cake, too, if I were the public face of forest fire prevention.

11. “Hey, that’s his hat!” (1988)
The 1980s was a weird time to be a TV watcher. While most comedies from that decade tried to imitate the success of sitcoms like The Cosby Show and Cheers, there was still room for a few out-there concepts. A sitcom about a child robot? Done! A wise-cracking alien hiding in the suburbs? You bet! Add to that “wild and weird” list a little show called Sledge Hammer!, which debuted on ABC September 23, 1986. Equal parts Police Squad! and Dirty Harry, the show was just weird enough to attract a cult following, and it survived two seasons despite getting bounced around ABC’s prime time schedule. Fun fact: it was also produced by New World Television, which at the time just happened to be part of the same corporate family as Marvel Comics… which is very likely how the short-lived Sledge Hammer! comic series came to be. In the first of two issues, Sledge finds himself playing security guard to an Elvira-like TV host; when the horror movie-inspired killer who’s after her sets the house ablaze around them, Sledge manages to get the host to safety but is trapped inside until “some big guy” who leaves his distinctive hat behind saves him from the flames. (Ooh, how about this? A horror film starring Smokey the Bear driven insane by people starting fires despite decades of him telling them to cut that out, and he decides to literally fight fire with fire. “And remember, kids, only you can prevent yourself from suffering my wrath! Darn it, you little twerps, how hard is it to pour some water on a campfire?”)

12. “Stomped to death by Smokey the Bear!” (1993)
When Superman #75 hit the stands in late 1992, it’s not unfair to say some people went a little bit insane. Heroes had died and come back to life many times before, but this was Superman, the biggest hero of them all — and the climactic battle in this issue made his death look pretty definitive (spoiler: he got better). The fact that DC staffers were playing it straight and acting as if they really were killing off Superman for good only drove hysteria levels even higher, with media pundits weighing in on What It All Means for America while thousands of speculators drove up back-issue prices to stratospheric levels. Leave it to MAD magazine to have something cheeky to say about the whole brouhaha; in their 319th issue, the same one that spoofed Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Under Siege, the “usual gang of idiots” ran a back-page feature titled “Other Superhero Deaths” in which the Sub-Mariner is shown “Exxoned to death” and Ant-Man and the Wasp are “found dead in a Roach Motel.” The Human Torch’s fate is just as ignominious; no glorious death in battle against Galactus for him, he ends up getting curb-stomped by one seriously pissed-off bear.

13. “Friend of the forest” (1997)
Here is what the Comiclopledia has to say about indie comics legend Jim Woodring: “He mostly draws pantomime comics set in surreal, nightmarish environments, inspired by his recurring hallucinations since childhood. His trademark ‘fine art’ style is influenced by old European masters and surrealist painters. Woodring’s comics have a strange, otherworldly, unpredictable atmosphere.” Not, in other words, the type of artist you might think would be first in line to work with the U.S. Forest Service on a 12-page comic starring their mascot. Together with writer/artist Scott Deschaine, Woodring produced Smokey Bear: Friend of the Forest, a giveaway comic in which Smokey and his three young friends put out a forest fire and talk about all the products and environmental benefits we get from having healthy forests. There’s also a scene where Smokey tells the person responsible for starting the fire he’ll be “fined and held responsible” for what he did, probably because the original script in which Smokey mauls him to death didn’t test well with focus groups.

14. “Bear attack!!” (2012)
Smokey makes an appearance in “Mountain of Madness,” the 1997 Simpsons episode that finds Homer and Mr. Burns trapped by an avalanche inside a remote mountain cabin. At one point, Bart finds a talking statue of Smokey inside a visitor’s centre. When Smokey asks “Only WHO can prevent forest fires ?” Bart presses the “YOU” button, which causes Smokey to reply: “You pressed ‘you,’ referring to me. That is incorrect. The correct answer is you.” Yeah, I’d kick him, too, Bart. Smokey shows up again in Bongo’s Bart Simpson Comics #74, in a story about how it takes Bart and Milhouse all of a half-hour to go mad from being lost in the woods surrounding Kamp Krusty. Fortunately, there’s a well-placed statue of a certain bear to motivate them back to civilization. (Side note: Now that’s a slogan people will remember! Keep your butts out, indeed.)