Sheldon Mayer's Animal Gang #2 - Favourite Stories #5: Funny Stuff #89

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Here goes another Mayer's funny animal story.
Yup! Another one! I love how these Mayer's characters have interaction among them. Mayer seems to understand perfectly the individual chemistry that moves the character to do what is doing in the story. All they are indissoluble and develop their fictional personality by means of dialog. They laugh, they get angry, they love them, and as result of that, they grow. This is a particular feature that I think defines Funny Animals best and that bring them closer to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
Yup! They're all quite quixotic to my way of thinking. On the other side of the spectrum we could find Tubby. Unlike them, he's a monologuist. He's much more Shakespearian.

As usually, this story has no tittle, but it could have been "Doper than Dope" or some such a thing. Mayer makes use of the classic resort of a guy being cheated because of his naivety and, in some way, because of his aspirations. As always, this guy sublimates his natural instincts of survival to fall into the trap. But Sheldon re-writes this formula like an absolute master and the last scene is the exact, beautiful and deserved last note for this great story.

It seems as if Mayer makes an attempt to move away from the not-written original tittle to look for new ways, letting himself be guided by his instincts or, what is the same thing here, allowing the characters take charge of the story. Just then we find out all they want to be different of what, actually, they are. Here goes another tittle for this untitled story: "How to pretend to be another one".
"Amster", says the frog on page one, "if I didn't know you was a Hamster, I'd swear you was a Rat". In fact, this frog just appears in the story to highlight the displacement of the personality, real leitmotif of the story and, what's more, when you have just read this statement you can't help laughing. The frog just appears in four panels altogether, but when he goes out on the fourth one, we have a feeling wisdom goes away with him.

"I'm you, and you're Skinny," says Amster afterwards when he tries to sweet-talk Bo Bunny. And what's the answer of our simple-minded friend? "I always wanted to be skinny, so here I go!!" Wow! That's Mayer at his peak!
And then, in an unexpected narrative turn, we arrive to the last scene to realize that Skinny's not free to be himself either, since doing what the conscience tells him to, he gives up his own personality: "Don't be silly!" says the little internal voice. "A conscience never stops anybody from doing anything! But we sure can stop you from enjoying it!!" And not even Amster has a lucky escape from this law. Just old Bo Bunny keeps unalterable in the end. Another title for the story? "Foolishness will make us free".