Miz Mam'selle Hepzibah

Hepzibah drawn by Walt Kelly

Miz Mam'selle Hepzibah is a fictional character, an anthropomorphic skunk from the classic Walt Kelly comic strip, Pogo. In the animated film, Pogo's Special Birthday Special, she was voiced by June Foray.

Miz Mam'selle Hepzibah is a female Cajun skunk, though a little more of the French persuasion. The curvaceous Hepzibah was supposedly modeled after creator Walt Kelly's former mistress and, eventually, second wife.^{[citation needed]} Her fur is the standard black and white skunk color scheme, though her hair is completely white. She wears a short skirt just about everywhere she goes, though she has several with varying patterns.

Personality and character history

In common with Warner Brother's Pepe Le Pew (who predates her by several years), Hepzibah is a French flirt. (The humor being that the French were perhaps the most famous perfume makers of the day.) She has a crush on Pogo, and is rarely shy about it. A running gag concerns the swampland characters wondering when they will be married — marriage being an uncomfortable topic for Pogo.

Though flirty, Hepzibah is gentle, sweet, charming and polished. A hallmark is her mind-boggling speech. Her broken English can challenge readers to determine her meaning, and tends to result in the loss of subtlety expressing feelings; sometimes awkwardly expressed when courting the timid Pogo.

In contrast, the perpetually grumpy Porky Pine is in love with her. Telling her so does not come easily, especially considering that Hepzibah seems to only have eyes for Pogo.

In the animated movie, Pogo's Special Birthday Special, Porky Pine manages to express his feelings in a gentle way, presenting her a magnificent gift he'd accidentally tied to his finger and carried all day. Hepzibah was more than pleased.

Conflicts concerning Hepzibah on film

Ironically perhaps, one of the least abrasive characters in the Pogo strip became a source of contention with Chuck Jones, who was involved in the half-hour Pogo TV show. Jones redrew Hepzibah to have a more human-like face, which made Kelly quite angry.^[1] It was the experience with this TV show that caused Kelly to find another way to animate.

References and homages

Miz Mam'selle Hepzibah was popular enough to inspire an homage by author Chris Claremont in the Marvel Comic series The Uncanny X-Men. A humanoid skunk woman named Hepzibah of the Starjammers would prove to be a returning character to the title (though the skunk aspect of her character would eventually be dropped in favor of her becoming a catgirl). Fifi Le Fume, the French female skunk from Tiny Toon Adventures may also be based on her, considering the strip was in the middle of a brief syndication revival at the time Tiny Toon Adventures premiered. And Eric W. Schwartz's Sabrina from Sabrina Online also seems to have been somewhat visually modeled after her.

References

1. ^ Kelly, Walt: Phi Beta Pogo, p. 146, Simon & Schuster Inc., 1989