Zeke Midas Wolf

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Alias: Big Bad Wolf


Eyes: Black
Hair: Black and white fur
Race: Wolf


Marital Status: Single
Known relatives: Li'l Bad Wolf (son)
Group affiliation: The Dirty Dozen, the Foul Fellows' Club (sometimes called the Badfellows' Club)


Story: Zeke Wolf is the Big Bad Wolf who is constantly trying to catch and eat the Three Little Pigs and raise his son Li'l Bad Wolf as a good pig-eating son. So far his success has been limited to catching the pigs on occasion but only for a short while.


Continuity: Disney
Publisher(s): Columbia Pictures
First app.: Cartoon: Three Little Pigs (1933)
Creator(s): Walt Disney
Country of origin: USA


Background notes: The Big Bad Wolf is one of Disney's adaptations of European and African folk stories. The story "The Story of the Three Little Pigs" by Jacob Halliwell (1849) was the first printed version of the story, but the original story about the wolf and the three little pigs goes back a lot longer.

This version of the wolf was first seen in Three Little Pigs from 1933. The cartoon was spectacular in being in color, which was highly unusual at the time. Like other Disney adaptations, the story did not contain the death of any characters. In the original story, only the pig that built his house with bricks survived. Disney had the two first pigs escape to the brick house. The cartoon was a part of Disney's Silly Symphonies and spawned the immortal song "Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf". The song would later, as the depression hit USA in the late 30's, become a major hit as it defiantly kept away the wolf at the door. The song would later become famous in another version. The movie "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" from 1966 used the chorus only using Virginia Woolf instead of The Big Bad Wolf. In the cartoons, the voice of the Big Bad Wolf was done by Billy Bletcher. Later when Zeke Wolf was used in the "House of Mouse" anthology, his voice was done by Jim Cummings.

When the cartoon was transferred to comics, the Big Bad Wolf was placed in a forest, which later became inhabited by other adaptations from folk stories like Bre'r Rabbit, Bre'r Fox and Bre'r Bear and in 1945 he also got a son. He had on occasions had sons in his stories before, but these were evil little critters with no staying power, contrary to Li'l Bad Wolf, the white sheep of the family.

Catching the Three Little Pigs became a major part of the wolf's stories, and as the ideas developed, the Big Bad Wolf developed devices for catching the pigs that looks like some of the inventions Wile E. Coyote got from ACME when he tried to catch the Roadrunner. The stories never reached the level of violence and over-the-top gags seen in the Wile E. Coyote cartoons, but some of the wolf's devices and Practical Pig's counter devices were close. To keep the stories from becoming all about catching pigs, the stories started branching out into stealing chickens from the farmer Bre'r Bear, catching Bre'r Rabbit and otherwise getting in trouble with the inhabitants of the Disney continuity. The early tales by Gil Turner (the writer and artist who worked on the series from 1947 and made the wolf and his son into the characters we know today) revolved a lot around father and son themes i.e. Big Bad Wolf as Li'l Wolf's guiding light. Big Bad Wolf became a self-conscious villain (one of the first), wolfishness became a profession or life philosophy with provisions for sloth, littering, ignorance, and disobedience, and Zeke Wolf was a master who tried teaching his son.

Big Bad Wolf never really crossed over to other medias. A very limited amount of merchandise has been made, but that's it.


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