Well, most comics characters that became cartoons began in the same way, no?
I mean, Popeye and Superman started n the pages before the big screen, so to most kids these must have just seemed like new comics that may or may not have become cartoons later on? They are, after all, very influenced and "drawn from" other, essentially "supporting" characters of the time. You could quite imagine having seen any one of these amongst those public domain collections of the VHS days!
Well .. sure; but I was referring to DC's deliberate decision to title these magazines: "HOLLYWOOD" Funny Folks .. Leading "SCREEN" Comics .. "MOVIETOWN'S" Animal Antics .. in such a way that heavily-implied that these were adaptations of existing 'movie cartoon' properties -- as The Fox and the Crow (who also sometimes appeared in stories featuring DC's characters) certainly were. It was akin to the later claim "As Seen On TV".
Still .. these comic books benefitted from the fact that they became popular at a time (the late-1940s - mid-1950s) when 'Hollywood' cartoon work was drying-up .. so, some of the artists on these books were actually former animators!