Free Updates
Navigation
Categories
| February, 2010 (1) |
| May, 2009 (2) |
| April, 2009 (3) |
| March, 2009 (1) |
| February, 2009 (3) |
| January, 2009 (3) |
| December, 2008 (7) |
| November, 2008 (3) |
| October, 2008 (11) |
| September, 2008 (28) |
| August, 2008 (1) |
| July, 2008 (9) |
| June, 2008 (13) |
| May, 2008 (3) |
| April, 2008 (9) |
| March, 2008 (17) |
| February, 2008 (17) |
| January, 2008 (17) |
| December, 2007 (25) |
| November, 2007 (37) |
| October, 2007 (48) |
| September, 2007 (60) |
| August, 2007 (61) |
| July, 2007 (23) |
Search
Archives
More Links
|
 Thursday, September 18, 2008
Sir Bagby: A Strip for Fans of Knighthood?
Posted by maggie
Today, such strips as the online Sword & Sarcasm and Nodwick provide comedy entertainment for fans of medieval fantasy. From 1959 to 1965, artist Rick and writer Bill Hackney produced such entertainment for newspapers via the Bell-McClure syndicate. More samples appear here. Isn't it time for someone to reprint these in more permanent form? (The strips below appeared in 1964.) 
9/18/2008 8:31:49 AM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00) 
|
|
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Percy Crosby's Skippy
Posted by maggie
Joan Crosby Tibbetts has been waging a campaign for years now to defend rights to her dad's "Skippy" character. Percy Crosby (1891-1964) created an incredibly popular feature starring a little boy playing with his buddies and making observations about life -- at first in the pages of the 1923 pre-photo-magazine version of Life and then (1925-1945) via a syndicated newspaper feature. There were books, toys, and a movie that starred Jackie Cooper and brought Norman Taurog the Best Director Oscar, and the strip can't be properly conveyed with only a few samples. Nonetheless, here are three from 1939. (Owing to the size of the printed strips, I can't get more than three at a time on the scanner.) The top two of these feature the fence that lingered on jars of Skippy peanut butter long after the connection to the strip's character had been forgotten by most. 
9/17/2008 9:58:15 AM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)
|
|
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Sam's Strip: Due for Complete Reprinting!
Posted by maggie
In case you've been frustrated by seeing a bunch of strips that are part of a larger whole that you'll probably never see, here's a taste of a treat you can own yourself. Fantagraphics will release Sam's Strip by Jerry Dumas (1930-) as a $19.99 208-page compendium (ISBN 1560979720) in mid-December. While there was one previous collection, Sam's Strip Lives! provided only a sampling from the complete 20-month run, so, even if you have that, you'll want to reserve a copy of this with your kindly comics shop now. Dumas' concept was that his characters were aware they were appearing in a comic strip, and he took the device to the extent that at times the strips took on gentle political commentaries -- since among the other characters were the cartoon devices used by editorial cartoonists. It ran from October 1961 to June 1963 but was never what syndicates would term a "success." The two primary characters, Sam and his assistant, appeared in a revamped version titled Sam and Silo in 1977, but they didn't seem to be aware any longer that they were only two-dimensional occupants of a two-dimensional world. This is one of my favorite sequences; it appeared in 1962: 
9/16/2008 9:11:43 AM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)
|
|
Monday, September 15, 2008
Non-Raymond Rip Kirby
Posted by maggie
Flash Gordon and Secret Agent X-9 artist Alex Raymond began his detective strip Rip Kirby March 4, 1946, and the strip was scripted by Raymond, Ward Greene, and Fred Dickenson. But Raymond died in a car crash Sept. 6, 1956, and John Prentice took over the art, while Dickenson continued to script the feature. Prentice died in 1999, and the last Rip Kirby strip was June 26, 1999. When The Cleveland Plain Dealer picked up Rip Kirby on Aug. 24, 1964, the strip was in the middle of an adventure. Solution: The paper provided a summary of what had happened to this point. (By the way, in case you were worried about the resolution to the sampling I've shown here, the strip for Aug. 28 featured Kirby making a hasty exit from the house, accompanied by the thought balloon, "Can't shoot him ... It's his house ...") 
9/15/2008 9:02:55 AM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)
|
|
Friday, September 12, 2008
Flook by Trog Is One of My Favorite Strips
Posted by maggie
"Trog" is Wally Fawkes, the artist, who was also a clarinet player and a jazz band leader. Flook ran in the Daily Mail from 1949 to 1984 and began as a children's strip focused on a little boy, Rufus and his sort-of pet, a furry little creature that, in earliest days, could only make the sound, "Flook." It evolved over the years, scripted by different people, into a humor strip laced with political and social satire. The primary scripter was George Melly, and there's a wonderful write-up at the University of Kent's British Cartoon Archive. This sequence, however, predates Melly's scripts and is a bit more of a kids' adventure strip. 
9/12/2008 10:48:37 AM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)
|
|
Dating British Strips
Posted by maggie
As noted in the previous post, it's frustrating. But every once in a while, there are hints. For example, on the back of the second of the Gun Law strips is an advertisement for an auction to be held April 28, 1964 -- so my guess is that the story begins at some point in April 1964. In the case of the Flook strips I'm about to post, the one that begins with Rufus saying, "Come out," is dated August 5, 1955. But that's because someone wrote the date at the top of the strip -- not because there's printed indication on the strip or its other side.
9/12/2008 10:38:20 AM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)
|
|
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Harry Bishop and Gun Law -- and Gunsmoke
Posted by maggie
OK, I've been showing you samples of funny strips. Here's an action-adventure British strip -- and what's strange about it is that, though it's titled Gun Law, it is clearly new stories set in the mythos of the TV series Gunsmoke. It just may be the best Western comic strip I've ever seen, and that must be thanks to writer-artist Harry Bishop (born March 3, 1922). Bishop also produced a strip adaptation of Bonanza, but, according to one reference, he gave up drawing altogether in the mid-1980s because of an eye infection.
Gun Law ran in The Daily Mirror from 1956 to the late 1970s. As is the case with most of the British comic strips, I can't find more detailed information on strip dates; since the strips ran in one newspaper, nobody thought it was necessary to date the strips. They were, instead, numbered. In the case of Gun Law, Bishop produced a complete story arc for each adventure, making the strip an obvious candidate for reprinting -- but I can't find any instance of reprints. It'd be a logical license for someone in America, but it'd have to go through double licensing: one for the strip itself and one for the Gunsmoke mythos. But, man, I'd like to see it. Bishop involved Matt Dillon, Chester, Kitty, and the rest with actual people active in the American West of the era.
Here's the start of a story. Sorry for the difficulty in reading it because of the reduction required for online posting -- but just look at the art!:
9/11/2008 7:57:35 AM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)
|
|
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Angus McGill and Dominic Poelsma
Posted by maggie
It occurred to me to try to track down online images of (Clive creators) McGill and Poelsma -- and I had no luck. Since that annoyed me, I thought I'd post this photo, which appeared on the back cover of Augusta the Great, copyright 1977 Beaverbrook Newspapers. I'm guessing the one on the left is McGill.
9/10/2008 12:01:20 PM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)
|
|
Clive and Augusta
Posted by maggie
The Clive strip (see earlier posting), while successful, soon evolved to pay more attention to his little sister, Augusta -- and eventually changed its name to acknowledge the fact. (The "horrible cat" shown here, by the way, was named Crippen [with reference to Hawley Harvey Crippen, put on trial in a media frenzy, accused of [and convicted of and hanged for] murdering his wife]. Don and I named one of our cats Crippen with reference to Clive's Crippen.)
9/10/2008 11:11:07 AM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)
|
|
Clive by McGill and Poelsma
Posted by maggie
Another British strip of which I'm enormously fond is the British daily Clive, written by Angus McGill and drawn by Dominic Poelsma. Despite the fact that there were a few book collections, I can't find out much about either, though I think McGill was an essayist and Poelsma illustrated some humorous books. Judging from the copyright date (1977) and the cover copy of Augusta the Great ("first appeared in the London Evening Standard nine years ago"), the strip began in 1968. And here are the first strips:
9/10/2008 10:59:38 AM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)
|
|
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
Another British Strip -- Choochi and Twink
Posted by maggie
While my primary scanning computer sits clicking to itself while it scans and fixes its C drive (though I have little hope that it will actually cure itself that way), Brent helped me work my way through the Photoshop Elements software on another computer.
We'll see how it turns out on an ongoing basis. But in the meantime, here's Choochi and Twink, which started in 1966. It was written by Les Lilley (1924-1998) and drawn by Chic Jacob (1926-2000). [Lilley also scripted such strips as Jane, Tiffany Jones, and Scarth. Both men were active in the community of comics professionals.] I don't think these first strips from the series have ever been reprinted -- until now.
9/9/2008 5:57:19 PM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)
|
|
Go, Rob Siegel (and Wrestler), Go!
Posted by maggie
OK, this isn't about comics, but I just had to gloat! In days long gone by, I occasionally caught glimpses of Rob Siegel at the Madison offices of the revered weekly The Onion. He was a wordsmith par excellence -- and a good buddy of Thompson Offspring Stephen. Long before Stephen left The Onion, Rob had made his exit to New York, where he polished his output even more. And the most recent evidence? How about the Golden Lion prize for The Wrestler at the Venice Film Festival? How about an all-night bidding war for rights to distribute the movie in America? You go, Rob! Here's a report on the film, which stars Mickey Rourke and is directed by Darren Aronofsky.
9/9/2008 11:11:12 AM (Central Daylight Time, UTC-05:00)
|
|
|