Sunday, January 30, 2011

Another Brick in the Wall

Monday Cartoon Day.

In 1966 cartoonist Morrie Brickman created the first comic strip designed to go on the editorial page, The Small Society. Taking i's lead from President Johnson's Great Society, it focussed on the daily goings on in Washington. And it was pretty funny. Before that, he tried several other strips, including a similar one about the stock market - which appeared so irregulary in the one paper I could find it in, that I am not sure if it was even a daily. His earliest syndicated effort seems to have been a cartoon he did in 1954, which is not mentioned in the two biographies I have seen online. It was done in a pleasant and early variation of the 'modern' style and fits in very well with the original goals of this blog to show the early work of the modern cartoonists of the sixties. Or could this be another Brickman? I don't think so...

Blue Chips seems to have run from late 1962 to 1965.

















Yummy Dummy

Sunday Meskin Measures.

This week's Vigilatnte from Action Comics #75 is a lot more solidly inked than last week's. Lot's of action and Mort Meskin's trademark circle panels.










Saturday, January 29, 2011

Italy's Don Martin

Saturday Jacovitti Day.

Recently I have been rediscovering the work of Italian artist Benito Jacovitti. His very funny strip Cocco Bill in the Dutch comic weekly Pep, which I read with a lot of enthousiasm, but he did lot and lots more terrific work. In 1968 and 1969 he did a whole page feature for one of the Italian photo weeklies. It was called Popjac, which I can only assume is some sort of pun using his name and the words Fox Populi, meaning The Voice of the People (but I was wrong, see the comments). It had a different lay-out every week and always featured a lot of gags as well as something with an everyman character called Guiseppi. I spend some time today translating one of the pages I have scanned in myself from it's magazine into Dutch and decided that it was so much fun to do, that I want to try and do it in English and every week. So, come back here during this week to see an English language version of this page. Till now, you will have to make do with Dutch... and Jacovitti's wonderful art.

As promised, I have replaced the Dutch translation with an English one. I have also added the article that accompanied the first Popjac in the Januari 30, 1968 issue of La Domenica del Corriere, which I will show next week. Anyone out there who can provide me with a translation of this piece?


Friday, January 28, 2011

Platypus Kurtzman

Friday Comic Book Day.

These are not unknown, but I had never seen them before in full: two short stories by Harvey Kurtzman for Police Comics #24 and #25. He sort of adated himself to the style of this ongoing feature, but it suited him very well. They must have been done just before he went into the army.












Thursday, January 27, 2011

Not Quite All Saints

Thursday Story Strip Day.

Here another installment in what I can only assume is the first John Spranger story for The Saint. It's a bit dark, but at least you'll have something to read when I get finished with this story next week.