Monday, January 23, 2012

VIP For VIP's Sake

Monday Cartoon Day.

Here are all cartoons Virgil Partch (VIP) did for Collier's betwen december 1945 and july 1946. Like Hank Ketcham, Virgil Partch started cartooning after leavind Disney. But unlik Ketcham, he doesn't seem to have served time in the army. So he arrived at Collier's a couple of years before Ketcham and while the later creator of Dennis the Menace was still searching for his style and only selling one cartoon every couple of weeks, Partch seems to have been there every week and sometimes even twice. And not a dud among them! The good news is, there will me more...



























7 comments:

Paul C.Tumey said...

Fabulous stuff, Ger! I love VIP's cartoons. He had a very personal vision of surreal humor. This weekend, I was at a local flea market and spotted 3 VIP collections for 5 bucks each. Boy, was I tempted... but I'm on a very tight budget these days. So it was really nice to visit your blog and find these treasures! Thanks!

Ger Apeldoorn said...

He did about six cartoons a month for Collier's, two to four for the Saturday Evening Post, four for True and he was the art editor for True, doing the letter's page illustrations and all of it was great. Not nearly enough of his work has been collected.

fortunato said...

I doubt US Army wanted VIP: he was more nearsighted then Mr. Magoo...

Larry Rippee and Molly Rea said...

Always great to see more Vip.

He was in fact in the military. He entered the Army in 1944 and drew cartoons for the military paper, The Ford Ord Panorama (circa 1946).

It would be great if you could dig up some of his Army cartoons.

Thanks again.

-Larry

Paul C.Tumey said...

Regarding Virgil Partch being in the military... somewhere in my files, I have his autobiographical account of serving... it's 5 or 6 pages written by him, and was published in some obscure volume. If I ever dig it up, I'll share it with you, Ger.

rnigma said...

I wonder if Virgil Partch, unconventional cartoonist, was any relation to Harry Partch, unconventional composer?
Vip was indeed prolific; I read that when he died he had a big enough backlog of "Big George" strips to keep it going another year or two.

fortunato said...

VIP was killed in a car crash in 1984 and BIG GEORGE! keep going until 1990.