Thursday, February 02, 2012

Illustrated Classics

Thursday Story Strip Day.

An early comic book creator who deserves a lot more attention than he has been getting, Chad Grothkopf started out as a film poster artist for Paramount in his twenties. From 1930 to 1939 he worked for Disney, after that we see him doing all sorts of early comic book stuff for a variety of publishers. As far as I am concerned, he didn't into his own until he started develeoping his recogizble thick outline style for Stan Lee's funny animal books in the forties. I learned about his work from the Howdy Doody Sunay only newspaper strip, a terrific cut estrip with just a little bit of bite he drew this Sunay only strip between 1950 and 153 and even appeard on an episode of the Howdy Doody Show with Milt Neil, the designer of the puppet who may or may not have drawn or written the feate with Grothkopf. Fot a short period in 1951/52, the strip was wrtten by Stan Lee. Samples form that run I have already shown. Later in the fifties he returned to (television) anmation and storyboards and he seems to have dropped fro iew for most fans and histrians. His most succesful newspaper strip through, ran fro 1942 to 1946 and deserves to be seen and (dare I say it) reprinted. I would prefer to have color samples, but here I have two comlete stories from Famous Fiction as well als the first page of a third one. His thicklined style works very well with the material and I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.
























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