Saturday, June 30, 2012

DIY

Saturday Leftover Day.

Make your own fun this weekend!







Friday, June 29, 2012

Hawking His Wares

Friday Comic Book Day.

Why Alex Toth would chose the pseudonym of Hawk for this single stoy in Famous Features Personal Love. It is mentioned in the ists of his work, but I had never sen it before. Two things are interesting about it. First of all, the date. Toth left DC after a disagreement with his editors in the early fifties. His last worked was published in 1952. This piece was published in the September 1951 issue. Secondly the style is very interesting. It is a departure from the work he did for DC and a definitive step towards his 'new' sharer style of his work from Standard. So how far ahead was DC in prfairing their magazines? Either they were about a half year further awy than other companies or Toth created and sold this story before he left DC... which throws a whole different light on his departure.










Thursday, June 28, 2012

The Irish Connection

Thursday Story Strip Day.

A week ago regular visitor and comment guest Jeff Overturf scanned a whole comic section from June 1955 and put it on his blog. I've put the link along the side. He comments on each strip. Biggest surprise is a full color tabloid page from Jack Sparling's Mr. Mumbles. I had known about this trip for a long time, but have never seen a color sample. Sparling was a very familiar atist in the fifties, tuning up a all kinds of publishers, mostly doing war an romance stories. For Mr. Mubles, he created (or cocreated with a wriiter, more likely) a bearded leprachaun. I wondered if there as a specific culturl event that made a newspaper syndicate think this could be a good and saleable idea. The announcement I found, shows that althoug leprachauns were all over the place in the midfifties (where artists of Irish decent were often well represented) but my guess is the movie Finian's Rainbow had a lot to do with it. The strip started on Monday April 18th, 1955 and it doesn't seem as if the Sunday started until May 15. But there could have been one earlier in other papers. The quality of these sans aren't the best, but a least you can see how the strip got it's start. I may share more later.
































Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Silly Putty Man

Wednesday Advertising Day.

Bet you have never seen this one before...

I have no idea who the artist is.


Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Marching Along

Tuesday Comic Strip Day.

Here is some more of my almost complete run of so-so scans of the early Beetle Bailey Sundays. I wish someone, anyone would just go and reprint them all in their clear, sharp three tier glory.