Wednesday, May 29, 2013

Getting My Nerves On

Wednesday Advertising Day.

I have shown more of these Postum Coffee ads before. They are interesting because of two things. In the late thirties they were done by Milt Caniff and Noel Sickles, who took turns using the pseudonym Paul Arthur. After the war they were don eby Lou Fine, who honed his 'slick style on them. In between there were some that were altohether different and seem to be the work of Pual Fung. I have shown those earlier as well. And there were some done in a different format, a black and white one tier strip, which would nogt have been out of place in a daily newspaper although I've always only seen them in Sunday Papers underneath a regular full page strip. The artist si unknown to me, but they are interesting because they introduce the Mr. Coffee Nerves character, which was later used to good advantage by Lou Fine and which seems to have been the visual inspiration of the develish charcater that told the crime stories in Gleason's celebrated Crime Does Not Pay series of comic books.

I have added two newsly found Lou Fine ads, which I may or may not have shown before - but they look new to me.















2 comments:

fortunato said...

I've read that Mr. Coffee-Nerves was created by Albert Dorne.

The earliest example I've seen are from 1934.

Among the artists there was Joe King too (THE CLOWNIES, TED TOWERS, GABBIE).

Ger Apeldoorn said...

I have one of those Ad yearboks with Dorne in them, I should have a look.