Younginoff?

Monday Cartoon Day.

Busy week (starting a new sitcom) so cleaning up the scans for todays post especially took a lot longer than I wanted. In fact, I wanted to do even more cartoons than I am doing right now, but since they are only a part of a larger collection I still have to scan and clean up, I decided to cut it short and publish already.

In my collection of cartoon books and magazines I have a large number of cartoons by Henry Boltinoff. At first I marked them but didn't scan, wanting to do my favorites (especially Hank Ketcham, Virgil Partch and Mort Walker) first. As the producer of almost all comedy pages for National (DC) from 1945 to 1965, he is not unknown or unseen. And eventhough none of his work was ever collected, he is known and loved by many collectors.

But what is not known, is the fact that he also worked as a prolific cartoonist before during and after his DC years. His gags are not the best when compaired with the work of the aformentioned collegues. I would even go so far to say that his one and two page comedy fillers are far better than anything he did in the gag realm. But his style, especially in his formative years is very special. There is a clearness to all of his work, upuntil his later work. But in the early years there is also a weirdness in the body and head shapes that is quite remarkable.

I hope to be able to show work from all of his creative periods here, from some very rough and weird from his early years to odd features and pages from the mid forties Judge and even a couple of mildly saucy ones from the fifties.

Today I am starting with some cartoons from several issues of Gags, which first appeared in the forties as a roadheet and later reappered as a magazine in the late forties and early sixties. As always, when he is in an issue, he is there with several gags, sometimes as many as ten. It seems that when he showed his wares at the monthly or weekly editorial viewing day, he never sold just one gag, but always a set.

Gags magazine was filled with wall to wall gags. There weren't even written pieces or articles, just gags, gags and gags. To enliven the layout the editors cut, tilted and blew up gags whichever way they wanted, more so in the early years then later. This makes cleaning them up a bit difficult and I wish I could say I have done so flawlessly, but I can't.

Still, I hope you will find it a nice selection and a good start. These are all from the earlier broadsheet version of Gags. More of the others later.