Tuesday, September 13, 2016

TM™

Monday cartoon day.

This one took a lot of scanning, but I think it was worth it. In WWII several cartoonists were approached to help illustrate the various language guides that were produced for the military. Among them were Walt Kelly, Hank Ketcham and Ham Fisher (or whatever assistant he hired to do it). There weren't that many others, even. There was one by a serious illustrator I can't place and maybe someone else I am forgetting now. Anyway, I got a few of these guides and pretty soon I discovered that these four of five illustrators were repeated all over the booklets. Walt Kelly was used for the Dutch Guide, which i have copied in full. First of all because it is my home language and second of all because it is actually a pretty good guide. Hank Ketcham was represented in three far east guides, from which I have taken scans to show all illustrations. As you can see, the illustrations were shuffled around wherever they fit with a joke or an explanation. One more thing to note is how close to Hank Ketcham's later style this 1944/45 version is. Many of the cartoons he did at that time were completely different.

























































1 comment:

Mark Mayerson said...

Thank you for posting this. I knew that Kelly had worked on the language guides, but I'd never seen one. I'm grateful to you for scanning it.