Summer Lovin' 12

Monday Summer Special.

Today I am going to Connecticut to do some cartoon research. So instead of the usual post, I am giving you daily installments of Lawrence Lariar and John Spranger's Ben Friday. Tomorrow another one. Use the time to look for that favorite artist of yours among my scans (as you have been wanting to for the last few months).

Summer Lovin' 11

Saturday Summer Special.

Today I am transferring to New York. So instead of the usual post, I am giving you daily installments of Lawrence Lariar and John Spranger's Ben Friday. Tomorrow another one. Use the time to look for that favorite artist of yours among my scans (as you have been wanting to for the last few months).

Summer Lovin' 10

Friday Summer Special.

Another day of research at the Billy Ireland collection. So instead of the usual post, I am giving you daily installments of Lawrence Lariar and John Spranger's Ben Friday. Tomorrow another one. Use the time to look for that favorite artist of yours among my scans (as you have been wanting to for the last few months).

Summer Lovin' 9

Thursday Summer Special.

Tonight I flew to Columbus Ohio. Today I will be tryiong tos tay awake, because I ma doing research at the Ohio State Billy Ireland collection. So instead of the usual post, I am giving you daily installments of Lawrence Lariar and John Spranger's Ben Friday. Tomorrow another one. Use the time to look for that favorite artist of yours among my scans (as you have been wanting to for the last few months).

Summer Lovin' 8

Wednesday Summer Special.

My last day in Los Angeles. So instead of the usual post, I am giving you daily installments of Lawrence Lariar and John Spranger's Ben Friday. Tomorrow another one. Use the time to look for that favorite artist of yours among my scans (as you have been wanting to for the last few months).

Summer Lovin' 7

Tuesday Summer Special.

I am staying with Wilbert Plijnaar in North Hollywood today. So instead of the usual post, I am giving you daily installments of Lawrence Lariar and John Spranger's Ben Friday. Tomorrow another one. Use the time to look for that favorite artist of yours among my scans (as you have been wanting to for the last few months).

Summer Lovin' 6

Monday Summer Special.

I am going to Los Angeles today. So instead of the usual post, I am giving you daily installments of Lawrence Lariar and John Spranger's Ben Friday. Tomorrow another one. Use the time to look for that favorite artist of yours among my scans (as you have been wanting to for the last few months).

Real Life Horrors

Sunday Meskin Measures.

Three delicious short stories this time in Black Magic #10. Stylisticly, the second one is my favorite.

Summer Lovin' 5

Saturday Summer Special.

I am at the San Diego Comic Con today. So instead of the usual post, I am giving you daily installments of Lawrence Lariar and John Spranger's Ben Friday. Tomorrow another one. Use the time to look for that favorite artist of yours among my scans (as you have been wanting to for the last few months).

Summer Lovin' 4

Friday Summer Special.

I am at the San Diego Comic Con today, So instead of the usual post, I am giving you daily installments of Lawrence Lariar and John Spranger's Ben Friday. Tomorrow another one. Use the time to look for that favorite artist of yours among my scans (as you have been wanting to for the last few months).

Summer Lovin' 3

Thursday Summer Special.

I am arriving in San Diego today. So instead of the usual post, I am giving you daily installments of Lawrence Lariar and John Spranger's Ben Friday. Tomorrow another one. Use the time to look for that favorite artist of yours among my scans (as you have been wanting to for the last few months).

To Use Or Not To Use

Wednesday Advertising Day.

As I promised last week, I will use the tradition advertising post on Wednesday to show your some of the stuff Craig Yoe and I didn't include in Behaving Madly, the Mad Magazine Imitation book coming out from IDW one of these days. Craig and I will be signing the first copies at the IDW booth at the San Diego Comic Con on Friday from 1 to 2.

Going through all the magazines involved, it struck me taht some movies and some tv shows were parodied more often than others. In the book we included one parody of the Glen Ford movie Blackboard Jungle, a marvelous piece by Art Gates for Crazy, Man, Crazy. But there were also parodies of this movie in Snafu (by Russ Heath) and Mad itself. Of course we couldn't use the Mad parody (by Walace Wood) and the Russ Heath one was printed very badly in all of the samples we found. And fortunately we were able to include a lot more terrific stuff by Heath anyway.

Another tv phenomenon spoofed a lot was the $64.000. Before the fraud scandal broke, many people were suspicious of the program. And some pretty good artists were involved. Ross Andru did one for Lunatickle in the style of Kurtzman's Mad magazine parodies, Mike Sekowsky a more illustrative one for Cockeyed and even Art Gates got into the game with a short parody for Crazy, Man, Crazy. We ended up using none of them, because Andru's was a bit too long (so we included a funny image from one of his other long parodies), Mike Sekowsky's not funny enough (but we did include a large illustration from it) and Art Gates was already given his due.

This may seem unfortunate, but I think it worked out fine. The book represents the best of the genre and is already being reviewed positively for some of it's more unique surprises. If we would have filled the book with sample after sample it would have hurt the impact from the ones we do have. In the forty page introduction I have taken care to describe every title so you will know what's in what and if you want to go and buy some more, you will know what to choose. That way we have hopefully made a book that caters to the collectors and the unitiated in an equal way.

But enough with the apologies, here are the stories.

Summer Lovin' 2

Tuesday Summes Special.

I am traveling to Los Angeles Today. So instead of the usual post, I am giving you daily installments of Lawrence Lariar and John Spranger's Ben Friday. Tomorrow another one. Use the time to look for that favorite artist of yours among my scans (as you have been wanting to for the last few months).

Summer Lovin' 1

Monday Summer Special.

I am preparing for my trip to San Diego today. So instead of the usual post, I am giving you daily installments of Lawrence Lariar and John Spranger's Ben Friday. Tomorrow another one. Use the time to look for that favorite artist of yours among my scans (as you have been wanting to for the last few months).

Borderlines

Sunday Meskin Measures.

Sadly the scans I took from the Digital Comics Museum are not as good as 99% of them are. I just sold my own cpy or I would have made my own. Two Meskin stories in Black Magic #9, even.

So Long

Saturday Leftover Day.

This week we learned that Bob Lubbers, one of the most extraordinairy artists that ever lived, has passed away. Lubbers worked in comics and newspaper strip and excelled in both. I have show much of his work, bt my favorite is his ten year run on the Al Capp signed (though actually his brother Eliott wrote them) Long Sam. I am surprised to see that I haven't shown any Long Sam for three years. But that probably is because I am collecting more, so that one day I can show longer runds that you can actually read instead of just look at the pretty pictures. For this week though, looking at the pretty pictures is enough. Here are a couple of early Long Sam's from 1954.

Jigsey Doubble Dooples

Friday Comic Book Day.

A couple of years ago Craig Yoe made a bok collecting the best of Archie's Madhouse. The spoof title (a Mad influenced comic book for kids featuring Archie and his friends) does not feature in Behaving Madly, our new book on Mad magazine imitation because it's a. a comic, b. not in the right time period and c. already colelcted. The bok itself (which I can highly recommend) was a visual inspiration for Behaving Msdly, though. From the borderlines cover (a must for this type of books) to the system used for naming the contributions (one line underneath the first page).

Like on Behaving Madly, Craig could not use every page of the title in the collection. Here are the first 11 pages of one of my favorite early features in Archie's Madhouse, Jughead's Dipsy Doodles. Sounds like something they could reuse on Riverdale with a whole different meaning.